Archive for category v.3.0

New Navigation in TargetProcess: It is Coming…

Posted by Michael Dubakov in UI, design, navigation, usability, v.3.0 on February 26th, 2010

In two weeks we will release a completely new navigation in TargetProcess. It was designed to follow several rules:

  1. Flatness. It is completely flat. No hierarchies. Currently there are 3 hierarchy levels in TargetProcess, there will be just one soon.
  2. Customization. Every person will be able to configure the navigation. It may have just 2-3 tabs or 9-10 tabs. See what you need, no more.
  3. Simplicity. We had long process of designing it,
    prototyping it and testing it. There were usability tests in live sessions and they were very valuable.

navigation

You may check interactive prototype (note that it is not full and final application, just a proof of concept prototype) and provide your feedback.

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Re-designing ToDo Area: Wireframes I

Posted by Michael Dubakov in UI, design, usability, v.3.0 on October 16th, 2009

Yesterday we’ve created wireframes for the fist ToDo list concept. The main ideas is to have 3 areas for Today tasks, Tomorrow tasks and Later tasks. Use drag and drop to plan tasks for today or move them later. No calendar view, just plain list with 3 groups.

todo1

There were debates around Tomorrow tasks. Several people think that this group is not required and Today/Later will be sufficient.

todo1_2

Also this ToDo list provides an ability to see other people’s ToDo list as well as group tasks by various parameters. Time grouping is default (Today/Tomorrow/Later), but also it is possible to group by User Story, Project, Type or other properties.

todo1_1

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Re-designing ToDo List: Scenarios

Posted by Michael Dubakov in UI, design, developing, usability, v.3.0 on October 7th, 2009

Today we spent several hours writing scenarios for Mary (she is a Tester). There are two types of scenarios. The first describes a typical working day. The other set of scenarios describes concrete goals that Mary wants to accomplish with the help of TargetProcess.

Sorry for a lengthy post, but we want to provide all the important details and show how we are trying to re-design TargetProcess. If you think that this persona is artificial, let us know. If you think you know similar girl, let us know. If you have any questions, just ask. Here we go.

Mary, 26 yo, Functional Tester

laptop_mary
Has 3 years of experience in testing web applications. Knows how to write test cases, works  with several bug tracking systems. Hates bad UI and constantly tries to convince developers to fix ugly areas.

Environment

  • 30 people development team, single project, 6 testers in the team.
  • Scrum process with 2-week iterations.
  • Uses laptop at work

Activities

  • Find and submit bugs, capture screenshots
  • Create test cases
  • Verify user stories (execute test cases)
  • Verify fixed bugs
  • Communicate with developers about stories and bugs
  • Participate in daily meetings, iteration planning, release planning meetings

Behavior

  • Smokes and drinks coffee
  • Likes to communicate with people around
  • Listens to music at work
  • Argues with developers about found bugs
  • Uses IMs quite often to chat with friends
  • Likes bright colors

Goals

  • Have fun at work
  • Good communication and social environment at work, money not so important

Typical Day Scenario

Mary’s working day (Tuesday).

Mary comes to the office at 9 am. She has daily meeting at 10 am, so she makes herself some coffee and checks email (20 mins). She looks at what she worked on yesterday, what’s new came today and what are her assignments (10 min). She forgot to add time yesterday, so she adds time right now for all the yesterday’s activities. She loads Skype and says “Hi” to friends.

Then daily meeting begins (20 min).
- I verified the UI improvement bug, then verified user story “As a admin I want to un-delete projects” and added 3 bugs on this user story (one is critical and 2 UI improvements). Today I am going to discuss a new user story with Pete, check specs and start writing Test Cases. Also I can’t setup Ubuntu to check several UI bugs on FireFox for Linux, so I need help.
- (Larry) Mary, we have one blocking bug to reproduce. It is very important.
- OK, I’ll take a look at it.
- (Ted) I can help you with Linux
- Oh, cool! Let’s do it this afternoon.

Meeting is over. After the meeting Mary has the following priorities: the blocking bug, Linux setup and bugs check, discussing the new user story.

Mary has coffee, smokes with friends, thinks about the blocking bug and discusses possible reasons with developers. (15 min).

