Brainstorm new UI: opinions?

[nand]

Hey,

I'm working on a whole new set of stuff for Ubuntu Brainstorm, including a new UI. Mind to give your opinion?

=> Popular ideas area link (http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/7259/frontpageve2.png)
=> Idea in development area link (http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/9743/ideaindev2ia2.png)

You should notice the "Idea in gestation", and "Idea in quarantaine" tab.
This will be more or less like explained in idea 10848 (http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/10848/): when submitted, ideas will go in this area where moderators and authors can discuss and update the idea. When the idea is deemed appropriate by the admins, it goes to the main "popular ideas" area.
Question that raise debate: what name should we give to this area so that it is clear for a newcomer: "Ideas in gestation"? "Ideas in quarantaine"? Or simply "Ideas in preparation"?

=> Rationale/solution separation link (http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/1452/frontpage2lx9.png)

Often ideas are trying to resolve the same problem, but in a different manner: as such, it's not easy to track the proposed solutions for a same rationale. They will now be united: an idea will have a rationale, and different possible solutions.
What do you think?

Thanks for your input!

[olskar]

+1 :) Looks good

[jay019]

++;

[Tree MendUs]

Hi Nand,

Thanks for going to the effort to make some improvements.
And wow, Thanks for inviting comment during the prototyping stage.
That's the way!
Ok.

several points;
First -
I note you were viewing one of my ideas shown in your example screen grab at;
http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/1452/frontpage2lx9.png

Thank you for considering the thought for "New Technology Hardware support - e.g. huge touch screen.". It is only a moderate scorer, and has attracted No comments. So clearly you are checking for content, and not just voter or topical interest status.

Now for the Critiquing.

1) Do I see a small rectangle in the voting panel? and could it represent the "null" vote?
If so - great news!
but maybe put an explanation in a caption so other viewers will understand the prototype.

2) The vote number - is that the total number of votes or the net difference? - why not show both (say net above, and total in smaller fonts below the voting marks)(could even have a small bar like on Dashboard, to show the votes. - null votes size bar goes in between negatives and positives)

3) Menu on right hand side.
Not many do this, but it is (IMHO) quite good because it helps show "the business" that the viewer has come "to" the page to see. Only when the viewer wants to leave the page, do they have to horizontally scroll.

Menu on the left forces a horizontal scroll at the start, which they have to do again to see the menu to leave. Plus it shows them departure options before they've even read the page - what a great opportunity to invite people to leave (soon)?

Menu on the right is not "conventional" but it Is an "innovation", and not un-"sensible".

I like it.

4) Tabbed options at the top of page.
re;
http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/7259/frontpageve2.png
These are helpful options.
But they take up quite a bit of vertical page space with this layout.

If placed as menu options (on the right - in this case), then
- no additional vertical space is taken up
- these choices appear with the other choices (in the menu)


5) Menu Options - more

a) The menu option for "Submit Your Idea" is good and clear.
There may be situations where somebody would like to submit "an" idea, but acknowledge that they have been given the idea by somebody else.
They somebody else may be a friend, who isn't using Ubuntu yet, or doesn't feel skilled enough, or isn't capable (physically or otherwise), to make the idea suggestion.
This menu option could read;
"Submit an idea"
The submission could them have an entry that says;
"If you would like to attribute this idea to somebody other than(or including yourself) then please let us know the 'Others' ".
And then they can type in the names of "Others/Friends".

b) this is a prime opportunity to make the Brainstorm website far more efficient and helpful. Plus it may help clean up some of the submissions and submission process.
Please add some buttons to;
- "Submit a Bug Report" (sends them to a brief explanation page about how to submit bugs at launchpad, they can then click to go to launchpad, register for a launchpad account, save to favorites, or go back to Brainstorm.
- "submit a program for Ubuntu" (sends them to a brief explanation page about how to submit needs-packaging at launchpad, they can then click to go to launchpad, register for a launchpad account, save to favorites, or go back to Brainstorm.

Plus the following links - in the same style as on the main website.
- "Ubuntu Main Site"
- "Get Involved"
- "Get Help
- "Get Developing"

and the link to Ubuntu Wikip-ideas (to coin a phrase) :)


6) Top in "30 Days"
This is a good sort feature.
Does it have options for bottom in 30 days?
Does it have options for "balanced/null/middle-of-the-road" in X days?

7) Popular ideas in Intrepid.
re;
http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/9743/ideaindev2ia2.png

I am not sure, so please let me/us know.
When an idea is suggested, does it only get implemented to the next version of Ubuntu, or does it get implemented into which ever (current or past supported) version(s) of Ubuntu , that it is possible to include it in?

I will use a separate comment for the Rationale topic.

