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<\/a><\/a>Happy Cog produced designs that WordPress developers then coded. The project included user research and an interface audit to identify WordPress’ strengths and weaknesses, and to inform new structural and interface designs.<\/p>\n
WordPress, as a free software project, was an unusual client for a traditional design agency. Matt and Jeffrey formed a buffer between the Happy Cog team and the community, but the designers, nonetheless, knew this was an entirely different type of client. Jason Santa Maria says<\/a>:<\/p>\n Any other client will have customers and their own community, but you really have to just manage the people inside of a company, whereas when you\u2019re dealing with an open source project, you deal with the people that you\u2019re talking with, but there\u2019s this whole gamut of other people that you will only ever get to talk to a small portion of. I think that that\u2019s really difficult.<\/p>\n Plus, I think that on an open source project like this, it\u2019s inherently different, not just because it\u2019s more of a CMS than an informational website — the design needs are different — but it\u2019s just a different kind of way to work, knowing that whatever you do probably isn\u2019t going to stick around for very long. It\u2019s going to continue to evolve and continue to be adapted. Usually, in the very near-term as well, not even three-four months from now, but next week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n An audit and usability review were among the first steps. Liz Danzico researched and produced a 25-page document on WordPress. WordPress needed an admin that didn\u2019t intrude on the user. In the audit, she quotes Mark Jaquith<\/a>: “That\u2019s when I know WordPress is doing its job: when people aren\u2019t even aware they\u2019re using it because they\u2019re so busy using it!”<\/p>\n Liz spoke to Mark Riley, whose support forum experience gave him direct access to users’ complaints. One of the major problems he highlighted was the clutter that had amassed in the Write screen between WordPress 1.2 and WordPress 2.0. Features had been added and then tucked into modules using the pods introduced by the Shuttle project. There were many actions a user could take on the Write screen, and many of them were confusing or hidden.<\/p>\n Discussion focused on navigation structure: labelling, position, and functionality grouping. Should they go with an object-oriented navigation (Posts, Pages, Comments, etc.) or an action-oriented navigation (Write, Manage, etc.)? Liz’s first hunch — supported by the newly launched Tumblr — was that users preferred navigating by nouns. She felt WordPress\u2019 verb structure was confusing. The first navigational structure iterations introduced both a noun version and a verb version. In the end, however, and after limited user testing, the team went with a mixture of nouns and verbs: Write, Manage, Design, Comments. This meant that the functionality for different content types was scattered over different menu items — to write a post, for example, users would go to “Write.” To manage the same post they would navigate to “Manage.”<\/p>\n Happy Cog provided extensive and detailed proposals and research for WordPress, and shared them with Matt. Their reports display a sensitivity to web users, and an appreciation for simplifying and streamlining WordPress.<\/p>\n When it came to the design stage, Jason Santa Maria created three designs to present to Matt, who would choose one to move forward.<\/p>\n He designed three early mockups:<\/p>\n Matt chose the visually lighter design. Jason had taken Shuttle’s heavy blue palette and lightened the interface. An orange accent color complemented the lighter blues.<\/p>\n When the design was finally signed off, WordPress trunk started to transform. As changes took place, community feedback<\/a> was posted to wp-hackers<\/a>. Was the admin actually more usable? Major changes broke familiar patterns. Some comments compared the design to Shuttle’s; a few community members even wanted to implement Shuttle’s interface<\/a>.<\/p>\n Just before release, a sneak peek was posted to the development blog<\/a>, and WordPress users installed the release candidate to get a better look. The response echoed that of the rest of the community. Regular WordPress users were surprised by the functionality changes to the Write screen. For some, it was a step backward<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>