Re: Drag and drop behaviour for the Layout Customizer

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:56:45 -0700

Allison,
    Your discussion of the columns of different widths prompts me to question the whole notion of having colums, and what their value is to the user.  With the original uPortal customization tools, columns provided a crude organization of the display -- allowing users to move portlet windows left or right by shifting them to the next column.  But with drag and drop the user can move the portlet through a continuous space, dropping it anywhere, and columns become less useful as a page organization model.  As for columns that are narrower than the portlet, we should remember that the user can adjust the column widths -- so is there a reason to restrict the user from dropping a portlet in a column that is too narrow?  She can always adjust the column width and retry the drag-and-drop -- so why would we make extra work for her?  Tangentially, we should remember that it's possible to resize the portlet width -- dropping it into a too-narrow column could just make it skinnier -- and this could be reflected in the dimensions of the avatar (the avatar would get narrower if it moved to a narrower column).

I suppose what I'm suggesting here is that before we get caught up in how to deal with procrustean columns, we should think about just what the column convention is useful for, and how much of it we need to maintain. Right now portlet coordinates are column number and ordinal position, but does it have to be that way?  And right now column boundaries are the way the user says "I want everything over here to be just this wide, and no wider", but it's worth questioning just what this means from the user's viewpoint.

The layout of boxes you show below doesn't fit into columns, but it may make sense to the user.  So what is our reason for prohibiting it?  I feel that having some sort of grid that portlets can  snap to makes sense, just to help the user make the layout look regular on the screen, but your example suggests that simple columns may be both more restrictive and more cumbersome than is necessary.

Paul

Allison Bloodworth wrote:
Hi there, 

I definitely believe that we should support the i-Google style preview that our 'drag and drop layout preview' pattern supports. However, I had also not noticed before that (as Eli pointed out) the iGoogle portlets are all the same size. If this pattern is used for columns with different widths, I'm guessing this may complicate things from both a coding and user perspective. For instance, how do you clearly tell a user that they cannot drag a portlet from a wider column into a narrow column? It may be that there would be enough feedback with the fact that a drop target did not appear, but that would be something I think we should user test. Another question would be whether we even want to prevent that interaction...should users be able to drag portlets around without worrying about column width? I'm guessing the coding for this could be complicated. This could result in a page like this:


...but perhaps there *may* be contexts where this would make sense (e.g. users organizing piles of photos if the Gallery every implements this). I did a bit of searching on the web and it seems like not too many portals (or design patterns) are dealing with at least *moveable* portlets of differing widths yet, so this is probably something that deserves more thinking and then inclusion in our design patterns.

I had also been a bit confused by what was described as the more "Yahoo!-style" interaction our Layout Customizer displayed, as I hadn't been too involved in the Layout Customizer design process and actually hadn't seen a (in the process of being dragged) portlet avatar represented as a very small box before. Today I realized why--Yahoo! has apparently recently changed this interaction in their portal, though their drag-and-drop modules Design Pattern has *not* been updated to reflect it: http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/pattern.php?pattern=dragdropmodules#. If you hit "play" you will see that a half tone avatar is still used here, as opposed to the very small box representing the portlet which Layout Customizer (and My Yahoo!) is currently using. This is the interaction I was more familiar with, and is represented by our Drag-and-drop List Ordering Pattern (http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Drag+and+Drop+-+List+Ordering).

I had a short conversation with Gary about this a few weeks ago, and he said that after the usability testing done on a more i-Google-like implementation:

"One of the main concerns was keeping the drag avatar the same size as the original portlet.  With potentially very large portlets, there were usability issues with having such a huge drag avatar, jerk-like shifting in the page contents on drag, and sometimes obscuring the drop target indicator with the drag avatar."

It sounds like this could be a real concern, but I'm wondering if using a full-size half-tone avatar (which you can see through, so the drop target is visible), which both Yahoo!'s *design pattern* (not portal) and iGoogle use, might mitigate this problem in a more effective way. This could be backed up by user testing, but I am worried that users will not be able to see or understand the interaction of a very small avatar, which they may not clearly be able to understand is a representation of the portlet they are dragging (because it is difficulty to make that mapping and is likely not in accord with the user's mental model of what a portlet looks like). With an avatar that is the same size which immediately moves from the original spot when the user begins to drag it, the mapping is much more clear.

I had also suggested to Gary that we make our drop target color very different from the portal's theme colors (e.g. make it green) to ensure users could see it. I would also recommend including this info in the design pattern.  Also, I thought the way the drop target is placed right next to a portlet without any padding makes it harder to see. I'd like to see it spaced about halfway between the portlets in between which it is indicating a drop target.