[Vadi]

Why KDE and not desktop-neutral like Tango icons?

(or at least the oxygen ones...)

[nand]

Hey!

Thanks for your feedback!

To answer specific bits:
- Small rectangle in the voting panel: yep, that will be the +0 vote. Plus you will be able to change your vote, plus you will be able to see how you voted :)
- More data in the vote box: Don't forget that too much data kills data. If too much is asking for attention, you have a bad UI.
I will eventually add the number of +1/0/-1 votes, but in the idea page, and I'm not quite sure yet where.
- KDE Crystal icons: because I like them :)
- Menu on the right side: As this menu became less important (no more links to main pages), it is best to put it right, where the attention goes last.
- Generally ideas are implemented for the next version. Only security bugs and grave bugs are fixed on the already release versions
- Submit a bug report, a package request: I guess it will be best to clearly put that on the idea submission page
- Links to others Ubuntu website: there is at the moment discussions to put a real inter-website navigations between all the ubuntu websites
- Concerning the navigation experience, please see below to experience with it

For people interested to see what's going on on the development version, and even try it, you can use:
http://devel.ideatorrent.org
Note that the data is not linked to the real Brainstorm, so you are allowed to try sample.
But also note that, as it is a dev version, lots of things are broken :)

[Vadi]

We might as well make brainstorm blue to go with the KDE 3 icons, because it really doesn't fit.

[droetker]

Blue is good.

[Tree MendUs]

Nand - Good work!
Thank you.


1) Navigation

Very Ex-cell-ente' to hear there is discussion for the navigation - this will really "open" up the use of the ubuntu website - make it easier to be used effectively - and cut out the wasted time with information going to the wrong place and being lost.
Non- topic stuff can easily be (politely) handled by redirection to other areas, so nothing gets lost.

Please encourage this menu to be include - it is such little work compared to the benefits for all the many visitors to the Ubuntu group of web sites, And to all the admin teams behind the scene handling all the traffic responses.


1b) Navigation - Corporate Receptionist as a Metaphoric Example

Think of this menu as the "receptionist" to a major corporation.
Is she/he polite, helpful, informative, accurate with information, quick at letting you know where to go or who you need to speak to, is nice to the mail man when he says that there's a few mails that have been incorrectly addressed, and when the freight company truck driver comes in the front door in his boots to ask where the loading bay for delivery or dispatch is - he is given every assistance on where to go round the other side of the block, how many driveways down, and a few tips on how to reverse in.
When a corporate delegation comes in, seh/he already knew what flight they were going to be on, and has been watching if the plane was going to be late or early - the reception catering will be timed to be fresh and not too hot cold or dehydrated.
She/he won't complain about the repetition of the job tasks, because IT is a computer.


2) Menu Idea
An idea for the inter/intra-site navigation menu module, is to have it of uniform appearance in each site - or at least as uniform as possible allowing for web site styling and CMS system (I see this site is still displaying the Drupal favorites.ico icon in the address bar - so the webmaster may want to change that to the Ubuntu one).

This menu which would take up about 3 times the size of the current user menu (say about 6 lines), would be small enough to be on every single page display - ie a stanbdard drupal module on each page.

An idea for the inter-intra-site navigation menu, would be to have it as code that people can put on their own web site. Similar to ordinary graphic advertisements, but it just contains a few more links.


3) Voting Panel
a) The middle square for null votes is great - this is going to help get and idea of voting skew.
When the square is hovered over it says "demote this idea" which is what the negative vote arrow says. This might be better is it said "don't care/not sure".

b) Please consider another positive and negative arrow, for a scale of very +, a bit +, don't care, a bit -, very -.
As this will give better idea of what % of people feel "how" strongly about something.


4a) The demo page at http://devel.ideatorrent.org/
Seems to repeat the following text in many of the examples;

"
Solution #1: Title of this solution
Written by (each respective idea person)
Many people are using the word processor they use, because "it's the best", or so they've been told. Did they ever do a comparison? Did they try another manufacturer?
Schools, Colleges, Polytechnics and Universities "teach" them to use these programs, and have never taught of any of the other alternatives.

Same goes with the OS. In fact so few ordinary people even seem to understand the difference between the OS and the Wordprocessor - because the names for both sound so much alike.
What's an OS, why do I need to know?
I just switch the PC on and it goes.

Same goes with the OS. In fact so few ordinary people even seem to understand the difference between the OS and the Wordprocessor - because the names for both sound so much alike.
What's an OS, why do I need to know?
I just switch the PC on and it goes.

[...]

