OSP.2_5.UIReview.Matrix View
- Former user (Deleted)
- Former user (Deleted)
- Former user (Deleted)
Introduction
This page allows end users to access a published matrix for various purposes. Users reach this page by clicking on a matrix title on the Manage Matrices page.
Tasks
CIG Participants approach the Matrix View page to:
- see what is expected of them to complete a matrix (view the criteria and levels)
- see how far along they are to completing the matrix"
- how many cells are designated as complete by evaluators?
- how many cells have completed reflections?
- how much "evidence" have I accumulated for each cell?
- see if there is a change in status of a cell:
- have any cells that I submitted for evaluation been evaluated yet?
- have new cells been unlocked for me to complete?
- add (more) information (forms or files) to their portfolio matrix
Evaluators and Reviewers may visit this page to browse through student matrices to:
- see what is expected of CIG Participants who are tasked with completing matrices (view the criteria and levels)
- see if students have changed their matrix in some way that may warrant some new feedback
- see how far along the CIG Participants are to completing their matrices:
- see if there are changes to statuses of participant cells:
- have any cells been submitted for me to evaluate yet?
- have new cells been unlocked for students to complete?
Authors may visit this page to preview what this screen would look like to matrix users during the authoring process.
Page features
The page consists of:
- A drop down menu of worksite participants, sorted by last name (for roles that have permission to review or evaluate matrices).
- A grid (matrix!) of colored, clickable squares/cells with optional file or form icons for each artifact attached to each matrix cell.
- A legend that informs users what the status of each cell in the matrix is.
Optionally, the names of the matrix, columns or rows may include tooltips and links to glossary definitions.
Recommendations
orange: Gonzalo Silverio
OK= yes, makes total sense, do not see need to discuss more
???= not sure what this means, have some questionsmatrix\viewMatrix.jsp
Mech Notes:
- Tailor message display to nature of message - alert, info, success... (done)
- Format description block - how important is it? Need the hspace. (left alone)
- Make person selector the same as when published, double up with the status message? (done)
- Get some wspace back from top (done)
- Put some structure into matrix table, summary, caption, row and col scope use, thead, tbody, perhapst h4, h5 (done - added summary and keypressable targets for cells)
- Validate (almost all done - except for glossary tooltip functionality)
Semantics
"Empty Shell" vs. "Personal Instance"
The page the immediately preceeds this is called "Manage matrices". On that screen authors add/edit/delete matrices or end users select a matrix to work with. From that initial exposure to matrices, the "Matrix" seems to be an empty shell. It doesn't contain our data. Each "matrix shell" has a name.
On this page (also titled "Manage matrices"), it seems that each user has their own "instance" of the matrix "shells" we saw in the first screen. We are told we are "viewing the matrix of user x". Its a bit confusing. We should distinguish between the "empty shell" from the first page and the "personal instance" on this page. I recommend using "matrix" to refer to the "empty shell" and a combination of the user's name and the name of the matrix (something like "Mary Doe's SOE Proficiencies") to refer to the instance. The name of this page should be changed from "Manage Matrices" to this new name.
(gsilver) OK - change Header to matrix title. Change "Viewing the matrix of user x" to something that unites user and context (for the sake of i18n something like "Proficiencies: Mary Doe" -if you have something less clumsy that still "translates" let me know) - OK done
It would follow that selecting a different user from the dropdown menu would change the name of the page. The comment "Viewing the matrix of foo" would be repetitve and could be eliminated.
(gsilver) OK - done
Display role information or restrict list to a certain role
Assumption: There isn't a need to allow users to navigate to matrices that are owned by evaluators, reviewers, CIG Coordinators or Portfolio Administrators
Evaluators, reviewers, CIG Coordinators and Portfolio Administrators are all likely to have access to view CIG particpant matrices. To facilitate this they are presented with a drop down menu to select the matrix owner's name. The current design includes everyone who is a member of the worksite. This list of choices should either:
- be restricted to the "role of interest" (CIG Participants) or
- include the participant's role. If this choice is selected, the list should be sorted and grouped according to roles.
- OK - Matrix group awareness will also need to be taken into account (am a CIG Coordinator member of "The Imponderables" group - I should see only Imponderables as a choice) - 2.6 I think - unless Noah gets done before.
