Propose new functionalities for Decidim software
#DecidimRoadmap Designing Decidim together
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The use of participatory texts is currently not intuitively understandable for participants (necessitiy of mouse-over to see options to interact is confusing for some). UI-Features that increase the motivation to contribute and interact immediately after accessing the participatory texts site are missing.
Describe the solution you'd like
We want to improve the frontend UID as suggested in the following figma: https://www.figma.com/proto/KHwovctNW44WbnVmGWyLin/decidim-%2F-textarbeit-improvements?node-id=225%3A1849&scaling=min-zoom&page-id=225%3A552 (interactive)
- By making the possible tasks visible on first level we want to increase the clarity of the platform, in order to make participation easier.
- By showing comments/activities/avatars of other participants, we want to increase their motivation to contribute and to interact.
Describe alternatives you've considered Of course various reflections until we came to this proposal, but nothing worth mentioning. Except of one small feature, that we still consider: Showing avatars of participants on first level next to paragraph (up to a certain amount) could give some good first impression of ongoing interaction.
Additional context
- Status Quo to compare: https://text.decidim-austria.org/processes/textarbeit/f/12/ (in german)
- We are planning to improve backend (import of texts) as well - will keep you posted as soon as we do have concrete suggestions.
Does this issue could impact on users private data?
No.
Funded by
netidee - https://www.netidee.at/ (Foundation that funds open source projects in Austria.)
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36 comments
Conversation with Pauline Bessoles
Hi Romy! Thanks for this proposal, I totally agree that participatory texts are a really cool feature and that we should enhance its UI!
I really like your mockup, but I'm wondering where the proposal title should be displayed in the global text (as the participatory text feature is based on proposals). And do you imagine a redesign of the comments section in the page of the proposals and amendments? I like it but may be it should be the object of a different proposal.
PS: The link in the Additional context section is broken :D
Hi Pauline! Thanks for your feedback and the good question about the title.
Currently we aim to hide it, because it has no function in a running text. Do you see a purpose for the title, that we didn't consider so far? We didn't plan to change the comments section yet, in order to keep decidim uniform. In the amendments, we would have to hide the title as well.
Thank you for your reply!
I agree, titles can be quite confusing for everyone (including admins when they configure the participatory text).
Actually, I think this feature should really be associated with improvements on the participatory texts administration, as @Ariadna_VA suggested in her proposal Improvements for the participatory texts module
But the UI is a good start!
Conversation with Virgile Deville
Thanks @Romy_GK_austria for sharing your proposal ! There are a lot of great ideas in the figma prototype you shared. Do you think you could give us a link that allows to post comments so that we can share our feedback more precisely ?
Thanks @virgile_deville ! Yes of course, we will open the figma for comments.
@virgile_deville: Voilà: https://www.figma.com/proto/KHwovctNW44WbnVmGWyLin/decidim-%2F-textarbeit-improvements?node-id=225%3A1849&scaling=min-zoom&page-id=225%3A552
(will change it in the original post as well)
hey @Romy_GK_austria did you get my comments ?
Yes, @virgile_deville - thanks, we are working on them. Best regards from Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer. ;)
Conversation with Nil Homedes
I love your design improvements @Romy_GK_austria !
Participatory text needs an upgrade, moreover there's a lot of things that we can start to discuss to make better this feature. One of my personal obsessions is the amendments voting process. And I have some questions around support button visualization in this new design.
Imagine a scenario where participants have to vote on several amendments affecting the same article:
- Will the support button appear on the landing page of the Participatory Text? Or just inside an article?
Actually when, as an admin, you enable supports in a Participatory Text, the support button appears on the article and on the amendments, so it's quite confusing. Have you foreseen how the supports will work in your design?
I made a quick mock-up over your design of how I think the support button could appear, check it here: https://imgur.com/gallery/EPwDgVr
I think this is an important UX issue to discuss if we want to improve all the text discussion process.
Hi @Nil_Homedes thank you very much for you positive feedback and the mock-up! The hint on the voting process and your mockup are very helpful. Will discuss that issue with our team and come back to you!
Conversation with Romy Grasgruber-Kerl
@carol is there anything else coming from your side? We collect feedback until end of this week, and will work with gathered inputs from 12th july on.