Pete comes to ask about a meeting on the new user story.
- Hey, let’s discuss the  new story I have.
- I have a blocking bug, so I can’t attend right now, maybe you’ll help me to reproduce it?
- OK, let’s take a look.

They investigate the bug for 30 mins and reproduce it successfully. Mary submits steps to reproduce into the system and as a small reward takes a little break. Then they  discuss the new user story with Pete (30 min). They discuss specs, some unclear areas, etc.

After the meeting, she writes checklist for the user story (1 hr). Then goes for lunch.

After the lunch she comes back and checks if there are any new tasks. No new tasks, so she calls Ted to help her with Linux. She spends 1 hour with Ted setting everything up. Then Mary verifies several UI bugs on Linux. Suddenly during exploratory testing she finds a new nasty bug - null reference exception when clicking on Delete User button. She captures the screenshot and adds bug into the system. This bug blocks verification process and Mary notifies team lead about the problem. And goes to smoke one more cigarette.

It is 5 pm already, so for the rest of the day she chats with friends and reads some interesting blog posts and articles. Suddenly she remembers that Katy returned from vacation today, so she calls for her and talks about Florida and Miami. Then Mary checks email and goes home at 6:30 pm.

Goal-oriented Scenarios

Mary has her own goals.

What did I do yesterday?

Mary comes to the office  in the morning, logs in into the system and wants to see all her yesterday’s work before the daily meeting. She sees:

  • daily meeting attended (10:00 - 10:20)
  • for story “As an admin I want to un-delete projects”
    • Test Cases ran
    • Bug “Crash when click Un-delete in FireFox” added
    • Bug “Main label has strange color on Un-delete screen” added
    • Bug “Buttons overlap in Safari on Un-delete screen” added
  • comment added for the bug “Ugly button formatting in Add User page”
  • Read article “Kanban and Functional Testing” (done)
  • Personal task “Install new version of Skype” added

System reminds Mary that she forgot to add time for all yesterday’s tasks, so she adds time quickly without any redirects.

I want to plan my day

After yesterday’s work review, Mary wants to see today’s meetings, all tasks and focus on high priority tasks (bugs, stories, tasks) with estimates, new tasks. She sees:

  • daily meeting (10:00 - 10:20)
  • 3 UI bugs to verify
  • for user story “As a developer I want to find all usages of the method quickly”
    • meeting with developer (deadline today, highlighted)
    • create test cases
    • run test cases
  • create test cases for user story “As an admin I want to delete comments”
  • Smoke testing of new build on Thursday
  • Retrospective meeting on Friday (undefined time)
  • Demo meeting on Friday (15:00-16:00)
  • Read “Why FitNesse rocks” article

Mary wants to plan her day, so she marks tasks for today, and as a result she has 2 groups of tasks (Today, Later). Suddenly she remembers that she forgot to report a bug yesterday, so she adds this task for today quickly.

What’s new  today?

Mary comes back from diner and opens her dashboard. She wants to know which comments have been added to her items, which new meetings scheduled, new bugs added or bug states updated.  A blocking bug “Crash on user add” was added  and already fixed by Tom.  She sees that nobody is assigned as a verifier for this bug and she assigns this bug to herself to verify the fix asap. Also she sees that a new comment has been added for a bug in her todo list. She reads the comment and replies quickly. Also she notes that someone has added the UI bug that she forgot to add yesterday. So she closes the related task.

The next step is to gather scenarios for the other personas, combine them, analyze them and create wireframes for the new ToDo list. Something tells me it will be powerful. And we should keep it as simple as required, but not simpler ;)

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Developing TargetProcess v.3.0: New Help Desk Portal

Posted by Michael Dubakov in UI, design, developing, help desk, usability, v.3.0 on February 2nd, 2009

Help Desk Portal is quite important application. It allows our customers to interact with us. Also it allows customers of our customers to interact with our customers (weird assertion, but it’s true :). We’ve collected quite many requests for Help Desk Portal improvements and finally decided to push it forward.

Here is the first mockup of the home page. It is still a work in progress, so comments/changes/advices are welcome.

