Explanatory guide text in Conductor?

Tzu-Mainn Chen tzumainn at redhat.com
Wed Aug 8 23:42:22 UTC 2012


----- Original Message -----
> From: "Matt Wagner" <matt.wagner at redhat.com>
> To: aeolus-devel at lists.fedorahosted.org
> Sent: Wednesday, August 8, 2012 4:01:02 PM
> Subject: Explanatory guide text in Conductor?
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> I've had an idea in the back of my mind for a while, and thought I'd
> mention it here to see if it was actually a good idea or not.
> 
> A lot of web apps, especially the ones that are user-friendly, tend
> to
> include text at the top of the main content section of each page
> walking
> you through what you're expected to do on the page. After you upload
> a
> photo to a social site, you might get a message along the lines of,
> "Great photo, $user! Now, you can tag your friends in the photo, or
> add
> a caption below!"
> 
> In that case, it's probably semi-intuitive what you're expected to
> do,
> but the text at the top of the page makes it abundantly clear if you
> weren't sure.
> 
> Aeolus does something pretty complicated, and a user must step
> through a
> bunch of forms as they build an image, create a deployable, and go to
> launch it. We've talked about working on making the flow intuitive
> and
> the forms easy-to-understand, but I wonder if it might also be nice
> to
> have some text guiding the user along.
> 
> As a random example, here is what the "New Deployable" page looks
> like
> today:
> http://dvmw6cjgjm3k7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Screenshot-at-2012-08-08-142841.png
> 
> It's not necessarily a complicated form, but if you stop someone on
> the
> street and ask them what it's all about, they're going to have no
> clue.
> 
> I took a really rough stab at writing some text at the top of the
> page:
> http://dvmw6cjgjm3k7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Screenshot-at-2012-08-08-150224.png
> 
> The text probably needs some work, and we should probably have a link
> or
> something like that to explain _what_ a "Deployable XML file" is and
> how
> to create one. But I like the idea of having some text telling me
> what
> I'm doing on the page, and what will happen next.
> 
> Ignoring my mediocre example text and the fact that it's just an
> unstyled paragraph tag, I wonder what people think about this general
> concept. Would it be helpful? Or in an app like ours, do we expect
> the
> user to know what they're doing? (Unlike, say, sharing a photo with
> some
> friends, managing cloud deployments isn't necessarily you should
> learn
> on the fly.)
> 
> -- Matt
> 

I like this idea, but in my opinion it should be generalized into a glossary/index of help items and topics; and an API that lets us create help links/popups that lead into the glossary.  Popups will help reduce clutter for expert users, and an overall help glossary will give a starting place for new users that might be confused.

Mainn



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