Mark Uraine 9:02 pm on February 3, 2016  

Shiny Updates User Testing Continued

After implementing a lot of the current revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. for the feature pluginFeature Plugin A plugin that was created with the intention of eventually being proposed for inclusion in WordPress Core. See Features as Plugins., Shiny Updates, we thought to do more user testing. I created a tests for the plugins process and the themes process on wp-admin. These are the results.

PLUGINS PROCESS

Testing: Installation, Activation, Updating, and Deleting of plugins

I expected to learn if there were any drawbacks on the current version of Shiny Updates, and observe any benefits to the process as well.

Tasks

  1. Login to site
  2. Search for a new pluginPlugin A 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 and install it
  3. Activate the plugin
  4. Find a plugin that needs updating and update it
  5. Delete the plugin previously installed

Takeaways:

  • 0.55 – Initially the little circle notification in the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. next to “Plugins” is orange, but once the user clicks in to ‘Add New’ it changes to be a blue circle. I don’t understand why here and this probably resides outside the Shiny Updates plugin anyways.
  • 1.30 – User is unsure how to ‘activate’ a plugin from the ‘Add New’ screen.
  • 2.16 – The green success notification still says “Updating…” instead of “Updated” or “Updated Successfully”
  • 2.41 – After deleting a plugin, the user is taken to another screen that asks if they want to delete all the files. Are we trying to get away from these screens and keep everything inline with the plugin? If so, can we move away from this screen and just present a msg inline instead?

 

THEMES PROCESS

Testing: Installation, Activation, Updating, and Deleting of themes

I expected to learn similar issues or benefits on the current version of Shiny Updates.

Tasks

  1. Login to site
  2. Search for a new theme and install it
  3. Activate the new theme
  4. Find a theme that needs an update and update it
  5. Delete the theme previously installed

Takeaways:

  • 3:18 – Took the user a while to figure out which themes needed updating. This is probably because the notification blends in too easily with the theme thumbnail.
  • 5:22 – It’s not clear how to delete a theme that is active. Maybe there could be a disabled ‘Delete’ button in the modal with a note that says you can only delete themes that aren’t active.
  • 6:54 – After reading the help documentation, the user expects to see a ‘Delete’ button in the modal but doesn’t see it.