Solution #2: Title of this other solution
Written by (each respective idea person)
Products have their users. Companies have their customers.
They always ask their current users and customer "What more do you want?".
Not so often do they ask (out on the street) "Have you heard of this?", "Would you use this?", "Why?/Why not?".
"

So there is something is up with the way the demo is assembling the content for the page.

b) I note that these are both extracts from a comment that I placed on an idea (at somebody else's submission - I think) - again - thank you for taking an interest.


5) I preferred it more when the voting module was on the left of the title.
It could have been insert from the margin, and push the title to the right some more.
Helps to visually identify the start of a new idea.

6) Note -
please allow a longer "stay live" time for reply to these submissions. It's a real problem trying not to losse stuff when ity has timed out.

Thanks. :)

[Tree MendUs]

1) Voting Panel;

I made some example images of the voting panel.

80149
Voting Panel plus ;
- bar display (including display of null votes)

80150
Voting Panel plus ;
- bar display (including display of null votes)
- Very Yes and Very No extra votes


2) How to Display User's Vote;

A possible method to show which way the user voted, might be to have a bold outline around the arrow (or square) that they voted on.
i.e. So it appears as if it was "selected".


3) Hover Display of Vote statistics;

It might also be possible to hover over (say) the bar display, to have a pop-up box that shows an improved display of the statistics, with fuller detail.
Of note , for web page speed, these could be not included in the page as initially downloaded. But like the pictures of a webpage can be made to download after the page has loaded, then the pictures (or text/script) of the pop-up boxes could be downloaded after the page has loaded.
That way the page initial load times will not be any longer, and the pop-up images should become available fairly soon after the page has loaded (each of them is not very big)


4) User could choose Vote panel in user settings. (and a general prototyping method)

If it was possible for the user to choose which vote panel style they wanted (say from three to 5 types), then there is a better chance that each user would have the degree of comprise between complexity of information, and simplicity of appearance that they wished.

Also in the case of prototyping, say in an area where users can try out new style sheets, templates, module styles, using real data on Brainstorm, then it becomes possible to take prototypes for test drives and get some "in-field-use" feedback.
note;
The admins could decide which, what, when ... any of the above features get "write" access to the data - but it can be read, and "dummy written/dumped"(ie. get a confirmation that a "write' would have correctly taken place if the "write-Prevention" was not ON) for the purposes of getting the feel of how well it works.

This user settings feature, would become handy in future when other features may be being implemented such as voting on comments (user identifies an idea in a comment - {may be} admin checks validity of claim that it is an idea - voting panel for idea gets inserted)(idea submisssion may contain idea of problem and several alternatives ideas for solutions)(pros and cons may be votable for importance). Users might want to test drive translation systems, check out 3 new alternative layouts (e.g. menu locations, and fonts).
The user could then "vote" on which alternatives they liked - great feedback - on "field-tested" "ideas".

Hope some of this is useful.

Thanks

[Tree MendUs]

1) Search Box

The search box could be about twice as wide, to allow searches on specific topics.
A little icon for search help might be useful, especially if logical operators (eg AND, OR, NOT)can be used in the search string.

A list of the current tags, and common keywords, to help people make sure they are using words that are used when topics are submitted.

2) Links in menu to
a) Submit a bug report
b) a package request

re: "I guess it will be best to clearly put that on the idea submission page."
This means that you'll only find them if you wanted to submit an idea.
You won't always guess of looking for bug reports of package requests when actually in the idea submission page. Although, if you had joined Brainstorm because you thought that somewhere inside there would be a place to submit package requests and bug reports, then you would eventually find it.
But for those who want to submit a package request, they might never join Brainstorm in the first place because it would never be evident to them that that is where a package request can be made.


These package requests and bug report link should go in a more universally visible menu than just the "idea submission page", so even unregistered users can see what services and functions are available.

The listings of ideas (e.g. this demo page) is one of the places that they would be convenient to access.
It would be helpful to have these links in the demo example - including the links to the help for making package requests, bug reports for brainstorm, and any other features which are not readily apparent but are useful.

Thanks

[Tree MendUs]

And ...

Ooooh
I do like this text editor, withththt
picture attachment facility, and bold text facility (though I do think fonts formatting should be limited, to keep some degree of uniform appearance on brainstorm).

Is this editor going to be available on Brainstorm, or is it just available here - on whet looks a bit more like a forum?

Thanks

[nand]

Eh, quite a lot of feedback!

- First, I really like the first mockup of the voting box you did, it's a nice way to display the vote balance! This, plus the hover informations, would be great.
- Five vote is maybe quite a lot of options, I'm not sure about this.
- A better text editor is planned.
- Inter-website navigation: the best place to discuss this is on the ubuntu-website mailing list.
- "please allow a longer "stay live" time for reply to these submissions." => What do you mean?
- Display user vote: not decided yet, but at first sight I'll go for making all grey except the option you choose.

