Propose new functionalities for Decidim software
#DecidimRoadmap Designing Decidim together
The stepping functionality is great for use cases where you can have a large amount of proposals and want to make it easier for
We have received feedback from the users that it makes the proposal creation process more complicated and the comparison step is not clear for all users. Also, some testers have complained that in case the comparison phase is omitted, it is confusing that the stepper jumps one phase and they have to submit the "same" form again.
We propose:
- Remove the stepper indicator from the sidebar
- Show all fields but the attachment already in the first step
- Only show comparison if it is necessary
- In the final phase, only ask for the attachment
- Make stepping (and previewing) configurable as they are not needed in all cases.
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5 comments
Conversation with Carol Romero
Hi @ahu, thank you for the proposal. I agree that the current wizard has some room for improvement. Anyways, I'm curious, are you guys doing user tests with the platform?
They are internally testing it at Helsinki, asking basically different people for comments within the organization. Quite many of these proposals I've added are based on that feedback which @katjah has forwarded to me.
@katjah may have more information on how this has been carried out in action. I would assume it's just feedback from users that keeps pouring in as more and more people are testing it out. The end goal is to have the system more understandable and simple to use when they take it to wider use.
Also, we have another ongoing project for a new Decidim instance and there few UX designers and experts went through the functionality of the system and also gave some feedback. One of the points in the proposal actually originates from their comments regarding skipping the step.
This is not random feedback but we are indeed running some formal user testing now, with focus on the proposal component. These have been in-person tests, group sizes ranging from 3 to 20. Based on these, we are quite worried on the usability of the platform. Despite most testers being city employees and therefore relatively computer literate, several people have failed to leave a proposal - and many others get very frustrated before doing so. We are about to acquire a senior usability expert to analyze the problem and come up with some suggestions how to improve the usability of the proposal step. I will let you know how it goes. :)
Those UX improvements make a lot of sense to me. Was making myself similar remarks the other day.
These same issues keep pouring in from people who test Decidim for the first time.
Helsinki is a bit of a special case in these terms because the proposal feature has been modified for them (to make it simpler by skipping all the other steps than "complete"). I believe this is what most other users would want to see as well.
I still believe stepping is valuable but not in the way it has been now implemented. In the "complete" phase the title and body fields should not be visible anymore because the user already filled those. "Why are you showing me the same fields I just filled?". This is even more confusing when the comparison step is skipped.
The compare step also does not really work for the Finnish language. It's more of an irritation factor than anything valuable + the current implementation would require quite a lot to make it usable and accessible even if it was valuable for someone. If it was configurable, I think 100% of our customers would decide not to use it.
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