RFC: Navigation restructuring

Jaromír Coufal jcoufal at redhat.com
Fri Nov 16 00:57:10 UTC 2012


Good morning/afternoon/evening to all
(you can choose your time-zone)

On our Aeolus Developer Conference I introduced new concept of Conductor 
UI. When I wanted to use versioning to distinguish it from current one, 
I realized that it would be better just to call it "new generation" :)

With this e-mail I would like to follow up with more details to the 
first stage of our change - navigation restructuring.

====
Goals
====
- Make user oriented in the system
- Allow user to quick navigate through the system
- Show to user as much as possible within at least steps as possible 
(but don't overwhelm him)
- Don't get user lost (at least not easily)
- If user gets lost recover him fast

=====
Solution
=====
-> Two level navigation
* First tier = logical grouping of elements
* Second tier = elements themselves in sections (all of them)

- User always knows where he is (always highlighted item in 1st and 2nd 
tier).
- Just by 3 clicks (listing through 1st tier), user can overview all 
accessible sections.
- It takes just 2 clicks to get to any full list of elements (e.g. list 
of Images)
- It takes just 3 clicks to get to any detail of any element in the 
system. (e.g. detail of an Image)
- If user looks for some section, he knows he can always find it in 2nd 
tier (nowhere else).

======
Structure
======
*Cloud Environments*
(everything related to active content)
     - Overview
     - Cloud Environments
     - Resource Zones
     - AppForms

*Catalog*
(everything related to passive content)
     - Catalogs
     - AppForm Outlines
     - Images
     - Hardware Profiles

*Cloud providers*
     - Cloud Providers
     - Accounts
     - Realms
     - Provider Selection
     - (Cost Estimates)

*Users*
     - User groups
     - Users
     - Permissions

=====
Concept
=====
- *Dashboard* will not be part of navigation. It is specific page with 
purpose to inform user about current state of system and what happened 
when he was out. User will mostly work with this page just after logging 
in not during further use of our system. This means, that Dashboard will 
be a launch (home) page right after login. It is common and very widely 
used usability feature, that logo brings you to homepage; in our case it 
wouldn't be different, logo will bring you back to Dashboard.

- Under each item from the second tier is list of all its elements in 
table view

- There is one exception - first page of Cloud Environemnts = Overview 
(currently will be substituted by Monitor page)

==========
Implementation
==========
Currently we are missing following table views:
- Cloud Environments
- Resource Zones
- AppForms
- AppForm Outlines
- Provider Accounts
- Provider Selection

Other views are already implemented, so we can just relocate them with 
very small adjustments.
(Details in link below Summary section)

======
Summary
======

Here is summary of the whole restructuring:
http://conductor.jaromircoufal.cz/new_conductor-ui_navigation-restructuring.html

Here is image for preview of the structure:
http://conductor.jaromircoufal.cz/conductor_overview.png

If you made it this far, I would be really thankful to any reaction - 
positive, negative, suggestions, if it makes sense to you, everything is 
really welcome.

Looking forward to hearing from you
-- Jarda

-- 
Jaromír Coufal

Interaction Designer
Red Hat Czech s.r.o.

Mobile: +420 724 595 508
E-mail: jcoufal at redhat.com
IRC: jcoufal at #cloudforms-ui, #aeolus, #brno




More information about the aeolus-devel mailing list