Thanks

[cszikszoy]

The mock-ups look great. Is there any sort of common user database planned? What I mean is, can we use our forum accounts to post on brainstorm, or perhaps our launchpad accounts? It would be great to only have one account for everything. Currently I have to have 3 separate accounts, forums, launchpad and brainstorm.

[cardinals_fan]

This is looking great! Keep up the good work.

[nand]

Is there any sort of common user database planned? What I mean is, can we use our forum accounts to post on brainstorm, or perhaps our launchpad accounts? It would be great to only have one account for everything. Currently I have to have 3 separate accounts, forums, launchpad and brainstorm.


Yes, eventually Brainstorm (and all the QA websites) will use the Launchpad user database, hopefully at the next update...

[cszikszoy]

Yes, eventually Brainstorm (and all the QA websites) will use the Launchpad user database, hopefully at the next update...

Thanks! This is awesome.

[Tree MendUs]

Hi Nand,
Thanks for your nice response.

1) re: "Eh, quite a lot of feedback!"
You've done some work, some of it sweat, some of it fun. You've asked for comments - Should I hold back?
I don't think so - you deserve good thoughts (or not so good - I dunno -you decide).

2) re: "First, I really like the first mock-up of the voting box you did, it's a nice way to display the vote balance! This, plus the hover informations, would be great."

that's the beauty of being able to attach pictures - it's far easier to sell the concept by the visual impact - imagine what it would have been like if I had have to have "said"; "Place the votes top right, net votes top left. Use a bar graph with width proportional to ...." Yeh the description is "correct" - but hardly seat gripping riveting attention getting stuff.

Glad you like them. They are not intended as final product - though could do for a start. Another option for the bar, might be to have constant widths above each arrow, and the height varies in proportion to the number of that vote.

3) Re: "Five vote is maybe quite a lot of options, I'm not sure about this."

There is the population statistic, and there is the "typical" user statistic. The five votes gives a better resolution on the user statistic, which also gives a better understanding of the population. It is possible to measure how strong the yes (no/don't care) vote is along with how numerous the yes (no/don't care) votes is.
This system could be extended to say 7 or 9 options, for increased resolution.

4) Re: "A better text editor is planned."
This will be good, but I think it might be wise for safeguards to protect from over emphasis being used.

5) Re: "Inter-website navigation: the best place to discuss this is on the ubuntu-website mailing list."

Well there's a good example - could the inter-website navigation system please have a link to the "ubuntu-website mailing list" also. And could the help on contributing to Ubuntu and/or Ubuntu Community Participation include some information on "ubuntu-website mailing list" and what to use it for.

But anyway, do you have a link for the forum and thread for this?

6) Re: "please allow a longer "stay live" time for reply to these submissions." => What do you mean?"

It might also be known as "session time". But what happens is the the user opens up a reply comment, and the word processor modules is activated. The user starts typing, gets a phone call (etc), comes back finishes typing, submits the text. Then gets told that time has run out and they need to log on again.
So they log on again, and then have to go back to the window where they entered the text (if they even think of that as an option, and can figure out how to do it). Then when they get back to their text entry they have to refresh the page, and then re-submit it.

That is a hassle, and it is also a hassle. That makes two hassles, which is also a hassle. So that makes three hassles (and there's no discounts).

Half an hour is good length of time.

7) Re: "Display user vote: not decided yet, but at first sight I'll go for making all grey except the option you choose."

The mode of "grey'ed out icons", by defacto standard (and therefore intuitive use) implies options which are "unavailable". This would be entirely OK in the present system, where once you've voted - that's it - no other option - vote is Done!
But in a system where a vote can be changed, then there Are options. So greying valid options out is not sending the correct message. The user should not be "indicated" that options are "unavailable", they just need to be "indicated" which option is "currently activated" - ie selected - which by defacto standard is displayed by being highlighted in some way.

It's the same amount of work either way - two sets of icons are needed - just instead of the "normal and grey", it is "normal and selected".

8 ) What did you think of the idea of prototyping features such as using new styles and templates on real data, and voting on options?

Thanks for the Thanks Nand.
Pleased to have been of help, inspiration, and/or etc.

wishing you
a happy Ubuntu day

Tree

[nand]

Eh, just commited the code that use your voting box suggestion : awesome :) You should try it! (You can use your Brainstorm login)
http://devel.ideatorrent.org/

[cszikszoy]

Looks great.

Still no launchpad user database! :)

I have a very strange problem with ubuntu brainstorm. It won't let me register my user name because it says it is taken. Won't let me register a different user name with my email address because it says my email address is taken. Only problem is, I never created a brainstorm account, and when I try to recover my "lost" password, it never sends me an email to the email address that's supposedly taken.

