Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
Open source needs open minds. Philipp's message is not to promote Drupal but welcome IxD professionals to bring their real world tested practice to the open source development of Drupal. There is a lot to learn from both sides. --- Someone new to both Drupal and IxD worlds but willing to learn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from ixda.org (via iPhone) http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40227 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
also not wanting to enter into the 'my tool is better than your tool' debate, but thought some people may be interested to know that Drupal is very aware of their current user experience issues and having conducted some recent usability testing that found some users completely at a loss when asked to complete a task to 'create content', the community on the whole is very aware of the fact that significant work needs to be done. to that end, I'm really happy to be currently working with Mark Boulton Design on a project sponsored by Acquia that is focused entirely on improving the user experience of Drupal 7 (the next version release of Drupal) for novice / intermediate users and as has been suggested, there is an awful lot that we hope to approve in this next release to make Drupal a much more viable option for non-developers. we're trying to run this project as 'open source' as we can - you can see some of the work to date here http://www.disambiguity.com/category/planet-drupal/ and we're in the process of getting a site that aggregates all of the activity from within the community and elsewhere on this project - just seeing the feedback here has already been insightful, so if you're interested in commenting on or participating in this process I would be really thrilled to have your input throughout the process. (that's a message for anyone, not only those currently jousting in this thread!) despite being drafted to work with Drupal on UX projects, I'm still a relatively happy Wordpress user. In fact, one of the success criteria we set for this project is that Drupal7 will be such a significiant improvement that it will be enough to tempt those of us working on the project from our other platforms (Wordpress and Expression Engine) and over to Drupal. I'm the first to admit that there is a long way to go, but the tide is really starting to turn within the Drupal community - there are now some really energetic UX and Design communities starting to emerge and the community overall has a much clearer sense of the impact that their current poor user experience is having on the perception of their product. I'm really excited to see what we can accomplish in the coming months and years and again, for those interested in helping us better integrate design into an opensource environment, please come and help out! It's a particularly great opportunity for anyone relatively new to the field and looking to gain some hands on experience - there's lots of work that needs doing - if you are interested, please ping me and I'm happy to help introduce you to the lay of the land (at least as much as I know it - I'm only fairly new to the community, but I can at least make it a whole lot less scary!) Leisa Reichelt Disambiguity.com Contextual Research, User Centred Design Social Design le...@disambiguity.com +44 778 071 2129 2009/3/21 Philipp Schroeder phil...@din15.org I actually didn't want to get involve in this discussion, because it is almost like Apple vs PC, but if I don't ask or discuss clarity will never be reached, and some people actually think that WordPress is just a blog and can't be a CMS. I hope this thread doesn't derail into a discussion about whether tool y is better than tool z. In my original post, I was trying to put forward that I see a huge opportunity for collaboration and cross-fertilization between the ixda community and the drupal community. I feel both communities can profit from each other's *expertise*. [...] Why is it then that the experts fear WordPress? Why do the experts choose systems that are known for their higher learning curves and shun the systems like WordPress that has excelled in user experience? Well, in an ideal world, software would be so adaptable to one's needs and personal experience level, that we wouldn't need distinct 'software for experts'. I feel that Alan Cooper's suggestion to optimize for the perpetual intermediates, rather than for the beginners, is good advice and something I feel Drupal is aiming for. Does empowering the user, scare the experts because they might no longer be needed or feel less of an expert among their peers? That is an interesting question. I am curious, where do you see evidence of such behaviour? Consider for example that Dries Buytaert - original creator and project lead of Drupal - has been evangelizing about empowering the user by eliminating the middlemen for years: http://buytaert.net/drupal-and-eliminating-middlemen [...] But if you are evangelists for a better user experience, shouldn't you be supporting the products which have a better user experience? Building software with great user experience for the masses is hard. That's why I point out that there is a great opportunity here ripe for the taking - for the ixda and drupal communities to actively collaborate on the ixda networking platform project. The ixda site building team will benefit
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
