User Experience Example November 2024

[katestange]

I asked my brother to take a look at Numberscope and he was immensely helpful! He had tons of ideas. I'm going to record them all here in no particular order, and without tons of detail, and then we can sort through them to figure out which things to make issues etc. I'll categorize them into two big pots, but otherwise the order is essentially random.

He's not a mathematician. I think the biggest takeaway is that it needs to be more accessible and discoverable for non-mathematicians and naive users. But he's also a bit of an expert (from past work history) on UI design, so he had super detailed recommendations based on exploring it with zero explanation/help from me.

I wanted to get this all down before I forgot, but I can try to expand on these...

Bugs & Important Things:

1. It would be great to add a sort of "I'm feeling lucky" button so the user can get a new "cool" specimen. I also think we should have TONS of cool specimens, maybe not all in the featured gallery (because of space), but in a bigger gallery from which to draw random specimens for fun.
2. [There's a bug that if you make a giant modulus in sequence options, the description field for the sequence doesn't wrap correctly and this messes things up in the sequence panel as well as in the switcher modules.] -- this is now Param Editor and Specimen Cards do not deal well with overflow #512.
3. One thing I really agreed with, is that Formlua and Random should be buttons not thumbnails or list items. There's room up next to the OEIS search. But basically these are ways to generate new sequences, not sequences themselves, so these three "generation methods" should be visually parallel.
4. [In list view in switchers, the mouse should be a "finger pointer" over the list, so it is clear it is clickable] -- this is part of Need more "finger pointer" cursors #513
5. [the sequence and visualizer names should also have "finger pointer" upon mouseover] -- this is part of Need more "finger pointer" cursors #513
6. regarding boolean parameters: checkbox next to corner right/down arrow is confusing. These are used in two distinct situations at the moment (e.g. in turtle). One situation is to affect visualizer behaviour (e.g. turn on animation); the other is to collect and hide options without affecting behaviour (e.g. "speed/style options"). A rocker switch (like the thumbnails/lists switch) might be clearer for booleans that affect behaviour. And something totally different should be used for just organizing/hiding options.
7. Principle for featured specimens or starting specimens: they should be good starting points, not just good individual images. Maybe there are various types of specimens: ones we give beginners as starting points vs. ones that illustrate a specific math thing, etc. Maybe we treat them differently.
8. We brainstormed the idea of a splash screen for new users that can be dismissed and makes clear the overarching paradigm of "combine a sequence with a visualizer to get a specimen"
9. More "try this" ideas on popups/mouseovers/descriptions etc., for more exploration encouragement
10. When visualizers aren't interesting -- many sequence and viz combos just don't do much, maybe a dot or two or a single line segment -- how should we deal with it? We don't want that to be a downer.
11. For the download button, maybe a camera icon is better: idea of a screenshot, not a download, is more clearly conveying what this button does.

Other Things:

1. He accidentally clicked outside the switcher module and was surprised it went away.
2. The icon currently used for "Change sequence" and "Change visualizer" means "shuffle" or "random" to him.
3. In list view in switchers, he expected to be able to click on column headers to reorder things.
4. He wanted tooltips on the buttons in the header, to make it less scary to guess what they mean and click on them.
5. He thought the header did not seem crowded.
6. He tried to click the question mark in the specimen name field to open help to tell him what to do.
7. He thought typing in the specimen name field should change the picture at first.
8. he clicked the numberscope logo to try to get help, so that was successful, except that the docs are currently very programmer oriented, so he tried to go to "create a visualizer" for guidance how to make a picture ... we need a more entry level access route to the documentation
9. Sliders would make the number fields (especially those with finite ranges) more appealing to play with -- I think this is a good point for something where you might want to quickly "walk" through a range of options and watch how the visualization changes
10. he expected the little equals sign (=) between the docking panes to do something on click, like reset to a nice default arrangement
11. The detection width for docking should be narrower (less eager).
12. When only one pane is docked in lower position, he tried to drag one pane up into the empty space above, but that didn't work (you can accomplish the same by undocking and then redocking in top position).
13. He tried double-clicking on the top bar on a docking pane -- he wanted this to "rollup closed" and "fully open" the pane/tab
14. There isn't enough visual indication that panels are longer than the view area and can be scrolled.
15. He managed somehow (we couldn't reproduce) to get the scrollbar to deactivate on the sequence panel.
16. More tooltips on parameters; and they should activate on mouseover of the entire parameter name
17. Parameters should have little link icons (arrow out of square) going to the appropriate documentation.
18. deleting a sequence from the sequence pane should have an "are you sure?" phase
19. "Search the encyclopedia..." should be "Add from encyclopedia...."
20. Instead of letting blue highlight on a new sequence fade, it should stay highlighted until modular is closed.
21. Blue highlight referenced above should also work in list view.
22. When only one thing is docked, the unused "empty docking area" above or below is weird
23. oeis.org link should have arrow/box link icon
24. switchers could dynamically resize
25. he managed to get firefox to fail to notice resize and reload canvas, as it should... couldn't reproduce
26. words like "modulus" are mysteries -- need explanation/tooltip/doc -- even things like first index of sequence
27. the specimens have entries that are not the defaults, which caused some confusion (last entry available on VFib for example, was not the last entry of the sequence, but the available range isn't shown)
28. in sequence parameters, last term has a greyed out max value, but the full range should be shown next to the parameter name (same for first index, number of terms)
29. we got the domain error repeating a bunch in Turtle -- will try to reproduce
30. array entry fields are a bit confusing -- should be upfront clearer it is numbers separated by space/commas
31. Should we capitalize error messages
32. A closing parenthesis is missing is "elements may occur only once (N is repeated." error message in Turtle
33. regarding the above, it shows only one element that is repeated, even when there are several (I think this is probably ok)
34. Math speak "The number w of walkers" is in normal person speak "The number of walkers (w)."
35. Chaos dark mode isn't working in Firefox (probably related to current bugs under discussion).
36. Opacity is a good candidate for a slider.
37. "favourite" (Canadian spelling) in FactorFence
38. FactorFence: why can't your favourite number be negative? (could ignore minus sign)
39. FactorFence: the constant play/pause causing the play/pause icon to change constantly was distracting
40. we lost factor fence off the screen by grabbing and moving with the mouse and couldn't get it back (probably no fix)
41. Spacebar should play/pause visualization when canvas is in focus
42. The lack of uniformity of controls like zoom/pan across visualizers wasn't good
43. In "Saved Specimens" newest should be at the top
44. In gallery the little arrow that indicates expand/fold should be on left, not right. For one reason, when in list mode it is floating way off to the right. He wasn't sure what it was.
45. When narrowing the browser in gallery mode, the "gallery" and "help" words in the top jump down awfully early on
46. turtle should have arrow key control
47. non-uniformity: frames per second vs. steps per frame for speed in ModFill vs. Turtle
48. It wasn't clear what "Animation" means in turtle, since it is already animating by default (drawing out the steps) just not folding