[Tree MendUs]

Nand,

Voting Box

Yes that looks pretty good! :)

I think the "Cast a Blank vote" could leave people wondering what they do with that option.
A phrase like "Don't Care" or "Don't Mind" or "Don't know" or "Not Sure" would be better than the above. As to which of these options is better I am not sure - maybe even "Uncertain/Don't Care".

"Blank" implies empty (empty thought) - and an empty thought is lack of thought and few people vote without some sort of thought.
All these other options carry an implication of thought, but either no conclusion is currently reached (they may change it in future), or the conclusion is that it "doesn't matter".

Thanks

Nand , can you please check out one of my latest ideas and let me know what you think. It links to related ideas I have had for processing and analysing "many and each individual component idea" - Thanks
see ;
Idea #11885: Method to "associate" "related ideas" & to form "idea group"s -will work for now.
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/11885/

Thanks

[Tree MendUs]

Nand,

Looking at the layout, I notice that it uses titles like "Solution #1".

Q1) Does this mean that we are about to have a system that permits more than one solution to a problem?

Q2) Does this mean that more than one person can submit a solution to a problem (which they can do now, but it has to be different idea submission), in the same idea submission?
How does this work? - I can imagine several options.

Q3) Now, if the solutions can be independently voted on, and since the solution is a separate piece of data to the problem, then can the problem also be voted on? - say, to get an indication of how important, urgent, critical the problem is.

[Tree MendUs]

nand,

I see that the sidebar menu is now where near as full as it is in the current version. I see that Categories and Projects are now only displayed as drop down menus at the top of the page.
Their appearance did not intuitively indicate that they were a selectable item - larger "Down Arrow"s would be helpful here.

But the main issue - and it's only since the change to the top drop down menu layout, that I've realized what this is - is that the current menu has "everything" there is all displayed at once, so you don't have to click in two places, and scroll, and remember what you can no longer see while your exploring elsewhere while trying to make decisions.

The new layout is "cleaner" but not (IMHO) easier to use.

The move of the sidebar to the right is OK (even Great), but I seriously urge you to keep the links readily at hand as per the current menu sidebar.

And

Add the additional links to the other Ubuntu sites for bug reports, package requests, bug reports at other places that do not get handled by launchpad, help resources, maybe the Launchpad PPA resource.
The universal site menu module could be prototyped here.

Thanks for all your good work. :)

[Tree MendUs]

Oh.
There's also the link to the "mentored projects" that have been started from Brainstorm.

That would show people that they can get involved in follow-on/downstream activities.

[Vadi]

Why is "Ideas in quarantine" the first option? With that big bad danger icon...

[Tree MendUs]

1) Bookmarks and Icon

I only just noticed the Star for making bookmarks.
And I had been wondering for sometime how to make bookmarks, seeing as there is a bookmark listing feature in "My dashboard".

The problem is that these are greyed out, but also relatively dim.
Same idea as for the vote arrows. Greyed out implies not available (what ever it is) - but highlighted implies it is selected. Color is either decoration or able to be clicked on to make a change.

This star should be yellow, and say changes to green with a tick over it when added to bookmarks.
But it is probably better if the bookmarks icon looks like a book, and gets a tick over the top of it when added to bookmarks.


2) Horizontal Line - idea separator
This could be about twice as thick for the current shading.
Or, if it were darker then it might look OK at the current thickness.


3) Pop-up text box for Icon to the right of idea titles.
a) I noticed that for short titles, the pop-up text box (with rounded corners) doesn't get placed on the page properly.
For example see the idea for ;
"Open Office Extras"

b) Where there is a "status" that progresses, it may be helpful to have the status displayed as a part of the progression path. Not everybody knows or remembers the order in which things happen. The progression bar display make sit pretty obvious how far advanced a process is.

4) Help
There is no help available.
It looks like the icons to the right of title have the following meanings;
a) bug = probably bug report at launchpad, but maybe specifically only for "needs-packaging" requests.
b) The triangle with a pair of scissors = some process - may be bug report, but may be the process for handling the ideas - not sure

It would be helpful to have a descriptive title in the pop-up box or/and have a key-help to explain what the icons mean.

:)

[Tree MendUs]

I see that hovering over the votes bar shows the actual votes.

That's really cool.
That solves some problem.
Great.

Maybe a lesson to learn ;
relevant areas make good triggers for pop-up boxes with more detailed explanatory information -great.

may be underneath the numbers could be the text "Yes / NA / No".

But wow, that was such a good idea, and so easy.

Well done!

[Tree MendUs]

Rationale / Solution - web site update October 2008

I noticed in one of the examples that the Brainstorm web site update may happen in October. The statement mentioned that ideas prior to that date will have the solution mixed with the "rationale".

