You don’t need edit access to use the Figma libraries, you can copy components from there into your own drafts. If you’re a contributor with the ability to grant edit access, please be mindful, and downgrade to view access once the initial need for edit has waned.
You can read the full transcript of this meeting on our Slack channel. You can also read the agenda for this week.
Housekeeping
The first week in April this meeting moves like most .org meetings, ahead an hour.
GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/
Gutenberg 5.3 was released! Congrats to all the amazing work designers have been doing!
You can read more about it on the release post. It will also coincide with the release of WordPress 5.2. Some things to point out:
Resizing the text and media columns in the Media & Text blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. is being discussed.
For any CSSCSSCSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. gurus, @joen has been reorganizing stylesheets. You can see the PullRequests.
The Section block is going to get (or already has) some updates for inner block alignments. This is super tricky but @getdave@kjellr and others have been trucking away on it.
There’s research sessions going on this week around the Navigation block. Please jump into the #research channel if you’re interested in helping out.
The intention is to give users the ability to access their WordPress admin when a pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party or theme is causing a fatal error. We’ve been asked to give design feedback on:
Crafting the email message itself and making sure the user understands what is going on
Giving meaningful updates within the admin to help walk through problems
The work has wound down. There has been an exploration of what the Gutenberg styling would look like in other areas of the admin. Further work is intended to explore what this could look like.
As an interesting note, the team chose 16px for the main font size with this plugin. Much of the WordPress admin uses 13px, but from an AccessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) perspective that seems to be pushing the limits of what’s reasonable.
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As a site note, the team did a Contributor dayContributor DayContributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. at Yoast last week, and it went well! The design table had 3 first-timers, and the team gave feedback on about 8 open issues, even one long-dead one about Gutenberg annotations.
The appearance of new faces in the GithubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repo is so encouraging. Conversations are productive, design direction is collaborative, and the excitement is promising. If you’d like to learn more about contributing to GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/, @karmatosedwrote up a great handbook page this week.
Just a reminder, today is the last call for merging PRs that will make it into WP 5.2.
Navigation blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.
People are being signed up for usability testing. There are already a few interviews scheduled for next week. The testing will be moderated and conducted with a prototype of the Navigation block. If you’re interested in helping, join the #research channel in slackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.!
Tightening up
A really cool update to the block outlines has been merged. The blue hover state is replaced with a strong grey left border. The focused state retains that strong left border and outlines the entire block.
With all the research efforts gaining momentum, a recent call for researchers went out from @tinkerbelly. If you’d like to help out, notify the researchers in the #research slack channel to get involved.
Wow, the comments in the post are lively! It’s great to see so many perspectives communicating. The feedback is being synthesized and thought through thoroughly. <- Say that three times fast.
Thanks for reading, staying informed, and contributing anywhere you can!
As you may remember, back in December a small group of curious-minded people embarked on a research study with the aim to learn more about how end users think about site building.
Since the results have been out for a little while now, @jarahsames and I are going to be hosting a walkthrough of the results as well as a Q&A session, live on video! Join us at 19:00 UTC, Monday, 18 March to learn more and ask all your burning questions.
The session will cover:
The goals and aims of the study
How the research was planned and performed
Findings and insights
How you can get involved with future research efforts
Answers to all your burning questions!
The session will be recorded and shared here, so if you can’t make it live, you can always catch up later. It should take around an hour, depending on how many questions there are. If you can’t make the session or would like to pre-share your question(s), please drop them in the comments below, and Sarah and I will be sure to answer them during the Q&A portion.
The Zoom link for the session is here, and will also be shared to #research just prior to the session. See you Monday!
User research is key to ensuring that software meets users’ needs. With user research efforts ramping up across the project, now is a great time to get involved!
You don’t need to be a designer (or a developer, or a tester!) to become a researcher. All you need is a curious mind and a desire to help improve products for users.
Upcoming studies
With the site building study wrapped up, the next research efforts will be focussing on usability testing of new features. Coming up this month:
Anyone can become a researcher! You can start as a silent observer. This is the easiest way to get involved. You join the call as a silent, invisible participant to see how it works, and you can share your observations with us in SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. after the session.
If you’re ready for the next step, you can help by taking notes or even running a session. You can also help by contributing your observations after the fact, watching video recordings, or compiling results. There are guides and support available for all of these tasks, as well as lots of friendly faces in the #research channel in Slack to answer any questions you may have.
If you’d like to be involved in one of the research studies listed above, please comment here or pingPingThe act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” myself, @sarahmonster in Slack, and I’ll get you set up and ready to go.
One of the GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ Phase 2 tasks is to design some lightweight responsive settings for individual blocks. The project is at a point where it could use some testing with users, and we could use your help.
