Colin Clark, Fluid Project Technical Lead, University of Toronto Daphne Ogle, Fluid Project Design Lead, University of California, Berkeley

Agenda Fluid Overview Deliverables User Experience Activities Design & Development Process How to get involved Questions?

The Context for Fluid Poor usability & accessibility are a significant barrier for community and open source software Now is the time to address the concerns of our communities Our goal is to incrementally improve the overall user experience of Sakai, uPortal, Kuali Student, and Moodle

The Fluid Approach Cross-project collaboration Take a holistic approach by combining both technology and UX design A two-fold path: –Social: build a community around UX –Technical: new UI development tools

Who’s involved? Partnership among several universities and corporations Toronto, UBC, UC Berkeley, York, Cambridge, and others IBM, Sun, and Mozilla Foundation Broad range of experience

Fluid Deliverables

Short Term Fluid Goals Plan heuristic evaluations Foster a vibrant community Evaluate technology in practice Create components –Design, develop, integrate, test, iterate –Create accessible alternatives or equivalents Make improvements to uPortal Plan ongoing architecture and design

Designer’s Toolkit UI Design Patterns –Help grow the current Sakai library –Extend to uPortal and Moodle Component library –Iterative design and testing –Component design artifacts –Design Patterns as taxonomy / folksonomy

More About the Designer’s Toolkit UX Inspections –Prioritize improvements –Protocol Persona Library –Leverage the Sakai design patterns library Design/Development Process U-Camps

User Experience Inspections Goals –Identify pain points –Identify “componentizable” solutions –Drive component work priority –Create shared protocol & process –Provide baseline for future evaluation Protocol –Usability & accessibility heuristics –Cognitive walkthroughs Organic process We need your help!

UX Inspection Plan Define protocol: we need your help! Choose targets within applications –Iterative: focus on highest-used areas first Define and share reporting templates Subgroup Inspections –Sakai, Moodle, uPortal, Accessibility –Synthesize across groups Identify issues –Common issues = common components

Subgroup Work Plan We need your help! Define process and priorities: –define iterations –user profiles –scenarios of use for cognitive walkthroughs Perform individual evaluations Synthesize evaluations and prioritize Brainstorm design solutions Collaborate with participating communities

Components Components are recurring interactions –Navigation –Forms and data –Direct manipulation of objects –Workflows, wizards and sequences

Component Road Map Prioritize based on usability research Start with specific solutions in context –Lightbox: organizing images Build general solutions over time Lightbox leads to all kinds of resource organization components: –Drag and drop –Folders and hierarchies –Re-ordering and rearranging items

Component Design User centered process Based on real user research Looking across communities and applications Agile, iterative process Close and constant communication with development Closely related to design patterns

Fluid Communication Models Team members all over the world Confluence wiki ( Mailing lists (fluidproject.org > Get Involved) Breeze meetings –Daily Stand-up meetings –Monthly Fluid meetings –Bi-weekly UX inspection meetings IM

We Need Your Help! UX Inspection –Join a subgroup –Attend the next meeting User research of development communities –Define developer and integrator needs for components Sakai Design Library WG –Join the group –Weekly meetings Future - component design –Stay tuned to the mailing lists

Thanks! Join our community: Questions?

Links to Remember Fluid Wiki: – Fluid UI Inspection: –In the wiki at Sakai UI Design Patterns: – ESPAT/Homehttp://confluence.sakaiproject.org/confluence/display/D ESPAT/Home