Site Index

[KimPatch]

We want to generally make the interviews more discoverable on the site. We want the user to have some kind of birdseye view where they can see a bit of information about many interviews at once. We are looking for a relatively simple way to do this. A couple of questions: What would it take to add

1. A thumbnail/tile view to the interview page that shows just the picture with name and interview date below it so several columns and rows of tiles could fit on the page?

2. An index page/Site map with just names and interview dates to give readers a better map of the whole collection. I'm picturing the collections as headings, and the interview names appearing alphabetically under the headings. The last heading would be "Interviews that don't appear in a collection". Collections and interviews would be clickable: Collection Name Interview name, Interview date Interview name, Interview date Timeline name Collection Name Interview name, Interview date Interview name, Interview date … Interviews that don't appear in a collection Interview name, Interview date Interview name, Interview date etc. It would be best if there are several columns so readers have a good birdseye view of collections and interviews even when there are several hundred interviews on the site.

3. The index page described above with a toggle that adds a thumbnail?

[KimPatch]

@ethanbutler If you can do an off-the-top-of-your-head – or at least a relatively quick estimate – of the above that would be helpful in figuring out priorities.

[KimPatch]

@EthanButler

This is looking good!

1- The collection names don't work well on the thumbnails – they don't physically fit and it's not immediately apparent what they are.

Thanks for adding the subtitle field and filling it in for the first three. I think this looks good and also makes it not necessary to have the longer descriptions, which are very small print anyway and require the hover, which makes everything look busier.

At the same time I think we need the interview date on this view, both because it's useful information and to distinguish interviews with the same person at different dates.

Question: Can you remove the collection name, remove the longer descriptions and add the interview date below the subtitle?

2- Borders would look better. Phil's second also example fit more interviews across. I see that the new Rutherfurd view scales down to fewer across on smaller screens.

Question: Can we have it scale up to as many as six across on large screens?

3- I was expecting to see the sort by name, reverse name, date, reverse date in view as well. Because we already had this functionality for the older view I expect it's easy to have on this view.

Question: Can you restore the existing sort function for this view?

4- If we still want the collection information in this view I think the best way to way to put it in would be to add a sort by collection to the sort function, and in this view the collection names would be headers over a group of thumbnails and so the entire collection name would show and it would be more obvious that this name indicates a group.

Question: How difficult would it be to add this to the sort function?

[KimPatch]

@ethanbutler

Thanks – the spacing looks better and it’s good that the 4 columns let us get more interviews on page.

Trivial change for clarity: If you can rename the new field “Index Title” rather than “Subtitle” on the backend I think it will be clearer.

1. I think we can solve several problems by putting the text, which should be just

Name Index title Date of interview

below the boxes, similar to the examples that Phil pointed to in his previous message.

(or it may fit better this way:

Name, date of interview Index title)

This will be less busy, nothing will obscure the picture, and there will be no need to indicate which side to put the box or hover to see the information.

Note that we don’t need the longer descriptions but we do need the date of the interview. Note that the name should be bold so it stands out a bit.

2- The filtering tools that were on the old interviews page should be brought back as they were before without the category grouping and headers (name, reverse name, date interviewed, reverse date, date published, reverse date ). This will let viewers simply look up an interview by name or date.

3- I was picturing the category grouping as an additional sort category on the drop-down (choose this sort option and the interviews would group by category and within each category would be in alphabetical order). I’m assuming this is relatively easy to do but I wasn’t sure and so asked the question below. If you have to leave something out this is the one to leave out – #1 and 2 are more important.

4- This one is just a question: In addition to the filtering tools we originally had a ‘change view” icon, and two different views on this page.

I think it might be useful to preserve this as well but have the new tiled view as default with the tiled icon, and use the list icon con to give the viewer the option to toggle to original view with pictures and longer descriptions (which is currently under the tiled icon). Question: how difficult would it be to do this?

[KimPatch]

Adding key bits from email thread:

Question: What's the greatest number of columns we can have now given the new labels? It seems like six would be fit comfortably. And looking at my 24-inch screen it seems like it might work well to scale up to eight.

