CUNY Academic Commons

Boone Gorges wrote:

(originally suggested in #555)

I am wary of making this the global default, because the groups directories are designed, at least in part, for discovery. However, I can see an argument for saving the most recent view in a cookie, and defaulting to it. In this scenario, if you are viewing the My Groups tab and click away to one of your groups, the system will remember that your last group view was My Groups, so when you return to commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups, you see My Groups.

Does that sound like a fair compromise?

Yes is think that would streamline the workflow for groups that are actively in use.
thanks

oh and BTW -- I was a bit stymied as to how to reply to posts here until i randomly hit the Quote button -- would in not make more sense to have that say "Reply"

m

"oh and BTW -- I was a bit stymied as to how to reply to posts here until i randomly hit the Quote button -- would in not make more sense to have that say "Reply""

I hear you, and the usability of this site becomes more of an issue now that we're advertising its presence more explicitly to the community.

For its real purpose, though, which is to serve as a ticketing system that we use to keep track of bugs and feature requests for the site, "update" is the better descriptor. Perhaps we can combine them with an "Update/Reply" button.

Having said that, I should note that it's a little more complicated for us to customized Redmine (the Ruby-on-Rails application that this site uses) than it is WordPress, so I'm not even sure how much time it would take to make this fix.

Boone Gorges wrote:

(originally suggested in #555)

I am wary of making this the global default, because the groups directories are designed, at least in part, for discovery. However, I can see an argument for saving the most recent view in a cookie, and defaulting to it. In this scenario, if you are viewing the My Groups tab and click away to one of your groups, the system will remember that your last group view was My Groups, so when you return to commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups, you see My Groups.

Does that sound like a fair compromise?

My concern about this is that unless the cookie was tied to accounts rather than specific computers/browsers it would create inconsistencies in the navigation of the site depending on what computer a member was using to look at the site. People could also find it confusing, and they might not know how to switch back to the other view. That's not to say that we shouldn't do it, but just that we should think through the implications of such a move.

Is there any possibility that we might make this a preferences option that a member could adjust through his or her profile? I'm not sure that that would be better, or even that people would find their way to the options menu to make adjustments. I do wonder, though, how many people share this issue.

Michael, one note: do you know that you can get directly to "My Groups" by clicking those words on the top sitewide navigation bar?

(n.b. I added Chris and Michael as watchers on this ticket because I think they might have thoughts about all of this)

Matt Gold wrote:

Boone Gorges wrote:

(originally suggested in #555)

I am wary of making this the global default, because the groups directories are designed, at least in part, for discovery. However, I can see an argument for saving the most recent view in a cookie, and defaulting to it. In this scenario, if you are viewing the My Groups tab and click away to one of your groups, the system will remember that your last group view was My Groups, so when you return to commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups, you see My Groups.

Does that sound like a fair compromise?

My concern about this is that unless the cookie was tied to accounts rather than specific computers/browsers it would create inconsistencies in the navigation of the site depending on what computer a member was using to look at the site. People could also find it confusing, and they might not know how to switch back to the other view. That's not to say that we shouldn't do it, but just that we should think through the implications of such a move.

Is there any possibility that we might make this a preferences option that a member could adjust through his or her profile? I'm not sure that that would be better, or even that people would find their way to the options menu to make adjustments. I do wonder, though, how many people share this issue.

Michael, one note: do you know that you can get directly to "My Groups" by clicking those words on the top sitewide navigation bar?

(n.b. I added Chris and Michael as watchers on this ticket because I think they might have thoughts about all of this)

account specific pref would have been my 1st choice. Having a number of groups that I am switching between means as
I finish on one groups forum i click the groups tab and then select another group. I think of the tabs above the group name
as reflecting "my commons". and the menus in the top site-wide nav bar as being for the commons in general.
To me it is rather like concentric rings of personalization and focus.

account specific prefs would be useful for a number of things including have the most recent post 1st for example

My concern about this is that unless the cookie was tied to accounts rather than specific computers/browsers it would create inconsistencies in the navigation of the site depending on what computer a member was using to look at the site. People could also find it confusing, and they might not know how to switch back to the other view.

