Equinox p2 UIWG Walkthrough

p2 UI Walkthrough Eclipse UI Best Practices Working Group 6/25/2008

Prep/Homework

The discussion will be the most productive if the participants are already familiar with both the Eclipse Update Manager UI and the p2 UI.

• Equinox p2 UM workflows shows the scenarios in the Eclipse Update Manager that were used to set goals for improving the user experience.
• Equinox p2 User Interface shows the same scenarios in the new p2 UI and compares aspects of the design to the UM design.
• Detailed references
  • Equinox p2 UI Plan
  • Update Manager and p2 Compatibility

Discussion Topics

• Are we ready to tweak/fix problems in the current UI or do we need to step back and reexamine the overall organization and metaphor?
  • Is "browsing" vs. task-oriented "search" wizard a better metaphor for finding content (esp. given performance issues, user wait time)?
  • Does eliminating modality improve the metaphor?
  • Is the juxtaposition of "installed" and "available" working?

• Known problem areas and possible solutions
  • How to integrate repo management into workflows
    • Presentation of large numbers of repositories for browsing
    • Selection of repositories for updating (solution might be to do smart picking for the user)
  • Unfolding of detail for installation contents
    • Balancing the simple view with more detail for advanced users
    • Is a tree view the best presentation for selectively exposing detail about the installed software?

• Specific UI improvements that could be made (style-guide type issues: wording, button organization, etc.)
• Other update UIs that are done well

Discussion Notes from Walkthrough

I didn't capture the names of who said what, and I'm sure I missed some things. These are the points that I took away from the walkthrough, and I've annotated existing bug numbers for issues brought up where applicable.

• The black and white icons for available software imply that you need to do something to enable them. Bug 210583
  • If affordance is going to show installed vs. not installed, don't rely solely on color Bug 216032
  • We'll probably have affordances for more states so the icon should probably be the color one
• Update manager hid a lot of the site management when searching for updates. It knew where to look. Putting repo management on user's shoulder through checkboxes is a step backward. Bug 234213
  • We should show the user (in properties, tooltip, etc.) what site something came from
  • If we retain that information, we could be smarter searching for updates so that user doesn't need to know
• Things that can take quite some time are modal and prevent user from working
  • Software Updates... dialog should not be modal Bug 221755
  • Progress dialog after clicking Install... can take a long time, it should not be blocking. Bug 236495
• User is used to 4 different kinds of dialogs in Eclipse (status, selection, preferences, wizard) and the update dialog doesn't fall into any category. Would moving the buttons around help with this?
  • Update Manager had wizard presentation, it was straightforward
  • Update Manager also had manage configuration dialog (different looking)
  • Would moving "Install..." to the bottom of available features page make it more familiar
  • Where would "Update..." and "Uninstall..." go
• General discussion of organization of "Installed and Available"
  • Already inconsistencies (selection models are different)
  • Should one view lead to another? User opens installed view and can push button to open available?
  • Is there interaction between these two? Should they actually be shown together
  • 90% case is user just wants to check for updates of what they have. Need fast way to do that which doesn't require seeing installed or available (ie...same behavior they get when automatic updating is on and they click on update affordance )
• The differences in margins, spacing, button sizes make the UI look unpolished