1a) It might be helpful to Warn idea submitters that they could (if they want), edit their submissions after the update, so split the "rationale" from the solution.
1b)
The warning could be made visible on the submission form, and also by a "special notices (to users) section/menu on the Brainstorm site.

2) Rationale
This (not being the solution) is the area where a problem gets risen/introduced, discussed with pros and cons brought into the picture, a conclusion for action.

The solution, is probably not just for the solution but the benefits, cost, efforts, and methods required to implement it.

If we want to really mimic the full gamut of actions in a Brainstorm session and problem solving, then we need to have the full breakdown of features, plus the ability to suggest and add more.

They may be brought up in any order of time, or dependence on each other.

(but)
If each form of information can be identified, treated individually, combined with others, and analyzed, then the system will be extremely flexible.
e.g. summaries and reports could get generated more easily/automatically.

I urge the consideration of a system like this.
It is currently already being used in a "static" sense of label an idea, label a duplicate. But if it was possible to have more label types, and add more label types, then the flexibility would be enabled.
And just as it soon will be possible to have an idea split into a problem and multiple solutions, so it could be also split into comments/discussion, pros, cons, and to add more features.
each of these components could be enabled for being voted on for various parameters such as;
- wanted/not wanted
- important/not important
- need now/ sometime later
- critical/optional

This might not be so hard to do, if the current code (or modules) are formulated in such a way as it is easy to create new "types/labels".
Whether or not it is currently considered necessary may be debated. It doesn't5 need to be implemented now - but now might be a good time to facilitate it during the code re-writes.
But if these features are not allowed for at this time, it may be a long time later (if ever) before they become considered worth re-addressing.

But if you've been in a live Brainstorming session (which you very likely have), then you'll probably agree that it is important to "grab" all the information any how (tape recorder is good), and place it in order it later.
The transcription process, is type it all out, title the paragraphs, spot the separate topics, sort pros cons discussion conclusions on each topic, and assemble in order, summarize, generate report. (And more)(resolve to get more information).
Much of this editing is paragraph moving, and it is based on the "type" of content in the paragraph.

If we can "label the type" of paragraphs that Brainstorm users are inputting (as they do it), then all the "live brainstorming flexibility and process" can be done automatically.

Please discuss this opportunity with the team next time you folks have a meeting.

Thanks
on behalf of all future Ubuntu Brainstorm participants, and brainstorm software site users.

[Tree MendUs]

Also idea for stats for category being looked.

Idea #11673: Brainstorm - show number of Ideas, Comments and Votes for category being viewed.
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/11673/

[MadsRH]

Looks great!!! :) Good work

[Predator106]

Excellent ideas, great job, I really want to see this get implemented ASAP :).

[Tree MendUs]

Nand,

1) MySQL and PostgreSQL

If the IdeaTorrent system is going to be worked towards availability as FOSS, and if it is thought that ability to be used with MySQL (not just the current PostgreSQL), then the bugzilla project might be able to help with conversion.

http://www.bugzilla.org/docs/tip/en/html/installation.html

The bugzilla project works with either of PostreSQL and MySQL.


2) Stockholm Airport chooses Ubuntu IdeaTorrent (Brainstorm) for innovation.

Congratulations on the new assignment at the project called “Airport Living Lab” (Stockholm Airport)
re:
http://www.ideatorrent.org/

[dilomo]

Good work! I'm waiting to see the final version working. Probably you can make its appearance dependant on what desktop you are using KDE or GNOME.

[neo tenshi]

Really great job, IdeaTorrent seems much more user-friendly than the current Brainstorm.

But I would still make some comments about the UI itself :

First of all, the "Ideas In Quarantine" tab is not very clear. The icon and the title make it look like this category contains ideas that have been "disabled" for some reason. Maybe we should use another title and icon, like "Work in Progress" or something like that ?
Also, as it has already been said, this category shouldn't be displayed first in the menubar. It should rather be at the end of the bar since these ideas aren't ready yet

The other aesthetic issue is the look'n'feel of the solutions. From the screenshots I saw, the vote box used to be on the left, which was great because the solutions were displayed more on the right of the screen, making kind of a "hierarchy" (the "idea" is displayed on the leftmost side of the screen, the solutions that reffers to it are more on the right). But now (as I can see it), the votebox has been moved to the right of the screen. This is not so convenient for two reasons :
- the solutions are now displayed with the same alignment as the ideas, making it less easy to recognize as solutions. We should keep a greater left margin for the solutions as to keep the "hierarchy"
- (less annoying, but still), the votebox seems less "linked" to the solution when it's on the right, especially in my widescreen (and with my visual issues :) )

