Propose new functionalities for Decidim software
#DecidimRoadmap Designing Decidim together
We have received lots of feedback about the complex navigational structure in Decidim. E.g. if the city has active budgeting phase in multiple processes, the users would first have to browse to processes => (possibly select a process group) => select a process => switch to the budgeting tab => authorize themselves (if required) => start the budgeting.
In this case the users are not really interested in anything else but the budgeting phase and it would be better to guide them through the process with a simple flow.
In this particular case the desired user flow would be something like this:
- Require the user to login (needed for budgeting)
- Require the user to authorize them with 1, many or all selected authorization method (needed for budgeting)
- Select the budgeting component from the desired process (only displaying those that the user is authorized in for the budgeting action)
- Do the budgeting
- Repeat the budgeting for any other components the user is authorized in
Also, in the budgeting phase, the user should not be shown the UI overhead links from the participatory space, i.e. the participatory space's header which shows its title, steps and sub-navigation. They are only interested about performing the budgeting in the desired process, so focus the user's attention to the actual budgeting.
The same kind of process could be applied to any component out there, e.g. proposals/ideas. The most use cases we've had, there is always one active phase (proposal, budgeting, etc.) that the users are interested in at the given time. They come to the platform for that particular purpose and are confused when they have to browse through multiple different views in order to perform what they came to do.
We actually tried to build a general module which would allow just this but quickly noticed it was pretty hard to implement this generally because of the way the internal functionality of the components is tied to the participatory space they are in. Basically we ended up creating a flow tool tied to the budgeting component which has its own routes for the budgeting component served by controllers that override the budgeting component's controllers.
The overrides were required to hide the participatory space's navigational structure from the user. Other than that, this component could have been created more generally that would allow attaching it to any component out there.
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Conversation with Pierre Mesure
Hi Antti, I fully agree with you. It's especially relevant when we talk about participatory budgets because they are have many different phases and require different functions/views at each step. Expecting someone to click the right tabs/buttons is delusional.
I guess a way to guide them a bit better is to rename the tabs of a process each time you change phase to give the relevant one (e.g voting module) more importance. But it requires the civil servants to master the admin page, which they do not always do. In general, there should be a better way to hierarchize the tabs of a process. Right now, it's all the same font, same size and removing the icons made them really hard to see for new users.
I guess the CTA button should help to direct your users where they can perform an action but I'm not sure if it's used so much right now?
https://github.com/decidim/decidim/pull/2440
Hi Pierre! Yes, guidance within a single process itself is already a challenge - most of the time the hard part is the "Process" tab which rarely adds much value to the process itself. In my opinion, the first tab should always be the phase that is active, the information tab could be the last tab.
The problem, however, is wider when you have an active budgeting phase in multiple components at the same time. This is the case e.g. with Helsinki where they have separated each major district of the city to their own processes because all the areas have their own budgets, ideas, etc. In this particular case, the desired user flow would be:
1. Select a district (process in this case)
2. Perform the action of the active step (ideation, budgeting, etc.)
The second level navigation of the process is just confusing the users since it can distract them away from what they came to do. They came to do the budget and they already selected an area - the user's attention should be focused there.
And also, since the user is anyways required to authorize themselves to perform budgeting, why not already require them to do that when they select an area (a process).
The combiled budgeting module we built for this purpose sets the flow as follows:
1. Login
2. Authorize
3. Area/process selection (only the ones where you are allowed to vote based on the authorization)
4. Perform the action
This prevents the user from getting lost in the system for the preferred action they want to perform. The only problem with the module is that it is tied to the budgeting module (because of the mentioned limitations), so it can only be applied to the budgeting process.
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