Ideas, Issues, Questions, Mockup

There are some ideas behind the Help Desk Portal re-design:

  • When someone has a problem, he should be able to find existing solution easily (if any). If there is no solution, it should be straightforward how to post a request
  • Ideas and Issues should be separated. They have quite different flows and expectation. If someone post an issue it should be resolved quickly. Idea can live in the backlog for years.
  • People may use search or tags to find relevant ideas and requests.

The next step may be to add more social networking into Help Desk Portal (self-service is a great thing if you can encourage other customers to provide solutions and answer the questions). However this is just an idea so far.

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Developing TargetProcess v.3.0: Redesigning Comments List

Posted by Michael Dubakov in design, developing, usability, v.3.0 on January 28th, 2009

We are redesigning comments to make them more usable. Redesign includes clear formatting and some functional improvements. Current comments list has several problems as you see:

Old comments list design

Here is the list of ideas:

  • Currently to add a comment user should click add link and the form appears on the bottom of the list. The add link will be removed and comment form will be always visible.
  • Currently when user clicks Edit, the comment content loaded into rich editor in the bottom of the list (frustrating!). In new design it will be almost like inline edit with no focus loss.
  • It will be impossible to use custom styles in comments. In some cases comments list becomes a mess, so just clean HTML messages will be saved and all other stuff removed.
  • Edit and Delete links should be there, but these actions are quite rare. To reduce quantity of visual elements, these links will be hidden by default and visible on mouse hover only.
  • It is definitely better to see something like “comment added 2 days ago” than “comment added 12-12-2009″
  • Comments from customers will be highlighted in the list to make them quickly identifiable.
  • More space will be added between comments.

New comments list design

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Developing TargetProcess v.3.0: Lists

Posted by Michael Dubakov in UI, developing, usability, v.3.0 on January 20th, 2009

Lists in v.3.0 was a hot topic during today’s meeting. It seems we will replace all lists in v.3.0 (such as User Stories, Bugs, Requests, etc) with lists based on the Custom Reports functionality. It will be possible to create custom lists (same way as a custom report) and to include these lists into the Main menu. For example, you may create Current Iteration Stories list or Open Stories list and include them into Planning section of the Project menu.

The other interesting idea discussed, was to provide List and Grid modes. You will be able to group by Iteration in the user stories list and see items as a grid, where each iteration is a column. It may be possible to change iteration using drag and drop. It can potentially replace Iteration Plan section completely. There are many useful applications of such Grid.

Current Custom Reports should be improved to provide great user experience.

  • Filters. It should be easy to add and change filters in the list, so filters should be accessible in one click.
  • Renderers and Colors. People should be able to set custom colors and maybe even styles to list items. For example, I want to mark all rows red for blocking bugs or gray for completed user stories. These will be a custom settings.
  • Batch actions. It will be possible to change all properties for selected stories in several clicks. For example, I may select 10 stories, click Batch action, select new Iteration, new Priority, new Assignment and save all these changes.

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Developing TargetProcess v.3.0: Navigation

Posted by Michael Dubakov in developing, navigation, usability, v.3.0 on January 19th, 2009

Today we’ve discussed navigation problems in TargetProcess and all agreed that we have four major issues:

  1. Similar labels in menu (for example, Reports inside a project area and Custom Reports in top menu).
  2. Too many links in the header (for example, in Project -> Planning area there are 31 links to click).
  3. Menu structure and how to get into required place (why Tags Board is in the Dashboard section?).
  4. It is not clear whether we are inside a project or outside.

We’ve come up to several improvements that may resolve the problems.

First, we agreed that there were two major different areas: inside and outside of a project. If a user is inside the project, he focuses on project’s tasks and will likely not go to Admin or Projects list. So we decided to separate global menu and project menu. It means that inside the project user will not see the top level menu, but just Back to Home link. Also there is no company logo and company name in the project area. It may look like that (just a mockup, not sure about final design):

Benefits? Sure, there are plenty!

  1. 17 links instead of 31 and more air in the menu.
  2. No frustration where to click.
  3. Clear sign that we are in the project area (large gray project name).

There is only one downside - one extra click if you need to change settings in Admin, check custom reports, etc. if you are inside a project. Quite rare operations to sacrifice simplicity.

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