This is critique in general about people who prefers to choose the complex path, in fearing of being devalued. I actually didn't want to get involve in this discussion, because it is almost like Apple vs PC, but if I don't ask or discuss clarity will never be reached, and some people actually think that WordPress is just a blog and can't be a CMS. I have been on this group I think for over a year now and I thought that the aim of this group, of like minded people, was to create better user experiences. We want to create products that users can embrace and not be frustrated by. Why is it then that the experts fear WordPress? Why do the experts choose systems that are known for their higher learning curves and shun the systems like WordPress that has excelled in user experience? WordPress embodies everything we want in our digital life; a product that are easy to learn and use (than any other similar system currently on the market). Does empowering the user, scare the experts because they might no longer be needed or feel less of an expert among their peers? Why do you want to do the more complex methods if easier ones are available? I hear things like Drupal or Joomla can DO so much more? Really? Are you working on possibility or practicality? How many users do you think WordPress MU handles? Are we being hypocrites (especially as IxDA Members) by choosing more complex systems? I am not criticising Drupal or anyone specifically here. I am sure the people at Drupal are great and passionate about the product they create and so are the Joomla supporters; and their products can do amazing things. But if you are evangelists for a better user experience, shouldn't you be supporting the products which have a better user experience? The funny thing is that Drupal Joomla can improve their user experience with leaps, if only they will only choose to stop using engineering and programming terms and start talking the user's language. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
Please, I would seriously be enlightened if you could tell me what those features are that you can find in Drupal but not WordPress. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
Does Wordpress have groups and flexible roles? I'm not sure, just asking :) Peter On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 11:29 AM, AJ Kock ajk...@gmail.com wrote: Please, I would seriously be enlightened if you could tell me what those features are that you can find in Drupal but not WordPress. -- me: http://petervandijck.com blog: http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/ global UX consulting: http://290s.com free travel guides: http://poorbuthappy.com Belgium: (+32) 03/325 88 70 Skype id: peterkevandijck Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
So your point is that Wordpress has a better user experience, so we should use it, even though the other products have more features? Sounds fair enough, if WP actually does what we want it to do. Peter On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 10:59 AM, AJKock ajk...@gmail.com wrote: This is critique in general about people who prefers to choose the complex path, in fearing of being devalued. I actually didn't want to get involve in this discussion, because it is almost like Apple vs PC, but if I don't ask or discuss clarity will never be reached, and some people actually think that WordPress is just a blog and can't be a CMS. I have been on this group I think for over a year now and I thought that the aim of this group, of like minded people, was to create better user experiences. We want to create products that users can embrace and not be frustrated by. Why is it then that the experts fear WordPress? Why do the experts choose systems that are known for their higher learning curves and shun the systems like WordPress that has excelled in user experience? WordPress embodies everything we want in our digital life; a product that are easy to learn and use (than any other similar system currently on the market). Does empowering the user, scare the experts because they might no longer be needed or feel less of an expert among their peers? Why do you want to do the more complex methods if easier ones are available? I hear things like Drupal or Joomla can DO so much more? Really? Are you working on possibility or practicality? How many users do you think WordPress MU handles? Are we being hypocrites (especially as IxDA Members) by choosing more complex systems? I am not criticising Drupal or anyone specifically here. I am sure the people at Drupal are great and passionate about the product they create and so are the Joomla supporters; and their products can do amazing things. But if you are evangelists for a better user experience, shouldn't you be supporting the products which have a better user experience? The funny thing is that Drupal Joomla can improve their user experience with leaps, if only they will only choose to stop using engineering and programming terms and start talking the user's language. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- me: http://petervandijck.com blog: http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/ global UX consulting: http://290s.com free travel guides: http://poorbuthappy.com Belgium: (+32) 03/325 88 70 Skype id: peterkevandijck Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
