Front page 'get started' call to action

[mialondon]

Ray's comment: '

I had an interesting interaction on Friday: Someone who saw the Serendipomatic story I put on my school's website said that she wanted to try it but couldn't log-in. I of course told her that she needn't use Zotero and that all she needed to do was grab some text and paste it in the box.

I know that this is one simple user experience and I know that Mia has pointed out that the team sees importance in two colors and two lines. But, at the risk of annoying everyone, I'd like to again mention that one simple line might work for space and also perhaps for UI purposes.

A while ago, Scott had mentioned these single-line possibilities, which I like: "Start by Grabbing Some Text and Pasting It Below". If that's too long, he also proposed "Grab Some Text and Paste It Below".

Feel free to ignore this, if you're tired of this suggestion.'

[mialondon]

My reading of Ray's colleague's experience was that she thought she had to put something in the Zotero box as well as the main text box. Is that right, @rpalin ?

I'd been generally worried that people would get caught up in random things along the way, which is why I'd been pushing the 1-2-3 step motif so much. Do we need to gather more data before trying to tackle this or could we look at some text solutions? I'd had a go at changing text (see mialondon@7ef9c71 ) but I don't think it's gone to dev yet.

If text solutions aren't likely to work as elegantly as we'd like, then we could look at design solutions for making the 'or' more clear with @fontnerd etc?

[scottkleinman]

I think there are actually two issues:

1. Our current copy does not explicitly say, "Put your text in the textarea
   field."
2. Our current copy does not explicitly say what the Zotero field is for.
   That will confuse non-Zotero users.

I think that for the former we could try changing the copy. Since I can't
see Mia's suggestions yet, I'm not going to try to formulate any. For the
latter, we could write more, but I really think that this will create
screen clutter. In my view, this is a place to have a small question mark
icon with a tooltip that states what Zotero is and how it is used. It can
also say something to the effect of "No Zotero account? Just enter some
text in the field to the left to make the magic happen."

If people like the tooltip idea, I'll put one in so that people can see
what it looks like.

On 19 August 2013 08:45, Mia notifications@github.com wrote:

My reading of Ray's colleague's experience was that she thought she had to
put something in the Zotero box as well as the main text box. Is that
right, @rpalin https://github.com/rpalin ?

I'd been generally worried that people would get caught up in random
things along the way, which is why I'd been pushing the 1-2-3 step motif so
much. Do we need to gather more data before trying to tackle this or could
we look at some text solutions? I'd had a go at changing text (see
mialondon/serendipomatic@7ef9c71mialondon@7ef9c71) but I don't think it's gone to dev yet.

If text solutions aren't likely to work as elegantly as we'd like, then we
could look at design solutions for making the 'or' more clear with
@fontnerd https://github.com/fontnerd etc?

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Scott Kleinman
Professor of English
Director, Center for the Digital Humanities
California State University, Northridge

[mialondon]

Maybe we could work out the text here rather than jumping straight into code, so that people who aren't as comfy with github can contribute? I think it might be one of those occasions where letting options brew for a while might help, and it'd give us a chance to test it on unsuspecting co-workers/loved ones/pets...

[scottkleinman]

Mia, I still can't see your new wording on dev. Can you past it here to get
the options brewing?

For the record, I just received an e-mail from my wife which reads only
"Wait, where's the hippo?" I'm still trying to work out what it means...

On 19 August 2013 09:38, Mia notifications@github.com wrote:

Maybe we could work out the text here rather than jumping straight into
code, so that people who aren't as comfy with github can contribute? I
think it might be one of those occasions where letting options brew for a
while might help, and it'd give us a chance to test it on unsuspecting
co-workers/loved ones/pets...

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Scott Kleinman
Professor of English
Director, Center for the Digital Humanities
California State University, Northridge

[rpalin]

Let me preface by saying that I am willing to shut up on this. ... I'm still thinking about a single-line prompt. While I like the appearance of the latest @fontnerd renditions, I'm still not convinced that the "Let's Get Started" text is entirely necessary. I think I remain partial to @scottkleinman 's language mentioned in issue #119: "Grab Some Text and Paste It Below." This, in conjunction with Scott's idea of the question mark helper for Zotero, might better assist the uninitiated. I think the grab-paste language might make it more like this:

[rlskoeser]

I'm not sure if it will help simplify the interface issue or not, but we really ought drop the zotero username login input text box. Unfortunately, it will take some coding to adjust, because the presence of text in that input box is what triggers the zotero login, but I think it isn't otherwise used. I think instead of a text input and a button that says "go" we should have a button with text like "login to zotero" or "connect to zotero."

