CUNY Academic Commons

Thanks, Boone, for getting this started. A few thoughts:

1a. Maybe something like "Notification Center" instead of "Push"? Thought perhaps that sound too CUNYFirstish

2d. I'm in favor of a tooltip that explains who we arrived at these recommendations, but as we discussed in the meeting, the title of this could go a long way towards reducing creepiness -- ie., instead of "People You May Know," something like "Users Who Have Listed Similar Interests"

1a. Maybe something like "Notification Center" instead of "Push"? Thought perhaps that sound too CUNYFirstish

Yup, "Push" is just a convenient term internally. Personally I don't think it really needs a public name at all (in the same way that, say, we call them "hero slides" but no one else would have a name for it - there's no public title)

instead of "People You May Know," something like "Users Who Have Listed Similar Interests"

I'm not certain that this is any less creepy (but I'm not a good judge of this kind of creepiness, I guess). But we can't say "...Similar Interests" because that's not actually what we're going to do. The recommendations will be based on shared friendships/group memberships. This doesn't map onto academic interests, or any other aspect of the profile.

I should also mention that the content for the friends activity is pretty much how it is now on the site (in the News feed) and the the list of friends is like the People list. I do think that for Positions we could add some typography so that it is easier to differentiate Position, Department and School. For the Group information I tried to keep the same content but I did reorder it a bit to put the group name first and change a couple of things around.

OverallI didn't do much design and I'm open to feedback on which direction to take. The font is definitely not the one I think we should use, but I did think that we could consider using he dark backgrounds like here to help differentiate this layout from other pages on the site. I was also thinking about adding in some color to areas like the group and friend count and the Quick Links title.

Thanks for this, Chris.

I like the "3 groups in common" "12 friends in common" glosses on suggestions. These could potentially be expanded to show the specific groups/friends.

A thought: since this is going to be a landing page for many users, it's likely to be used fairly frequently on mobile devices, and it's worth thinking up front about how it's going to behave on phone-sized screens.

First rough pass of the Personal Homepage (PH) is up on cdev.

- Profile pages (as well as single group pages) now use the right sidebar. The right sidebar uses the old styling for now. Also, the "Commons Information" block that Dan worked on is integrated into the sidebar.
- Profile page headers now use circular avatars and have the quick links to "Change Avatar" and "View Portfolio".
- For now, I have transformed the "News" tab to the PH when a user is logged in. I intentionally made this change because there is a bit of an overlap between the current "News" tab and the proposed location to have the PH situated at the "Home" tab. This is not set in stone! Just want to get you guys thinking about the UX here.

What isn't completed:
- Finalization of sidebar contents on the PH and single user / group pages (see below)
- Custom "Filter My Activity By" dropdown activity filter for the PH
- Avatar bundling (#3332)

About the sidebar contents, after looking at Chris' mockups, I think a distinction needs to be made between what sidebar links are shown in the PH and what sidebar links are shown when you visit a single user / single group page. Do we keep the existing sidebar contents the same on single user / group pages, but change the contents for the PH only and when you're viewing your own profile?

Excellent to see this taking shape, Ray -- thanks so much!

Profile pages (as well as single group pages) now use the right sidebar.

I don't think we had talked about changing group navigation, and my instinct is that we should not -- that it will be confusing to members. Wondering if I missed a discussion about this?

I think a distinction needs to be made between what sidebar links are shown in the PH and what sidebar links are shown when you visit a single user / single group page.

I think that all mockups are about the PH, not groups, no? And by "single user," do you mean the PH?

Awesome - thanks, Ray!

I don't think we had talked about changing group navigation, and my instinct is that we should not -- that it will be confusing to members.

Agreed. I don't think we're going to touch groups at this time.

For now, I have transformed the "News" tab to the PH when a user is logged in. I intentionally made this change because there is a bit of an overlap between the current "News" tab and the proposed location to have the PH situated at the "Home" tab. This is not set in stone! Just want to get you guys thinking about the UX here.

The general consensus, I believe, is that this is the content that should appear when a logged-in user is looking at the home page.

On a related note, as I understand the wireframes, there should be no Sitewide option on the PH (or, at least, it should not be the default). The default stream should be a unified view of user group activity + user friend activity + user site activity. In this way, the News page (/activity/) still has a separate role to play, as the non-personalized sitewide stream.

I will also note that this is all less than clear from the multiple documents that we've passed around. Ray, apologies for places where the requirements were not clear.

Let's talk this over during today's dev chat to clear up any of these details before asking for revisions.

I don't think we had talked about changing group navigation, and my instinct is that we should not -- that it will be confusing to members. Wondering if I missed a discussion about this?

There wasn't a discussion about this, but I went ahead and did this to provoke one :) I think there are both pros and cons to either approach. This is easily revertible.

I think that all mockups are about the PH, not groups, no? And by "single user," do you mean the PH?

By PH, I mean the main PH and your own profile. By "single user" in this instance, I mean when a logged-in user views another user's profile page.

The default stream should be a unified view of user group activity + user friend activity + user site activity. In this way, the News page (/activity/) still has a separate role to play, as the non-personalized sitewide stream.

