Environment: Gallery 2.0.4, local apache server 2.0.54, PHP 4.4.0, MySQL 4.1.12 and Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7. The evaluator had admin-rights on server and system.
When a user chooses “Delete Photo” in the actions-menu, he gets to another page, where photos and albums are displayed.
At the bottom of the page the user can navigate to other pages, with more photos from this album, check or un-check all, invert selection, cancel and submit the deletion.
By clicking on “Delete photo” in the “item action”-menu of one special photo, the user could be surprised that she is asked about deleting more than the selected item. At first look it isn't clear which album items are presented on the following page. The button “next page” at the bottom of the page could be lightly overseen, as well as the naming is not clear.
Recommendation: The workflow for deleting single items is too long. After choosing the deleting-action from the drop-down menu or the main-menu, the user has eventually to scroll down and to check if the right item is selected on the following page. After submitting the deleting-action, the user should only have to verify his selection. For deleting more than one item he should at this moment be provided with the possibility to get to another dialogue, where he can than delete more than one item.
The dialogue for deleting more than one item should be either a multicolumn-view or more information to each item should be displayed. Information and thumbnails should be displayed in table form, for the sake of clarity. The columns of the table should have rough the same order as in the table of the upload dialogue.
First column: check-box
Second column: thumbnail
Third column: item type
Checking, un-checking and inverting selection should work as recommended in the Usability Report “Item Upload”.
Environment: Gallery version = 2.1 core 1.1.0; PHP version = 4.4.0 apache2handler; Webserver = Apache/2.2.0 (Linux/SUSE); Database = mysqlt 5.0.19-standard
For reordering items in an album there exist two possibilities: reorder items and rearrange items. The function "Rearrange items" works with spatial arrangement, whereas "Reorder items" is based on drop-down menus to change the order of a list. The goal of both functions is the same, only the way of doing it is different. The existance of two function for the same goal is presumably based on two different use cases:
Problem: First time users and beginers have to make a decision between two menu entries, which in fact lead to the same. The existance of two very similar menu entries makes it hard to decide which is the right one. Moreover users search for an explanation, why there are two of these functions.
Recommendation: Merge the two menu entries into one. In the new dialog still the two ways of rearranging items should be possible.
Comment: "Reorder items" is not WYSIWYG. I cannot use it. If Reorder/Rearrange are being used together the icons should be different too - or give Reorder a chance to be uninstallable.
Problem: In the case of rearraning items, when a user has to click on a new location for an item, he can not know if the former item is shifted forwards or backwards.
Recommendation: Put placeholders between the items, so that users have to click on that placeholder for selecting the new location of an item.
Problem: Albums and items look similar in the rearranging items dialog. Users have to assume which pictures in the dialogue stand for items/pictures, which ones for albums. This may be done with the help of a style from theme.css.
Recommendation: Better visualize the difference between different kinds of items in the dialogue.
Comment: The columns could span a wider area too if you have a long list of items.
"Edit Album" comprehends a great deal of attributes that can be assigned to an album. Editing albums is split into four sections: general, album, theme and custom fields, which are available through tabs.
Problem: The two labels "General" and "Album" aren't meaningful enough to give users a hint what can be found in the different sections. Also the sections themself are very crowded and quite complex.
Recommendation: The tab-labels have to be changed in order to make the content more obvious. Alternatively the information architecture of "Edit album" has to be changed (card-sorting, workflow-analysis or user survey could reveal more user-centric categorization).
The contents should be rearranged to give the user a better overview on the first glance. Further, all four tabs should try to adapt the same structure. (For guidelines see [1]) As an example the picture shows a revised version of the former "General" tab in "Edit Album".
Site Structure - draft -
> rearrange menu entries
> search and index for site admin
> separate plugins (module/themes installation-activation-...) from the rest
Environment: Gallery version = 2.1 core 1.1.0
Module Status
The meaning of the symbols that show the status of each module are not clear-cut; at first view it is not clear if the current status or an action that can be performed is shown.
Recommendation: Insert a legend at the top of the page, where the meanings of the symbols are explained and give the table-column the heading: "status". Media:Usab-recommendation-modules.png
Module actions
When there are two possible actions for one module, the two links are possibly not recognized as two, but as one link. There are six possible actions for each module: activate, deactivate, install, upgrade, configure, uninstall. Only the "next" possible actions are shown. Example: the user has first to deactivate a module before he can uninstall it.
Recommendation: For better visual separation put the links in one line and separate them with a vertical stroke. Uninstalling should always be available. Media:Usab-recommendation-modules.png
Furthermore
Users could be surprised that the actions are submitted with the first click. For uninstalling a module this could be to fast. On the other side, if more than one module has to be changed, the workflow is intricate: the user has to select each action and wait till its done. User tests or an user investigation could show if there is a need to change this workflow. The alternative would be a two-step workflow, where the user chooses first the changes that should be made to the modules and then submits his selections.