Compare this (old version) (http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/1452/frontpage2lx9.png), and this (what I see right now -- I kept only the important part of the screen) (http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/8380/brainstorm2qa7.jpg)



Eventually, on the page showing one given idea, there is a small issue with the titles : "Proposed Solutions" is in brown, small fonts, when the solution's title is in bigger, black fonts. This looks ... strange, even more because the alignment between these two titles isn't the same. Well, see what I mean :

82765

It looks even worse in the whole page, to be honnest



So, that's it, nothing more to report at the moment. The rest is kinda great. You sure did a great job (and I know what I mean, making UI has always been kind of a pain for me), keep this way and it'll be really good in october

[rouge568]

Great job, brainstorm team! Besides not being able to log in, everything looks great and functional. Ok, so looking at the new layout, I have compiled a mockup of several improvements that I think should be made. 'screenshot1' is the original, as it is now and 'screenshot2' is my mockup, nicely numbered for your convenience! It's a bit stretched out, but you get the idea.

Here are my suggestions:

1) Switch the "Popular Ideas" and "Quarantine" tabs so that the Popular Ideas are first. Really, when is someone going to want to look at the bad ideas before the good ones? Besides, having a radiation symbol as one the first things people see on the page is not the best idea.

2) Elongate the menu bar so that it takes up the entire screen. It looks squished to one side and one has to almost search for it when they scroll back up to use it. This is more fully explained in (6).

3) Fix hyperlinking with emails. In the original, only 'ubuntu.com' was linked instead of the entire email 'soundcompetition@ubuntu.com', as was intended. Clicking on the email should open up a new thunderbird/evolution message.
EDIT: Bug Filed.

4) Shrink the size of the 'Solutions' title. I was wondering why it was so hard to tell the difference between ideas, and I thought that it might be because the divider line was not thick enough. But looking at it more, I realized it was because the solutions look like separate ideas themselves. Currently, the font is just as big as the idea titles and really distracts the eye when scrolling down. Shrinking it a little bit would go a long way.

5) Move the 'Submit Your Idea' button to the upper-right corner and add an exclamation point. It is more visible and I think it looks nicer.

6) Get rid of the right-hand column. It contains absolutely nothing and uses up way too much room (especially on mobile devices). Move the search bar and submit button and you have a lot more room for actual content.

7) Move and elongate the search bar, by a little bit if not as much as I suggested. It looks squished on the side and is really the only thing in the right-hand column.

IMHO, (1),(3), and (4) are the most important fixes.

Comments on my ideas? I love critiques.

[nand]

Thanks for your comment!

Indeed, the UI is still not perfect... And I rather agree with Neo tenshi on the vote box : putting it right was nice, because it was breaking the layout, and it was more easy to distinguish ideas in the lists. Either I'll put it back that way, or I'll try to put a big margin for the solutions.

"Ideas in quarantine" => We discussed a long time for a good name, but haven't found better! Any suggestions.
Its tab has been put at the left so that ideas goes from left to right (quarantine => popular => dev => implem).

"Proposed solutions" not good enough => agree. I'll change that.

Getting rid of the right column : I don't think that's a good idea because:
- Reading small lines in the whole screen can be difficult
- The search function (you should try it!) could not really be located on the list, especially on lists with subtabs (see idea in dev/implem ideas).
- And more generally lack of space (you forget in your screenshot the "My dashboard" link and the admin menu.

Better UI separation in ideas/solutions: indeed, you're right.


So far, the last big question mark is the name for the quarantine area. Ideas?

Thanks

[neo tenshi]

Why not something like "Ideas under work", or "Ideas in redaction" ?
The first option could be a bit confusing with "ideas in development", though.

Maybe something as clear as "Ideas being written" ?


EDIT: Btw, the tour of Brainstorm ("learn how it works") is great ! Looks very professional :)
The only thing is that it could be more on view ; only a small link in the info bar isn't that obvious... Maybe put it in the right menu ? I'm not quite sure about it, it could perhaps look too overloaded with this ...

Something else ... When you vote on an idea, the choices (the arrows) get gray, and the one chosen keeps its colour. Shouldn't it be the opposite ? Since you voted +1 (for example), this option is "disabled" (so, grayed) because you can't vote +1 anymore, but you still can change your vote for 0 or -1, so these options should stay coloured (= enabled).
The grayed icons should only be the disabled options, whatever part of the design it is, as I-dont-remember-who said

Eventually, I dunno if it's normal or not, but the link to the posting guidelines in the step 3 of the idea posting is leading to a 404
The page linked to is : http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/amarok/faq/#question11
While the guidelines of the "older" version were on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brainstorm

Guess it's gonna be fixed, but I wonder if it's already reported

Edit2: bug filed

[rouge568]

I can see the logic behind the "quarantine => popular => dev => implem" scheme, but I still think that it is going to get a lot of head-scratching from people new to the site. (e.g: Why is the default tab the second one? Everywhere else I've been the first tab is the home/most important one.) Also, things should not go straight from quarantine into popular zones (at least in real life). Perhaps a popular => dev => implem | quarantine layout would be more appropriate.

