We tested Views in Drupal 8 at BADCamp 2012 and this uncovered a large number of usability issues. Since then we have been hard at work resolving them.
We resolved over 20 identified usability issues. Most of the issues revolve around the following fundamental issues:
- What can views do? People are overwhelmed by the plethora of options and often don't quickly find the right approach.
- Handler listings are overwhelming, and this causes people to miss the right handler.
- People occasionally miss the "save" button, making them move off the page before saving.
- On the detail level a lot of copywriting is overly descriptive, this makes people miss important help text.
Major
We have a number of major issues that we encountered. Most of these revolve around workflow and scan ability of listing pages:
- Users feel overwhelmed by handler listings
- Users miss "save" button and can't distinguish "editable" and "preview" areas
- Add “place block in region’ to the Views wizard to help workflow
- The distinction between the two items "HTML list | Settings" is unclear
Moderate
These issues will distract but not keep people from using the Views interface:
- The views UI should display "All Displays" option only when there are more 1 displays.
- In the Views UI, the interaction pattern of “All displays”/ “Override this display” is confusing
- Remove the "More" area from the bottom of handler configuration
- "Create a label" should be off by default, with an opt-in for style plugins
Normal
Finally, we have dozens of minor issues that often require little coding but have quite an impact on making individual forms better:
Edit + "Field" Views (table, grid, etc.)
Revamp descriptions of items in handler listings
Views UI gives no indication that you are editing a disabled view
Title setting in views UI does not indicate when the title might be overridden
The views UI should display "All Displays" option only when there are more 1 displays.
Let users set the block instance title for Views blocks in the Block UI
Add some settings on the block display to allow overrides on the block instance configuration
Provide helpful editing links on "admin/structure/block" for different blocks (menu, views etc.)
We have been working hard at solving many of these issues starting with the copywriting. However we are currently running up against a few issues that will need some serious help in the PHP department.
You can track views issues by following the tags Usability + VDC.
We look forward to your help, feel free to drop by #durpal-usability or #drupal-vdc if you have any questions.