The default view should be alphabetical. The filtering tools are already built and functional – they allow the user to toggle between alphabetical (default), date published and date of interview, and reverse. These are all important for finding interviews and giving viewers a good mental map of the Rutherfurd collection.

Question: how much extra work is adding sorting by category to the filtering function (# 3 in my previous message above) It should be left out if it's extra work, but if it's easy to add I think it adds to the mental map of the whole collection. Note that the collection groupings should not show up in the default view either way.

[KimPatch]

• [x] I think there was a misunderstanding about the text box. Fixing this will also sidestep the problem that limits the number of boxes across. The text should appear below each box rather than on it.

Name Index title Date of interview

below the boxes, similar to the examples that Phil pointed to in his previous message.

(or it may fit better this way: Name, date of interview Index title) This was also what Phil was referencing in the comment below when he said “can we see with labels below”

The hover is removed – great. Understood that it was screen reader friendly and I'm glad you're thinking about that. It's the cognitive load I was thinking of.

Sorting looks great. Understood about the interview date sort.

• [ ] For the sort by category we need category headings like you had before just on this view. I would recommend making the headings font a bit smaller than you had before.

[KimPatch]

@ethanbutler

• [x] It looks like there's a glitch in row spacing. On Chrome/Windows 7 I only see five interviews. On Firefox/Windows 7 I see all 18 interviews. It looks like Phil is having the same issue on his Mac

• [x] A couple of tweaks for the text:

  1. The name and title are a bit crowded.

• Can you make the space between them match the space between the title and date?

  2. There are three different font sizes and three different colors, which increases busyness and makes it harder to parse. I think the best way to reduce this while keeping the three types of information easily distinguishable is to

• make the date color the same blue as the title so there are two colors rather than three but different colors next to each other.

• make the date size the same as the second line – it will still be a bit smaller because the second line is all caps – it looks like there's plenty of room and it's hard to read as it is.

[ethanbutler]

@KimPatch – the style updates are made. I'll have some time to add the collections sorting over the weekend.

[KimPatch]

Formatting looks good! Looking forward to seeing the collection sorting.

[KimPatch]

Looks good. I checked to make sure collections don't show up when all interviews are hidden and as expected they don't -- great. I also checked this on an ipad -- looks good.

4 details:

1. On large screens (and if you zoom out in smaller screens) there ends up being a lot of space on the sides. How difficult and how advisable is it to have these wrap at 6 across instead of 4 across instead of having wide margins show up?

2. I'm seeing some artifacts on Chrome/PC -- see the lines in the above picture

3. There's too much space between collections (on Firefox and Chrome/PC). Can you reduce this?

3b. Interviews not in collections show up at the bottom of the view with no heading. There should be an Interviews that are not in a Collection" heading for these.

4. The sorting dropdown doesn't show up on an iphone, so the only choice here is to scroll through alphabetically.
   Question: is this an oversight or are there reasons for leaving out this functionality on the smartphone view?

[KimPatch]

@ethanbutler Thanks for the email heads up – checking each of these.

• [ ] 1. I'm seeing six columns in Firefox on a widescreen but the margins don't line up on either side – with the title or the drop-down. Question: is this an easy fix or something that is likely to affect other things on the site?

• [ ] 2. The Chrome artifacts are gone, but most of the interviews now don't show up. I'm only seeing these five – doesn't matter what view, there are just five.
  

3. Spacing now looks good on Firefox and Chrome – thanks!

• [ ] 3b. This might've been overlooked because it was in email – I suggested "Interviews Not in a Collection" as an improvement on 3b. wording above. It's confusing to have no label. Addendum: better 3b wording from Katie "Standalone Interviews"

4. I'm seeing the sorting drop-down on the iPhone – looks great – thanks.

[KimPatch]

@ethanbutler better 3b wording from Katie "Standalone Interviews" (addendum to notes above)

[KimPatch]

@ethanbutler

• [ ] 1. Is good at level of the title but there's still a spacing issue at the very top

2. Looks good

   3b. Looks good – thanks

[KimPatch]

Looks good!