[scottkleinman]

I think this is just a matter of removing the if statement in the Python
code. On my website, I have a link that triggers a login screen for Moodle
in a JQuery UI dialog, and it's really effective. If we were to use one of
these, could we then automatically submit the Zotero collection?

On 19 August 2013 13:38, Rebecca Sutton Koeser notifications@github.comwrote:

I'm not sure if it will help simplify the interface issue or not, but we
really ought drop the zotero username login input text box. Unfortunately,
it will take some coding to adjust, because the presence of text in that
input box is what triggers the zotero login, but I think it isn't otherwise
used. I think instead of a text input and a button that says "go" we should
have a button with text like "login to zotero" or "connect to zotero."

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Scott Kleinman
Professor of English
Director, Center for the Digital Humanities
California State University, Northridge

[rlskoeser]

I think in the very short term we should just put names on the submit buttons so we can determine which if clause in the view to trigger.

In the longer term, I do have zotero working with django-social-auth and a jquery ui dialog would probably be a nice way to handle the authentication part - we'll probably have to play with it some, but I like that idea. Once a user logs into zotero, the site will need to indicate they are logged in and give a logout option, but we will also be able to let them an option to select one of their collections (or possibly other content in their zotero library? not certain), and use that as the source for the search. I'm not sure if that functionality still belongs on the primary input page or on a secondary page, although if secondary there probably isn't all that much more content...

I think the zotero specifics may not be as relevant to the front page discussion; @scottkleinman if you have more comments about the zotero flow or interaction once someone is logged in, maybe you could add them to #111. I just wanted to suggest a UI change we need to make anyway in case it helps simplify the two alternate inputs we're struggling with presenting clearly to users.

[mialondon]

I think @scottkleinman 's summed up what slipped in the rush to go live:
'(1) Our current copy does not explicitly say, "Put your text in the textarea field."
(2) Our current copy does not explicitly say what the Zotero field is for. That will confuse non-Zotero users.'
I'd add (3) Our current page could make it more obvious that you EITHER grab text OR link your library
(4) Rebecca's point about the username box and form function

(1) For reference, the current text is:
'Grab some text.
Got a paper you’ve written? How about some research notes? Favorite song lyrics? Throw it into the Serendip-o-matic! Not sure what to use? Try Wikipedia's daily featured article or try it out with the sample text below.'

We could either change 'Grab some text.' to a variant of 'Grab some text and feed it to Serendip-o-matic below' OR include explicit directions in the longer text e.g. 'Throw it into the Serendip-o-matic text box below! '

(2) For the 'what on earth is Zotero and what happens when I click here?', the text I had was '

Or got a Zotero account?
Enter your username to give your reference library a whirl!

' but I'm not wedded to it, especially as it would need to change to 'Link to your personal Zotero library' or something.

(3). A test for any solution proposed - do the changes make the either/or choice clear to the first-time visitor?

(4) How does the layout and positioning of the 'Zotero' box change if it's just a heading, text links and a button? What should the text and the button say? In the meantime, as @rlskoeser says names on form submit buttons would be a good fix, as would getting rid of the extraneous username box.

Since we're getting into design changes to support these text and UI tweaks, it'd be good to ask Amy to contribute when we've hit on exactly what we want to end up with.

[scottkleinman]

Our current copy is below (tags approximate the relative font sizes):

Let’s Get Started.

Grab some text.

Got a paper you’ve written? How about some research notes? Favorite song lyrics? Throw it into the Serendip-o-matic! Not sure what to use? Try Wikipedia's daily featured article or try it out with the sample text below.

What if we change it to this:

To get started, grab some text and paste it below.

Got a paper you’ve written? How about some research notes? Favorite song lyrics? Throw it into the Serendip-o-matic machine! Not sure what to use? Try Wikipedia's daily featured article or try it out with the sample text below.

For the Zotero box, our current copy is:

Zotero, anyone?

["Zotero" is an image]

Got a Zotero account? Enter your username

[text field]
Go!

Need help or more info about Zotero integration?

Here is a suggested revision:

Got a Zotero account? ["Zotero" is a smaller image linked to the Zotero web site] [Question mark image with tooltip that reads something like: 'Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. If you have a Zotero account, you can login and feed the items in your Zotero library to the Serendip-o-matic machine. Not Zotero account account? No worries! Just paste some text into the field on this page and click "Make some magic!"']

Login [Triggers a login form in a dialog. Changes to
"Logout" if the user is logged in?]

Need help or more info about Zotero integration?

One problem with this is that it requires the user to click a button twice:
once to open the login form and once to submit the form. An alternative is
to put the login form on the front page, but I think that people still
might find this confusing. It seems to me that the formulation above is
preferable (and reduces clutter). I hope it also takes into account the
Zotero authentication problems Rebecca brought up.

