On 8.8.2012 22:51, Matt Wagner wrote:
On Thu, Aug 09, 2012 at 06:35:16AM +1000, Justin Clift wrote:
Would a visual progress tracker be useful here too?

Something like this one:

  http://media.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/mrandmrsSmith_pr.gif

That's from an article Matt pointed out a few months
ago for a similar thing (but for our docs):

  http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/15/progress-trackers-in-web-design-examples-and-best-design-practices/
I thought about this. I really like the idea, but I'm not sure how it
would work in practice, because you don't necessarily have to follow a
prescribed flow.

You _can_ upload a template, build an image, create a deployable, and
then launch it. But you might just build an image from an existing
template but not launch it today. Or you might upload a template, build
an image, and then go off and set up a catalog.

Then again, maybe those workflows need some attention.

-- Matt
I was thinking about this feature as well. It doesn't have to be necessarily for each process of creating/launching an image/deployable/... I would like to improve workflows anyway, but what I was thinking about is this step by step visual approach as kind of "wizard" - you can follow the steps with the wizard, or you can manage objects manually. This type of guide would help user to get familiarize with sequence of steps really fast and easy.

There are two things against - using wizard will not learn user about navigation in the application - just sequence of steps, because he is all the time working with wizard which redirects him directly to the page where he needs to continue.

Another contra is that this wizard will help users as a guide in very beginnings (or if they need to go through the whole process) but after a while user would have partly different use-cases - just create image or more often just launch already prepared deployable. It will be very rear for user to go through the whole process at one time (I assume). From this point of view, wizard would not help and would be an unused function.

I would say, let's see, what we can do with workflows and if we manage to do them simple enough, I think we would not need to have this "wizard".

-- Jarda
-- 
Jaromír Coufal

Interaction Designer
Red Hat Czech s.r.o.

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