Malone (and LP) navigability and structure

[Ian Jackson]

I'm afraid that this message has turned into a rant about how
execrable the Launchpad UI is.  Despite that I think it's is a
valuable contribution and I would hope that LP developers can take it
as constructive criticism, which is what I've tried to aim for.


Brad Bollenbach writes ("Re: Malone email interface"):
> On 18-Jan-06, at 11:00 AM, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > [MaloneEmailInterfaceUserDoc] is not discoverable.  It is
> > mentioned nowhere on the LP UI AFAICT.  [...]
> 
> It's mentioned in a portlet on the Malone front page:
> <https://launchpad.net/malone>

I don't think I came via the Malone front page.  I think I blundered
about at random starting from the LP main page and probably typed
`ubuntu' into the `find product' box.  In general I'm finding
navigating through LP extremely confusing.


> Would it help if Malone had a perma-portlet that provided help links  
> on just about every Malone screen?

These `portlets' are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

LP pages should be more different from each other.  In particular, the
right place to put a link to the email interface documentation would
be on a navigation page.  There should be few navigation pages, and
they should be powerful - allowing a direct transfer to the intended
target page.  Navigation pages should be largely static so that it is
not possible to have the `wrong version' which doesn't contain the
thing you were looking for.

Launchpad seems to almost completely lack any notion of `depth', which
is criticial to most navigation of websites.  Perhaps it's there but I
find there are few clues when browsing as to what the structure is and
where I am in it.

Most sites have `shallow' pages near the `front' (and very often
bookmarked or linked from other sites) which contain quick links to
useful information, brief summaries, and more detailed navigation.
These are completed by `deep' pages (reached from the shallow pages
and occasionally direct-linked from other websites) which most
visitors treat like leaf nodes.  In very complex and rich sites you
can find pages of intermediate depth, which is OK if it's very clear
at each `downward' navigation stage where to go.


Let's compare what passes in LP for a navigation page:
 https://launchpad.net/
 https://launchpad.net/malone
with the corresponding pages for Debian and Bugzilla:
 http://www.debian.org/Bugs/
 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

Note how the latter two have relatively little _content_; they contain
mainly _references_ to other places (both inside and outside the
relevant system).  Note how the references are organised by task (that
is, by the task that the visitor is probably trying to perform).

Note how they have clear and simple page structure.

Note how they allow you to quickly go to the information you wanted -
in one page load for the Debian one, in two (via Advanced Search) in
Bugzilla.


Now let's look at some data display pages.  Compare:
 https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/16554
with:
 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=327251
 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=firefox
 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307537

Note how Debian and Bugzilla pack the page with useful and relevant
information.  All of the screen real estate is used to good effect to
convey the information the visitor is looking for.  The page is rich
in relevant information.  Note how essential irrelevancies (such as
navigation to different parts of the system) are relegated to the top
and bottom.  Note how inessential irrelevancies are simply omitted.
Note the lack of sidebars (LP has two!) so that full use of the
display area can be used for content.

Note how the Bugzilla bug editing UI puts all of the options for
manipulating the bug report together.  (The Debian BTS is modified by
email, so there is no need for anything similar on that page.)


> I'll mail you, and Cc launchpad-users, when the Launchpad email  
> documentation is up-to-date, a week from today at most.

Thanks,
Ian.