Alexander Klimetschek's Blog On Software Design and Development

Usability improvements in Mindquarry 1.1.1

In the upcoming 1.1.1 stability release of the Mindquarry Collaboration Server we fixed lots of bugs, especially with Internet Explorer 7, but also added some minor but useful features. These will also be added to the Mindquarry GO beta servers as soon as possible. The new things include:

• Better display of errors in forms + hints on what to enter (see below)
• More user friendly error pages (see below)
• Paging in task list
• Password recovery via Email
  
• Using Email address for login

We have to admit that the forms for creating users and teams were not that good in explaining what you should (and can) enter as "Team ID" and even worse - any error messages were hidden behind a small icon. This was especially a problem for all new users, because this is what you first have to do - and when you have the least knowledge about the system in practice.

So we improved that and have a look at the result:

Another thing was that we got a lot of bug reports that did not came from some "real" internal server error, but that simply were "Access not allowed" error pages (we called them "Not authorised"). The problem is simply that all error pages looked the same and gave the user the feeling he hit a bug and we should fix it!

Our solution is straightforward in multiple dimensions: show specific pages for each error (no access to team, page not found, team not found, internal error), explain the reason so a non-technical expert can understand it and finally give a hint to resolve the problem. That's how it looks now:

We think that should really help people getting along with Mindquarry right at the beginning! The release will be out at the beginning of next week.

Posted at 06:59PM Jun 29, 2007 by Alexander Klimetschek in General  |  Comments[2]