Hi @Romy_GK_austria, I left some feedback in the figma mockup. Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks, @Carol!
Conversation with Romy Grasgruber-Kerl
Fyi: We are working on your inputs and will keep you posted.
Conversation with Romy Grasgruber-Kerl
Hi everybody,
after integrating your input, we are happy to share our final Figma with you: https://www.figma.com/proto/KHwovctNW44WbnVmGWyLin/decidim-%2F-textarbeit-improvements?node-id=225%3A1849&scaling=min-zoom&page-id=225%3A552&starting-point-node-id=225%3A1849 . It is being implemented by our developers atm. Concerning titles, we are developing an option (via checkbox) in the admin-interface to hide them. The checkbox is only visible and can only be activated in the participatory texts feature. Please take a look - we hope that everybody is content with the frontend-design. (We are considering the recent decidim-updates, just need to change a few details (such as the placement of dates).
If you want to know more about our developments concerning admin interface, import/export of texts you can find the relevant information here: Improvements for the participatory texts module?commentId=24480#comment_24480
@carol @product @virgile_deville @Nil_Homedes @Pops @arusa
ssssssssssuper nice!!!!!! congrats
It looks good @Romy_GK_austria !! Congrats on finding a work around for the proposal titles.
I still have few comment on the UI especially on how you display the amendments on the side + a comment feed.
Don't you think it would be showing too much info for little added value (in a small box it's hard to see the proposed changes (amendments). I like that you are showing some comments on the side and offering to comment directly. I'll post some comments directly on the figma file.
Thanks @virgile_deville . Concerning the amendments we are considering your input and finding another solution - probably with showing only the avatars as you suggested. Daniel will reply directly in the figma.
awesome
Conversation with Blocked user
Conversation with Romy Grasgruber-Kerl
Hello everybody,
here is our current status: https://decidim-dev1-org1.spreademotions.com/processes/textarbeit/f/123/proposals/80/overview#proposal_80 User admin@example.org Pass: decidim123456 We will change the visual for amendments and there are still some other issues to solve. This link is just to give you an impression. Updates will follow. 🙂
Thanks for sharing !
Update see below. :)
Thanks for the update Romy! It looks like the server is down right now... Could you please reset it? Thanks!
Thanks for the hint - we are back again! ;)
awesome, thanks!
Conversation with Romy Grasgruber-Kerl
Dear colleagues, we are much further now and ready for your final input! Please visit: https://decidim-dev1-org1.spreademotions.com/processes/textarbeit/f/123/
(External link) User admin@example.org Pass: decidim123456
We need your final input particularly on the "Add comment"-view in the sidebar: If you click on "Add comment", the sidebar opens. There you see amendments (max 3 without content @virgile) and the already received comments. Below you find the "ADD COMMENT"-field. We kept the original Decidim-order (comments above, "add comment"-field below) to stay consistent. But concerning usability it could be better to put the "Add comment"-field above, in order to avoid that it gets pushed down too far (out of screen) when there are already many comments/amendments. Hence in order to make the CTA always visible, an "Add comment" field in the right corner of the comments-box appears (when there are more than 3 comments) that makes you jump into the "add comment"-field". Here we could also use the usual red decidim-button, which would give the CTA more presence, but is rather "loud". Do you suggest that we change the order, take the red button or leave it like that? Thanks for testing, playing around and sharing your opinion. 🙂 Since we have to finish the project in november, it would be great to get it soon. ☺️ Thanks and best regards from Vienna, Romy
Love it, thanks @Romy_GK_austria !
I just have two remarks:
1. I think the comments section currently have a fixed width. I suggest sticking the section to the right side of the page and making the width dynamic. This would help keeping the comments section relatively short, at least on larger screens.
2. This doesn't have a lot to do with your work, but I still think amendments are currently overly complicated (I just want to suggest an amendment, this should have to be done in 5 steps) and the git/wiki style overview of changes isn't understandable for everybody. I know thoughts are currently made to improve this and making the overall proposal creation/amendment process more intuitive.
Other than that, I am really looking forward to the release, congratulations!
Thanks @larskaiser ! @carol @product any news from your side?
