Melange Confusions

From Google Summer of Code Mentor Wiki

This page is created with the intention of improving process.

• If you add a new usability issue here which is not already an issue in the tracker, please first add it into the tracker so that you can link to it from here.
• If a usability issue mentioned here is important to you and is already in the tracker, please star it in the tracker (navigate to the issue and click on the star). This is one of the reason we want the links to issues here.

[edit] Usability issues in the issue tracker

• Issue 601 Confusion between home page document and featured document

On 19th April 35 orgs who had been asked to add home page documents on 14th April "Action Needed" had not done so. At least some of them had added featured documents instead.

• Issue 595 Always display the highest level of funtionality for the user

People who are both mentors and admins by default see the mentor view, not the admin view. They may wonder 'Where have my buttons gone?'.

• Issue 553 "Admin comment" should be "Admin actions" and hide textarea

The admin comments is misnamed and admin actions would be better, or even better have the admin actions on their own page. This usablity issue was introduced in solving a different usability issue, that mentors frequently made public comments as private and vice versa.

A specific consequence of this is that the "Assign Mentor" button is hard to find, because it appears only when "Admin Comment" has been selected.

• Issue 600 Students show in green, but admin still has more to do

After the number of slots has been finalized, interface does not visually distinguish which students have been assigned mentors

Currently after the number of slots has been finalized, the N students at the top of the list are shown in green, whether or not they have been assigned mentors. This gives the impression that the students are done being prepared for acceptance, when in fact they may still need to be assigned mentors.

Fixed in: 0-5-20090410p4, pushed to socghop 19-Apr-2009

[edit] Improving usability testing

• Issue 435 Allow mentors to see the student forms

This would reduce one barrier to testing. On the test site it is significant hassle to set up admins, mentors and users to test out various features from different users points of view. Testing on the test site is not happening.