CHEP 2009 José Benito González López Indico Central Enhancements, ergonomics and collaboration tools integration

Outline Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 2 Introduction to Indico Usability studies Results and conclusions Solution Demo of the coming release Future of Indico

Introduction Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 3 Conference Management Software Indico started in 2002 as European Project… … and “ended” 2 years after (for CHEP 2004) CERN IT dep. keeps maintaining and developing Indico. Initial goal: conferences Current goal: conferences, lectures, meetings, room booking, AV services, … Currently, intensively used by a big community

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 4 Events per year: Contribs per year:

Usage statistics ( on CERN server) Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 5 More than events More than contributions Around stored files Dashboard any day at 17h00: 1349 users in the last 60mn 136 created events 158 room bookings for that day More than 40 institutions have installed Indico world-wide

Impact of such usage Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 6 Main concern has always been to: Provide a large set of features Satisfy a huge number of users’ requests for new features Ever increasing needs (Room booking, AV services, etc) Non-stop growth User complained about usability New focus: “User Friendliness” Usability, ergonomics, accessibility Users point of view Personalization

Usability Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 7

Usability studies (I) Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 8 1)User survey, May 2007, 56 voluntary participants

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 9 2) “Checklist-based” usability testing – using the W3C guidelines [ P. Ferreira (CERN IT-UDS-AVC) ] 3) Analysis based on Jakob Nielsen’s “website deconstruction method” [ R. Mondardini (CERN IT Comm. Team) ] 4) Laboratory test [Mondardini and Ferreira ] : Six users from different backgrounds Usability studies (II)

Usability study – Conclusions (I) Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 10 Navigation elements were not clearly differentiated Menus were not consistently placed on the pages No common template for the menus: they all looked different; Icons were inconsistently used throughout the site Terminology issues – users easily confused some concepts Ambiguities: the result of some of the decisions taken by the users was not clear Excessive number of options Placement of important information Reworking the terminology used in the interface, in order to harmonize it with the jargon used in major conferences; Adding contextual help to the interface Hiding the more advanced options from regular users; And a large etc…

Solution Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 11 New interface with a “not that” different design New background technologies to cope with improvements: From REST to AJAX WOHL: context sensitive help

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC Demo - Improvements

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 13 New face

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 14 Context- help

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 15 In-place editing

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 16 Embedded calendars

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 17 New meetings layout

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 18 Pop-ups instead of new page

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 19 Materials management

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 20 Conference Portal Customization

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 21 Renewed Timetable

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 22 Renewed Timetable

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 23 I18n: internationalization

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC Future

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 25 Video Recording [J.Herr, D.M. Clavo]

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 26 Collaboration [J.Fernandes, D.M. Clavo, EVO Team] Collaboration [J.Fernandes, D.M. Clavo, EVO Team]

Demo – Future Improvements Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 27 Paper Reviewing Drag & Drop timetable edition My Indico Listings optimization Still many usability improvements Quality of Service

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC Thank you for your attention cern.ch

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 29 My Indico

Indico - CERN IT-UDS-AVC 30 Usability study – Conclusions (II)