Background
A few blocks currently behave responsively, but most do not allow for specific control over that behavior. For example, the Columns and Gallery blocks let you set a number of columns, but will always collapse down to one or two columns on small screens. Some third party plugins have built more extended functionality for custom blocks, and since these are generally considered advanced controls, a pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party does feel like the right place for them. However, there are still a couple good reasons for us to formally establish simple pattern for these controls:
Plugins are all currently implementing these controls in different ways. If Gutenberg can establish a reusable, scalable best practice for responsive controls, it’ll help promote consistent UIUIUI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. wherever users adjust these sorts of settings.
There’s currently no way to opt-out of the stacked columns behavior for the Columns and Gallery blocks. In effect, they’re less “smart defaults”, and more enforced behavior. There’s a limited responsive toggle for the Media & Text blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. already, but establishing a scalable pattern here will come in handy as Gutenberg expands to include more complicated site-building blocks.
There’s been a lively discussion in the GitHub thread for this issue, and the group has largely coalesced around a possible direction.
Testing plan
The next step is to run this by users and get a temperature check on the direction. To kick things off, I’ve begun a short document to outline general goals and establish the beginnings of a script, and built a simple prototype for testing:
Since many advanced users have shared feedback on GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/, we’re primarily hoping to interview those who have less experience building websites. @tinkerbelly is already recruiting users for a test of the Navigation block, so we’ve decided to combine recruiting efforts. Depending on timing, we’ll either combine both projects into one test session, or break the responsive controls into its own short session. We aim to test this later this month.
How you can help
If you’re interested in user testing or responsive controls, I’d love more volunteers to get involved. As @tinkerbelly noted in her “How to participate in user research” post last year, there are many different opportunities to help. Volunteers do not have to be designers or have any experience with user research: moderating or observing sessions, taking notes, and assisting with with analysis of the interviews are all incredibly helpful.
Today, I could primarily use help reviewing the goals and script. Please give it a read, and share any notes below, in the document itself, or in the #research channel on slackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. Thank you!
The research group sorted participants into three segments, based on their current understanding of how people use WordPress. These segments are based on a handful of data points and warrant further study to confirm the categories. For now, these segments allow researchers to group WordPress’ extensive userbase into behavioural categories and learn characteristics specific to each group.
For this study, we focussed on three segments: bloggers, small businesses, and site builders (people who build sites for others). Today we’re going to learn more about site builders.
Site builders are people who make sites for others. Site builders often start as bloggers or small businesses. Having taught themselves to build websites, they are now progressively leveraging their skills to earn additional income. They tend to work for friends, acquaintances, or people in their professional networks and often barter or don’t charge much for the websites they build.
The research group sorted participants into three segments, based on their current understanding of how people use WordPress. These segments are based on a handful of data points and warrant further study to confirm the categories. For now, these segments allow researchers to group WordPress’ extensive userbase into behavioural categories and learn characteristics specific to each group.
For this study, we focussed on three segments: bloggers, small businesses, and site builders (people who build sites for others). Let’s learn about small businesses next.
Small businesses are the most varied group since businesses range widely depending on their nature. This is a difficult group to generalise about and researchers observed a diverse range of experiences.
The research group grouped participants into three segments, based on their current understanding of how people use WordPress. These segments are based on a handful of data points and warrant further study to confirm the categories. For now, these segments allow researchers to group WordPress’ extensive userbase into behavioural categories and learn characteristics specific to each group.
For this study, we focussed on three segments: bloggers, small businesses, and site builders (people who build sites for others). Let’s learn about bloggers first. (Hat-tip to @jarahsames who studied this segment!)
Bloggers wear many different hats: they are the writers, admins, and IT for their websites.
Results have been compiled from the sitebuilding research conducted at the end of December, and a report is ready. Make a cup of tea, it’s a long one! 🍵
If you have any questions about these results or would like to conduct your own research, please drop into the #research channel in SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. and say hello.
With that said, let’s dive into the full report! There’s a lot of information to digest, so this will be split into five sections (see discussion), to be shared here over this week and next.
The research group has a report ready to share as part of the sitebuilding research. Since it’s quite long, the group would like to choose the best place to publish it.
This report should be stored with other research results in the future, since these are likely to build upon and enhance one another. It’s best if these resources are easy to find and access. They should be something that everyone contributing to WordPress can refer back to in coming months and years.
This was discussed in Slack, but let’s open the conversation to more people.
Where should this type of content live?
In a series of posts on make/design
On a static page on make/design, announced with a post on make/design
In a static Google document linked to make/design post
Somewhere else?
This research is ready to publish, so please share your preference by leaving a comment on this post no later than Thursday, 31 January 2019. Thank you!
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