Direct evaluators' and reviewers' attention to matrices of "participants of interest"
Some of this information may be handled by the evaluations tool and the "dashboard" tool currently in development. This is one of those cases where segregating different types of information into different tools makes things awkward.
(gsilver) This section is 2.6 - need to
get a design together that addesses all these points
Consider the scenario of building a portfolio over the course of a semester. Students may choose to add information to the matrix at any time. This page would be pretty handy if it gave some clue as to what might need evaluating or reviewing. The current design allows the evaluator/reviewer to browse/wander through the many students' matrices, but doesn't direct attention to matrices that have new information that may warrant their attention. It is important that reviewers and evaluators that visit this page be able to find the interesting bits quickly and easily.
Conveying information about "recent" activity
The current design seems very focused on browsing the current state of a user's matrix. However, the changes that are occuring in a matrix are not communicated by the current design.
- Reviewers are likely interested in seeing what has changed (new files or forms filled out) in a matrix since they last visited so that they can go review it and provide feedback
- Evaluators are likely interested in evaluating newly submitted cells
- CIG participants are probably interested in reading new reviews and evaluations
There are a couple of ways to display information about recent activity:
Activity table
An advantage to this design is that it allows for a lot more specific information to be presented to the user.
However, it takes up a lot of space.
A section of the page devoted to a short (< 10 rows?) table of reverse chronologic, time sensitive messages tailored to the logged in user's role would help to inform users what the current activity is in in the matrix. The rows of the matrix should link to and behave identically as clicking on the relevant cell of the matrix. More activity information (further back in time) may be viewed via a link to a more complete, paged table of event information for this matrix.
ie:
Date-Time |
Event |
|---|---|
7/21/07 - 10:00am |
Sean Keesler submitted Row 1, Column 3 - "foo bar" |
7/20/07 - 11:00pm |
Sean Keesler added completed a new reflection for Row 2, Column 3 - "bar foo" |
7/19/07 - 1:00pm |
Sean Keesler added attached a new word doc to Row 3. Column 3 - "Cell title" |
read more >> |
Display activity info in matrix cells with icons
An advantage to this design is that it would not take up much more space. However, not as much information could be expressed as a table of event information. Using icons as the only means to convey information would also have accessibility implications.
Use a different set of icons or an additional attribute to icons to draw user attention to particular cells based on recent activity. New ways of distinguishing between cells that have the same attachments as last time the user visited this matrix and cells that have new files or forms would need to be thought of. Newly submitted, reviewed or evaluated cells would look differently than cells that have the user has already visited that were submitted, reviewed or evaluated.
Arguably, some of this information is handled for evaluators via the "Evaluations" tool, however, it seems that some information about recent changes to a matrix that draw a user's attention to an interesting part of a matrix would be very helpful on this page for all users of published matrices.
Syntactic Elements
It is likely that some combination of these two ideas would do a lot to enhance the UX for this page.
Accessibility
(gsilver) Regarding this section - it *is* tabular data. The issue is that this table needs to be semantically enriched. See mech notes above.
Convey info in an alternative way
In general, showing "non-tabular data" with a table to achieve a formatting effect is not a great idea. Here we really DO want the graphic effect of rows and columns, but I struggle with the idea that this is tabular data (unless more accessible data is included...see below).
The matrix is a visual representation of status information for a number of "cells". However, the same information could be displayed in alternative formats that would be easier to access for users unable to discern the graphic elements (the grid layout, icons and colors used to convey criteria, levels, cell status, and attached artifacts). The same information could and should be displayed in an alternative format:
Matrix Name |
Level 1 |
Level 2 |
|---|---|---|
Criteria 1 |
Status: Pending |
Status: Ready |
Criteria 2 |
Status: Complete |
Status: Ready |
Inaccessible tooltips
If a tooltip is rendered on this page, it is done as a div positioned with absolute positioning on a mouseOver event. WebXACT throws an error about the mouseover and about the absolute positioning.
(gsilver) Sorry - what tooltips? Glossary? Contributed forms and elements are using the title attribute...??? - Hmmm. Maybe revisit this in 2.6 - it is used everywhere.
Label Form Elements
The dropdown menu of users is a naked select, without a form label. Consider a label like "Select a person to view their matrix:"
(gsilver - OK -done