Hi @Romy_GK_austria, Thanks for all the updates, very good work you've done here! 👏 👏
Here's a little feedback from me, while waiting to share it tomorrow with the rest of the product team and get back to you:
* The comment and amend actions below each paragraph can lead to confusion, as it shows the same even if those actions are disabled. My suggestion would be to leave them as counters, and when clicking on the paragraph, the option to comment and amend should appear if they are enabled. Here's a screenshot to explain it better: https://imgur.com/x3sohgE
* Supports are represented with the chevron icon that we use to upvote/downvote comments. IMO we need to think of an alternative, as most participants will have a hard time understanding this, plus it is better not to use the same icon for different actions.
* Definitely a big improvement is the UI to display both comments and amendments on the side, without having to enter the proposal to see them. Regarding comments, I noticed a small bug when adding a new one, as the comment is sent correctly, but the text box remains with the text of the comment sent.
In the case of amendments, though, it would be great if clicking on "Show amendment" would show, perhaps with a modal, the text of the amendment. I'm aware that this can be technically complex, but I think that otherwise displaying only the author and date takes up a lot of space and adds little value. In that case, simply displaying the total number of amendments and the option to view them all might be better? What are your thoughts on this?
On the other hand, I agree with Lars that the amendments wizard is in most cases unnecessary, and adds middle steps that overcomplicate the whole flow, which should be much more agile.
This brings me to the idea that I've been thinking about and discussing with other admins that use this component. FWIW this is just my personal view and surely deserves a specific debate, but here's my thought of a possible evolution of participatory texts:
I tend to agree that, as has been mentioned several times (by both devs and admins), the combination of proposals with participatory texts is too complex. The original idea is good: a set of proposals can be visualized and read in order as a document, taking advantage of all the "richness" that the proposals component incorporates regarding internal settings (supports, endorsements, amendments, comments, etc.) and interaction with other components (be converted into results, etc.).
Plus, at a technical level, the goal was to reuse the same model to avoid duplicating code without need, and in general this should be a criterion to be maintained. The problem is that implementing this in an optimal way seems difficult.
And I think that now that we have real use cases of documents co-creation processes, we could explore the possibility of making Participatory Texts a separate component. I imagine having a new, much lighter component that incorporates the specific features required for this type of collaborative editing process (document management, amendments, etc) and sacrificing some of the "potential" advantages offered by the proposal model, although maybe nothing would have to be sacrificed.
We could start by making the proposal at the functional level and examine what it would imply in terms of technical debt. Any feedback on this is very welcome :)
Additional info concerning the admin-interface:
1. To import text, you can now use an editor directly on admin level and copy paste your text from any document you have (pdf etc.). Previously only document import (very error prone, had to be formatted exactly) was possible.
2. You can now edit the document and delete single "paragraphs" (aka proposals) on the editing-level, if a paragraph was split wrong or is not needed anymore.
3. It is now possible to export the text including the received feedback as a text document, i.e. as Word.doc, which makes the post-processing of participatory texts easier. (This feature could be interesting for debates, proposals also)
Conversation with Nadja von Ballmoos
Hi @Romy_GK_austria Is your code already available?
We are planning to work on the functions of participatory texts as well:
- For long PDF Files, we believe it is better to work directly in the document. Therefore, some sort of PDF view is necessary.
Hi Nadja,
happy to read that you are working on texts as well. If you want more exchange, let me know, we would be interested in your ideas.
Since Decidim won't integrate our devs. into the core (before the Redesign is ready) we are finalizing a separate component, that everybody can install and use. We are planning to finish this week and will keep you posted about it. Best Romy
@Romy_GK_austria Great, thanks! Once we clarified our requirements we are happy to share it in a new proposal on metadecidim. Let's then decide if more exchange is useful.
@Romy_GK_austria Any news?
Hello everybody who has been following our proposal: We (@arusa & me) are finally presenting our module "Enhanced Textwork": https://github.com/DecidimAustria/decidim-enhanced_textwork
You can find a demo here: https://textwork.decidim-austria.org to see it.
It has been listed on the decidim.org/modules page.
Hope it will serve us well.
Best
Romy
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