BP already stores local cookies for things like activity filters, so this IMO a natural extension. Maybe 1% of users will ever stumble upon a setting buried on a long preference page, while if the site "just remembers", it'll benefit a far, far greater percentage of users. Technically speaking, it is no more difficult to store the last view on the server rather than in a browser cookie; the arguments in favor of a cookie are (1) it's standard practice to remember nav preferences this way, and (2) it'd create a large amount of database cruft to store it on the server.

I am generally opposed to adding items to a preference page that should either happen naturally (as in this case) or be context specific (as in the case of #577 asc v desc threads, where the option should be on the topic view itself). In both of these sorts of cases, the system should remember the thing you last chose automatically, as that'll be the most graceful behavior for the vast majority of users. A global setting on the preferences page is OK, but only as an override/backup to the automatic behavior.

Let me make sure I have this straight: when a user clicks on the Groups link in the main nav bar, it shows both "All Groups" and "My Groups." You're saying that you want the site to automatically remember the members last choice the next time he clicks on Groups.

I can see how that makes sense, but as a user I might want to be asked whether I always want "My Groups" to be shown at the default (personally, I don't). What I'd suggest, then, is that there be a pop-up triggered by a click on "My Groups" that says something like "Always show "My Groups" first when I click on the Groups tab" with options for yes and no, perhaps with a "Don't show this alert again" listing.

That sounds intrusive and inelegant to me. This is conjecture, but I'd wager that the use pattern for the vast majority of users is such that they are not switching back and forth between All Groups and My Groups very frequently, so that in those cases it is not onerous to expect those users to simply click the other tab.

Okay -- sounds fine to me. Looking at this again, I think you're right remembering the preference will be useful and that it's not asking a lot of users to click on the other tab if they want it. I'm on board!

I think this idea and others that have come up at the SubCAT meetings, for instance making the activity stream the default page if one clicks on My Profile, are hard for me to get my head around unless I can see it. Or at least start to diagram some ideas to get a more global sense of why make these kinds of interface changes.

Are there any collaborative whiteboards out there where we could sketch some ideas as well as describing them in writing?

Thanks, Matt.

Michael, that idea is a fine one, but it should get a separate ticket. (Or a whiteboard somewhere else. But in any case not in this ticket :) )

I have to say that I misunderstood what was being suggested until I logged into the Commons and clicked on the Groups tab on the main nav bar. When you click on that tab, you'll see two options -- All Groups and My Groups. All we're talking about here if users click on "My Groups," it will show them that tab first the next time to come to the site. They can click right back on "All Groups" if they choose.

So, in the end, I think that this will be an intuitive and useful way of remembering a user's actions and preferences and it will not affect the design of the site.

Matt Gold wrote:

I have to say that I misunderstood what was being suggested until I logged into the Commons and clicked on the Groups tab on the main nav bar. When you click on that tab, you'll see two options -- All Groups and My Groups. All we're talking about here if users click on "My Groups," it will show them that tab first the next time to come to the site. They can click right back on "All Groups" if they choose.

So, in the end, I think that this will be an intuitive and useful way of remembering a user's actions and preferences and it will not affect the design of the site.

i am down with that!

I doing this functionality is fine. I'm not sure it's the best use of time. Ultimately it does seem like sending people some kind of landing page on login is the road to a more general solution to these kind of problems.

One thing that I'm still confused by Michael, if you're still reading this. It seems like you are envisioning the two navigation bars in the reverse of how they're intended. You mentioned that
"Having a number of groups that I am switching between means as
I finish on one groups forum i click the groups tab and then select another group. I think of the tabs above the group name
as reflecting "my commons". and the menus in the top site-wide nav bar as being for the commons in general.
To me it is rather like concentric rings of personalization and focus."

The tabs right above the group name are more for the commons in general while the site-wide nav bar at the top is for "my commons." Other than the way you've distinguised the bars is there anything else that would prevent you from clicking on "My Groups" in the site-wide bar?