[nand]

Hey!

I think we finally found the right name. Instead of "Ideas in quarantine", we'll use "Idea sandbox". We now need to find a more appropriate icon!

Concerning the vote arrows, I don't think the opposite is good. Indeed, with the current system, you can see in a glimpse what you voted, with the traditional code colors. (Green => I promoted, ...)

Concerning the tour, thanks :) Maybe I'll add a more prominent link better, if not too overladed...

[neo tenshi]

Hey, it's me again

Nice job with the "idea sandbox", it's more explicit than before. The only thing left is to find a more appropriate icon (why not a sign like the ones found on working sites ? Quite explicit, even if it hasn't much to do with the "sandbox")


I'll just point out two other aesthetic issues with the design. First, look at this part of the design (it's faster than to describe it) :

83257

The text in this menu isn't vertically centered, is it ? I think it looks ... weird. It should be centered (so, it should be a bit more on the top of the box than where it is at the moment)

The other thing, more discutable, is the global look of the FAQ. When you look at it (even without reading), it just looks like a long text... Doesn't really make the user excited to read it. I think this could be made more comfortable to read, even quite easily only by adding some "space" in the text : add a new line break between each question, separate the different categories more obviously, things like that ... This really would make the page more comfortable to read. Maybe also change the colours of the titles (of the "categories") and --why not ?-- add some images
Although the tour looks quite professional, there is really work to do in order to make the FAQ look the same way, IMO (this is a problem you could generalize to the entier Ubuntu websites, though. It really could be better-looking)

This is it, have a nice day

[richardspirit]

I have created my Brainstorm account three different times but I still can't log in. It keeps telling me that my email and user don't exist in the system. Can anyone help?

[neo tenshi]

No problem with me
I asked a friend of mine to try, maybe it's a problem only you have ?
Anyways, I think you should post it as a bug report in Launchpad
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ideatorrent/


EDIT:the friend in question has just tried and had no problem to subscribe and log in ... Are you sure you haven't made some bad manipulation ?


EDIT2:By the way, I asked this friend about the design in the same time, and here is his opinion :

- the icons and the banners are too big, they take too much vertical space
- another font would be better. Maybe something more rounded ? (that's something I think too)

[nand]

Hey!

Thanks for the feedback.
I agree with the current header taking too much space: I reduced the front size of the drop down lists of the banner, and I've merged the idea title area with the banner.
Concerning the text in the other dropdown not being centered, I'll have a look at it.

Concerning logins, do not forget that each time I update the code (around every two days), they are reset! Only the brainstorm logins from before the 23june will stay.

Cheers,
Nicolas

[neo tenshi]

Having the idea title area merged with the tab menu is better, but don't you think the font is a bit too big ? It takes some space, and when the title needs two lines (which happens with long titles or quite "small" resolutions like 1024*768, or both), this *really* takes space
The other thing is that the titles in "my dashboard" aren't merged with the menu, although all the other titles are ... Shouldn't it be fixed ? (it should at least be brown, like all the other titles, shouldn't it ?)

That's it, the rest is looking great IMO

[Drian42]

Just two small sugestions:
at the top of the page is this text"
'The Ubuntu community has contributed xxxx ideas, xxxxx comments, xxxxxx votes'
Why not include solutions as well?

Also, the Order By drop down box has square corners, which look out of place compared to the rest of the site, especially the box's border.
A small, relatively insignificant detail but it really shows up.

I think the titles are OK, except individual ideas don't stand out as well as in the current brainstorm site. I think this is because in the current site the voting icons act like bulletpoints. Maybe everything in an idea could be indented, apart from the title, reducing the amount of space the text uses on the page, making the titles stand out more and making it easier to distinguish between one entry and another.
I'm not to sure about this but it might help the site look a little cleaner...

Apart from that it's really good, and I think a big improvement over the old site, despite the negative reactions some people always seem to have over change of any sort.

It's great that you included my idea, and i think the way it has been adapted to fit the new site works really well.

[cszikszoy]

I have created my Brainstorm account three different times but I still can't log in. It keeps telling me that my email and user don't exist in the system. Can anyone help?

I have a very similar problem.

I never created a brainstorm account, yet when I try to register, it always tells me that my username / email are already taken. So, When I try to recover my "lost" password, I never get an email from brainstorm!

What gives?