Right, but on the production site, if you're logged-in and you click on the "News" tab right now, this gets you halfway to what the PH is supposed to be. So let's say the PH is completed and resides at the root, when you go to the "News" tab, you will still get these filtering options (My Friends, Favorites, etc.), which is why I mention the overlap.

Let's definitely discuss these things as it's worth talking about.

For those following along, I've moved my experiments for the PH from the "News" tab to the homepage. So when you login from the homepage, the homepage is now replaced with the PH.

This is available for testing on cdev. Still quite a bit of work to do, but we'll get there!

Great progress, Ray! If there are specific things you want feedback on, please let us know -- I'm not sure what is waiting for feedback and what is simply work-in-progress. Huge thanks for your work on this.

If there are specific things you want feedback on, please let us know -- I'm not sure what is waiting for feedback and what is simply work-in-progress.

Here are my UX things that I could use feedback on:

Sidebar contents

In the mockups that Chris did, he divided the links into various sections (Commons Activity, Settings & Notification, Communication). My original question was whether these sections applied to other user pages. My answer to this question can be found in this thread, specifically on one of Chris' mockups.

I want to know if we've finalized the sidebar links as well as including the call-to-action buttons there. We have to be careful not to put too much in the sidebar. We already have the "Commons Information" block there as well, which takes up some vertical space.

I also want to know if the group sidebar will have similar sectional changes.

Placement of group sidebar

I know I kind of brought up this issue, but this is something that could use some internal discussion about whether we want to keep the sidebar to the left or move it like I proposed on cdev to keep the layout consistent. There are both pros and cons to each side.

Redundancy between PH and News tab

If you're logged-in and you click on the "News" tab right now, this gets you halfway to what the PH is supposed to be. So let's say the PH is completed and resides at the root, when you go to the "News" tab, you will still get similar activity filtering options (My Friends, My Groups, Favorites, etc.).

I would probably recommend removing the filtering options from the "News" tab to prevent any duplication of features.

In commenting on http://redmine.gc.cuny.edu/issues/3411#note-3 I give some reasoning behind some of the suggestions I'm making below. First I'll try to explain how I see the homepage working and then address Ray's questions.

My proposal is that we keep home.php with the is_user_logged_in() separation so that when someone goes to commons.gc.cuny.edu they get shuttled to the appropriate page. I'm also suggesting that we add a page template that is essentially the old home.php (say commons-home.php). A static page would be added that uses this template and this page is what we link to in the two Home nav items (in the main navigation and the Home on the left side of the WP Admin Bar). Perhaps the code to show the Commons homepage could be put in a separate file that can be get_template_part()ed in to both places to avoid too much duplication?

From the user's perspective this keeps the Home links working as they were while adding in the personal homepage when they're logged in.

Ray's UX questions

Sidebar contents

In the mockups that Chris did, he divided the links into various sections (Commons Activity, Settings & Notification, Communication). My original question was whether these sections applied to other user pages. My answer to this question can be found in this thread, specifically on one of Chris' mockups.

I want to know if we've finalized the sidebar links as well as including the call-to-action buttons there. We have to be careful not to put too much in the sidebar. We already have the "Commons Information" block there as well, which takes up some vertical space.

I also want to know if the group sidebar will have similar sectional changes.

• My Homepage
• My Activity
• My Groups
• My Sites
• My Friends
• My Messages
• My Notifications
• My Settings
• Send Invites

Don't make those changes yet though Ray. These need to be discussed. I will update the discussion you pointed to , and we will discuss on Friday 8/29 meeting.

Placement of group sidebar

I know I kind of brought up this issue, but this is something that could use some internal discussion about whether we want to keep the sidebar to the left or move it like I proposed on cdev to keep the layout consistent. There are both pros and cons to each side.

I do see pros and cons to both sides. In this case I'm leaning towards keeping it how it is. I think it's important to let people know that they are in a different navigational space than the Personal Pages and having the navigation on another side helps keep them separate. This is something we might revisit when doing the site redesign.

Redundancy between PH and News tab

If you're logged-in and you click on the "News" tab right now, this gets you halfway to what the PH is supposed to be. So let's say the PH is completed and resides at the root, when you go to the "News" tab, you will still get similar activity filtering options (My Friends, My Groups, Favorites, etc.).

I would probably recommend removing the filtering options from the "News" tab to prevent any duplication of features.

I see what you're saying. Your idea is also in line with mine that we have a better separation between Commons pages and Personal pages. If we do this perhaps we should also follow with removing the "My" filters in Groups and Blogs/Sites pages. This might also push people to move more towards using/seeing the personal pages and that navigation as how to get to their stuff. I'm assuming those can be commented out easily. Can we do that on CDEV and see what the rest of the group thinks?

I've updated cdev with a new draft of the Personal Homepage.

Login from the homepage and you'll see the one-column and activity filters at the top of the page. This is similar to what Chris has on his mockup page.

The avatar logic in #3334 should be implemented for the most part as well.

I know there are some things that still need to be decided (final styling, URL where the PH should reside, etc.), but I thought I'd go ahead and get another draft up.

Given that we're so close to being complete here, would you mind merging into the 1.7.x branch?

Done!

Thanks Ray - you're the man!

Excellent - thank you, Ray! And as always, thank you, Boone!