After we figure out what to do with the portlet avatar styling for the Layout Customizer if anyone is up for thinking through some of this and updating the design patterns with me, let me know.

Thanks!
Allison


On Apr 16, 2008, at 4:54 PM, Daphne Ogle wrote:
Thanks Colin!

Looking at the results it does look like users had difficulty  
understanding where the portlet would land based on the summary:

"Drop Target Indicators:

     * Green bar is too small and not being noticed enough.
     * Maybe make it thicker and with an arrow indicating where  
portlet will go."

Perhaps we could include the bar and make it thicker along with the  
igoogle dotted outline pattern?  Not being involved in the testing,  
it's difficult to understand exactly where the hang up was for  
participants.

It looks like the link is broken to the original designs (off the  
testing page Colin identified below).   Assuming we have it someplace,  
we could do some additional testing with the new design and an updated  
version of the old one.  Since so much changed between designs I'm  
concerned that testing just the new design won't give us very good  
comparison information.

That said, our current iteration is very full so we could sure use  
some volunteer help doing the testing if we decide to go that route?   
And takers?  We could do pretty low intensive "hallway" testing so I  
wouldn't expect it to take more than a day but we'd have to look at it  
closer to see what is required.

-Daphne

On Apr 16, 2008, at 4:38 PM, Colin Clark wrote:

Daphne,

Sorry for the confusion; we haven't renamed all the wiki pages to  
reflect the new Layout Customizer name. The user test results are  
located here:


The results, as I read them, suggest that some participants had  
difficulty determining exactly where their portlet would land. On  
the other hand, this test was performed with a prerelease version of  
the component that was a bit buggier in some respects.

Hope this helps,

Colin

On 16-Apr-08, at 7:33 PM, Daphne Ogle wrote:
Does anyone know where the user testing results for the layout  
customizer are?  There doesn't seem to be a link off the main page  
for the component and I haven't had luck with search (probably  
don't know what terms to use).

Thanks!

-Daphne

On Apr 16, 2008, at 3:33 PM, Colin Clark wrote:

Hello designers,

We've been doing a lot of review and testing of the Layout  
Customizer
component in preparation for the Fluid Infusion 0.3 release. One of
the things we've been thinking about is the behaviour of drag and  
drop
in this component.

A couple of months ago, Gary and Shaw-Han did a great job of putting
together some detailed mockups. They're available at:


If you notice, these mockups specify an approach that is very  
similar
to myYahoo's news portal, available at http://cm.my.yahoo.com/. The
noteworthy features of this approach are:

* the use of a small drag "avatar" (the thing that follows your
mouse during a drag operation)
* a coloured, horizontal bar representing the drop target (the spot
where the thing will land when you let go of the mouse)

Another approach to drag and drop layouts is documented in the Fluid
design pattern for Layout Preview:


This approach is similar to iGoogle, http://www.google.com/ig.
Noteworthy features include:

* the use of a full-sized, transparent drag avatar that shows the
whole portlet
* a full-sized outlined box for the drop target
* other portlets on the page shift out of the way to show a
realistic preview of how the layout will look

What's the best approach? I'm thinking this is one of those "it
depends" questions. When portlets are similar in size and closely
spaced, the myYahoo approach is probably simpler and easier to
control. When portlets are more widely spaced and may have different
sizes, a full preview of the layout seems more useful.

At the time of the original designs, it's my understanding that we
went with the myYahoo-style interaction because it was immediately
similar to some existing code we have in the Reorderer. On the other
hand, the Reorderer is highly customizable. The dev team tells me  
that
implementing both behaviours should be relatively straightforward.  
It
may impact our release date a bit, but should we consider taking the
time to provide an option that will allow for the iGoogle-style of
preview?

I'd really appreciate opinions and advice from designers in the
community.

Colin

---
Colin Clark
Technical Lead, Fluid Project
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto

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Daphne Ogle
Senior Interaction Designer
University of California, Berkeley
Educational Technology Services
cell (510)847-0308




---
Colin Clark
Technical Lead, Fluid Project
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto


Daphne Ogle
Senior Interaction Designer
University of California, Berkeley
Educational Technology Services
cell (510)847-0308



_______________________________________________
fluid-work mailing list

Allison Bloodworth
Senior User Interaction Designer
Educational Technology Services
University of California, Berkeley
(415) 377-8243



 


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