Proposals for changing Drupal UI and UX are heavily scrutinized (as are all other changes) once they hit the issue queue for implementing them. To keep discussions on track and prevent “opinion wars”, it helps to bring some solid research.

I’m excited to see more people taking the time and effort to provide exhaustive overviews documenting specific parts of the Drupal user interface. For example:

• Bowersox running down the options for how to handle form error messages
• Kika taking stock of how we let people add stuff
• Rick Cecil breaking down core user registration and login workflows
• Bojhan and yours truly did similiar research work for the create content page and page builder concepts.

This is design grunt work. Clicking through the user interface, collecting screenshots to document existing patterns, analysing what works and what doesn’t and deciding which direction to explore towards an improved design.

Design is for a big part about making the right trade-offs between conflicting requirements (“Easy yet powerful!”). Together with solid usability testing, it’s this kind of research that gives us solid foundations to build and improve on.

Great work people, much appreciated.

drupalplanet