Thoughts?

For the interim measure of providing names on the forms, I'll see if I can
get to that later in the week.

On 20 August 2013 02:49, Mia notifications@github.com wrote:

I think @scottkleinman https://github.com/scottkleinman 's summed up
what slipped in the rush to go live:
'1. Our current copy does not explicitly say, "Put your text in the
textarea field."
2. Our current copy does not explicitly say what the Zotero field is for.
That will confuse non-Zotero users.'
I'd add 3. Our current page could make it more obvious that you EITHER
grab text OR link your library
4. Rebecca's point about the username box and form function

1. For reference, the current text is: Grab some text. Got a paper
   you’ve written? How about some research notes? Favorite song lyrics? Throw
   it into the Serendip-o-matic! Not sure what to use? Try Wikipedia's daily
   featured article or try it out with the sample text below.

We could either change 'Grab some text.' to a variant of 'Grab some text
and feed it to Serendip-o-matic below' OR include explicit directions in
the longer text e.g. 'Throw it into the Serendip-o-matic text box below! '

For the 'what on earth is Zotero and what happens when I click here?',
the text I had was '
Or got a Zotero account?
Enter your username to give your reference library a whirl!' but I'm
not wedded to it, especially as it would need to change to 'Link to your
personal Zotero library' or something.
2.

Do the above changes make the either/or thing clear?
3.

How does the layout and positioning of the 'Zotero' box change if it's
just a heading, text links and a button? What should the text and the
button say? In the meantime, as @rlskoeserhttps://github.com/rlskoesersays names on form submit buttons would be a good fix, as would getting rid
of the extraneous username box.

Since we're getting into design changes to support these text and UI
tweaks, it'd be good to ask Amy to contribute when we've hit on exactly
what we want to end up with.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/143#issuecomment-22933601
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Scott Kleinman
Professor of English
Director, Center for the Digital Humanities
California State University, Northridge

[rpalin]

Regarding the text box side:

Thanks for these ideas, Scott. I like them a lot, especially dropping the H2 in favor of the H3. My only thoughts are two minor phrasing changes above the text box:

Get started by grabbing some text and pasting it below. RATHER THAN To get started, grab some text and paste it below.

Throw anything into the Serendip-o-matic machine! RATHER THAN Throw it into the Serendip-o-matic machine!

[mialondon]

I've been neck-deep in a bunch of deadlines that all come in around Monday (thanks, universe) so I can't wade in now, but I'd suggest we use tools like Infomaki to actually test the effectiveness of different text on real people, so that we can balance it with our vision of Serendip-o-matic's 'voice'.

[fontnerd]

Perhaps this addresses some of @rpalin and @scottkleinman suggestions regarding the necessity of both the h2 and the h3. This doesn't quite address the zotero issue.

[scottkleinman]

I'm assuming that the text will wrap on a smaller screen, which is OK,
since the colon implies that there is something more. If that's the case,
we could even do "Let's Get Started", and possibly even hard code a line
break.

But this puts in my mind another issue. Right now, the Zotero box gets
moved below the textarea on a small screen, which effectively hides its
existence from users. Perhaps we could put a "Got Zotero" link under the
get started line and link it to the Zotero box. Another option is to remove
the Zotero box entirely to a modal dialog so that it would sit on top of
the textarea if the "Got Zotero" link is triggered...

On 3 September 2013 08:00, Amy notifications@github.com wrote:

[image: screen shot 2013-09-03 at 10 57 48 am]https://f.cloud.github.com/assets/5123245/1073566/3f7be15c-14a9-11e3-9dd6-1f24a0543f6d.png
Perhaps this addresses some of @rpalin https://github.com/rpalin and
@scottkleinman https://github.com/scottkleinman suggestions regarding
the necessity of both the h2 and the h3. This doesn't quite address the
zotero issue.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/143#issuecomment-23719062
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Scott Kleinman
Professor of English
Director, Center for the Digital Humanities
California State University, Northridge

[mialondon]

So to resolve this, we need to:

• finalise the Zotero functionality - if linking a library doesn't need a text box, it's more a matter of fitting in a text link?
• work out whether the current layout (as on dev) addresses the 'people don't know to scroll down' issue
• work out whether people are confused about what to do (ie does 'get started' work?) and if so come up with solutions

[fontnerd]

I would like to add 15px of top margin to the "Let's Get Started". It's not a permanent fix but the space between the icons and the "Let's Get Started" line is very tight, touching in the mobile view. As for the Zotero spacing issues mentioned by @scottkleinman, I agree this is an issue but perhaps should be resolved alongside the other Zotero issues.

[mialondon]

Go for it! Once the code is pushed to dev, we can test it on various devices.