James, I agree with your points on WordPress. WordPress, as you say, is much easier on many fronts. But, it is not nearly as powerful as Drupal. I think that's a notion most will agree with. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40227 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
@ Peter Wordpress 2.7 Roles: http://agapetry.net/news/introducing-role-scoper/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adminimize/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/user-access-manager/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/connections/ WordPress 2.6 http://www.im-web-gefunden.de/wordpress-plugins/role-manager/ @ Brian More powerful? Powerful for what? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
Drupal being more complex and technical is a fallacy. I've used drupal, joomla, mambo, crown peak, trinidad, proprietary systems a slew of others and when I finally got around to checking out wordpress I was pleasantly surprised. Even if wordpress doesn't do exactly what you want it to do out of the box the experts should be able to pull it together and make it happen within a reasonable amount of time. I always wondered why some big dev teams or communities just don't develop their own tool/system. Why don't you guys do your things and conduct your millions of tests, make some decisions, make some wireframes, prototypes and wow the world with that skill everyone should buy into? A team of designers agreeing to use drupal is kind of strange. I think the communication of creating a simple internal tool is probably the best opportunity to get everyone in sync before you offer your whacky service to the public. Just my 2 cents. I'll still read the emails no matter what you use. Please don't take this away (bad move). It's discouraging a specialized team/community that boast about optimal research before design would just jump on the bandwagon and say drupal, we are using drupal. Drupal is the first search result that comes up when you google CMS, it must be the best... Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
Just so I understand, who is the %u2018user%u2019 when you say WordPress provides a better user experience? If you%u2019re talking about the end-user who doesn%u2019t know (or care) what CMS was used to build the site, then I%u2019d like to learn more about how exactly WordPress provides a better user experience? I%u2019ll presume you are referring to the user experience of a person or team building a website. Then, yes, without a doubt, WordPress provides unmatched ease of use to the *non-developer*. But if you need/desire customization, most developers will say they feel their hands are tied. In this sense, it is not a better user experience. In terms of features, one can add plugin after plugin to WordPress to inch it closer to Drupal%u2019s core feature set. User management is a strength of Drupal (I can%u2019t comment on the value of the user management WordPress plugins mentioned). Views and the creation of Content Types are also very powerful for custom sites. The famous Yahoo Design Pattern Library was built on Drupal using these features ( http://tinyurl.com/cdxdma ), saying %u201CUltimately, we chose Drupal because of its breadth of capabilities, powerful taxonomy, and extensibility.%u201D When we discuss %u201Cfeatures%u201D, I suspect we first think of blogs, forums, polls, etc. %u2013 but out-of-the box capabilities such as Content Types, Views, Taxomony, etc. are core Drupal features to support tailored designs. If we were to do an assessment of each tool%u2019s Administrative areas, Drupal is a better provider of tools to manage large-scale, multi-authored sites. Core User Management, Roles, Permissions, Actions, Logging and Alerts, System Performance, Load Optimization, etc. support site maintenance and performance. Drupal is a content management framework that provides the basis for building, extending, and maintaining large, multi-authored sites. It boils down to choosing the right tool for the job. If you need a %u201Cstandard%u201D site (blogs, forums, polls, profiles), WordPress is probably your answer. If your design requires customization, Drupal is more flexible; if you need to support a large, multi-authored community, Drupal provides better site maintenance and performance. I'm not married to either Drupal or WordPress. I just know each has its strengths. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40227 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
You can put your drupal T-shirt on and jump off a cliff and I won't try and stop you. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
I actually didn't want to get involve in this discussion, because it is almost like Apple vs PC, but if I don't ask or discuss clarity will never be reached, and some people actually think that WordPress is just a blog and can't be a CMS. I hope this thread doesn't derail into a discussion about whether tool y is better than tool z. In my original post, I was trying to put forward that I see a huge opportunity for collaboration and cross-fertilization between the ixda community and the drupal community. I feel both communities can profit from each other's *expertise*. [...] Why is it then that the experts fear WordPress? Why do the experts choose systems that are known for their higher learning curves and shun the systems like WordPress that has excelled in user experience? Well, in an ideal world, software would be so adaptable to one's needs and personal experience level, that we wouldn't need distinct 'software for experts'. I feel that Alan Cooper's suggestion to optimize for the perpetual intermediates, rather than for the beginners, is good advice and something I feel Drupal is aiming for. Does empowering the user, scare the experts because they might no longer be needed or feel less of an expert among their peers? That is an interesting question. I am curious, where do you see evidence of such behaviour? Consider for example that Dries Buytaert - original creator and project lead of Drupal - has been evangelizing about empowering the user by eliminating the middlemen for years: http://buytaert.net/drupal-and-eliminating-middlemen [...] But if you are evangelists for a better user experience, shouldn't you be supporting the products which have a better user experience? Building software with great user experience for the masses is hard. That's why I point out that there is a great opportunity here ripe for the taking - for the ixda and drupal communities to actively collaborate on the ixda networking platform project. The ixda site building team will benefit from drupal's developer community. Drupal will benefit from expert ixd advice that can be incorporated into the core framework. And most importantly, the members of this community, who notably will be the end users of the resulting platform, are participating in the process. Hey, I am talking about user-centered, participatory design here. :-) The funny thing is that Drupal Joomla can improve their user experience with leaps, if only they will only choose to stop using engineering and programming terms and start talking the user's language. It's interesting that you mention language here. In fact, the terminology used in the system was what originally led me to Drupal and its community - namely Drupal's taxonomy module. As far as I am concerned, Drupal introduced a paradigm shift on how to organise and structure content. Drupal's abstract way of storing all content types as 'nodes' and then allowing all kinds of navigation - content-linking, filtering, searching, ... where hierarchical organisation is only one option, rather than the dominant one. Drupal was and is developed by a bunch of forward looking technologists, right there on the web frontier. IxD'ers, come and play! :-) -- :::. Philipp Schroeder DIN15 / Information Architecture Interaction Design www.din15.org, phil...@din15.org Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
I hear what you're saying and, no doubt, Drupal does some things very well. Where I work, we've built a few standalone projects with it. However, it also has some huge drawbacks when compared with something like Wordpress for medium sized, discussion-based sites (blogs on steroids, or even discussion forums). Drupal is a mess to theme and very difficult to hand off to an end client who just wants to easily update content. Theming it, with it's convoluted combination of views and mods is, frankly, a pain of monumental proportions. The mod update process, compared to that of plugin updates on Wordpress, pales in comparison, from an ease-of-use standpoint. Wordpress is infinitely easier to configure and to manage content, due to a much more elegant backend. It has a very active community and follows the same open source approach to extending the platform, as does Drupal. Wordpress has addressed many of the things that used to make it a second choice for larger sites with a lot of users, though it's still probably weak compared to Drupal in the user management arena. I'm not trying to open a debate here, since IxDA has already chosen to use Drupal, but it's certainly not the only game in town for seeing an open source approach in a robust community. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40227 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designers, meet the Drupal community!
It's a sign that experts would choose drupal over wordpress. Wordpress is far superior on to many fronts to even waste time discussing. Sent from my iPhone On Mar 20, 2009, at 12:48 PM, James Wanless ja...@wanless.info wrote: I hear what you're saying and, no doubt, Drupal does some things very well. Where I work, we've built a few standalone projects with it. However, it also has some huge drawbacks when compared with something like Wordpress for medium sized, discussion-based sites (blogs on steroids, or even discussion forums). Drupal is a mess to theme and very difficult to hand off to an end client who just wants to easily update content. Theming it, with it's convoluted combination of views and mods is, frankly, a pain of monumental proportions. The mod update process, compared to that of plugin updates on Wordpress, pales in comparison, from an ease-of-use standpoint. Wordpress is infinitely easier to configure and to manage content, due to a much more elegant backend. It has a very active community and follows the same open source approach to extending the platform, as does Drupal. Wordpress has addressed many of the things that used to make it a second choice for larger sites with a lot of users, though it's still probably weak compared to Drupal in the user management arena. I'm not trying to open a debate here, since IxDA has already chosen to use Drupal, but it's certainly not the only game in town for seeing an open source approach in a robust community. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40227 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
