UX: Adding people to a group
The most pressing UX problem we've discovered from our user testing over the past couple weeks is the process for adding people to your group.
To my mind, this is split into two parts:
- the group settings for access/permissions/privacy are confusing and restrictive;
- and, the invitation form is overly ambitious and under designed, so the end result is a confusing form that we've watched multiple users fail to navigate.
The devs are well underway on a much improved group settings form, which will be live in the next few days. This includes a change which will mean new groups will start with "Anyone can ask to join" enabled by default - one component of making groups easier to access.
Simplifying the invitation form
There are lots of jobs we want to do with this form. In order of priority:
- (must have) user types email address, presses enter or clicks submit, invitation is sent
- (must have) it's easy to bring in multiple people
- (nice to have) it's easy to select people without knowing their email address, e.g. by providing a list of Loomio users that share a group with you, or by integrating with your email address book
- (nice to have) add a custom message to explain why people should join the group
Right now, we're focussed on fixing the very pressing UX problem of the first 2 bullet points, and building up from there.
Update: I shared one design, got some feedback, and have now updated a second design here:
I had a look at how Slack handles invitations...
...then went through a few loops and got to this iteration of the invite people form:
...which lets you add a custom message:
And if you are inviting someone to a subgroup:
...you just click to add parent members:
Additionally, we're exploring the idea of adding a "team sharing link", which will work like Google Doc's "anyone with link" setting:
(That is a question we'll look at more deeply in the next week or two though.)
We're planning to build it and run a couple of user tests ASAP.
I'm keen to hear how you respond to these mockups before we build anything - does it look to you like an improvement on the current form?
Joop Kiefte (LaPingvino) Sun 15 Nov 2015 10:23AM
About the automatically adding to a subgroup or to a group in general, maybe have a general setting "I want people to be able to add me to subgroups etc/I want to confirm everything first.". I know enough situation where people are like "can't you do that for me?". You could even extend this to something like "enable the admin to change my settings where necessary". This could be implemented with similar care and UI warnings like access delegation to Gmail accounts.
Jochen Walter Wed 18 Nov 2015 7:59AM
Automaticaly adding to subgroups:
I think Loomio should be a tool to empower people in democratic action. Wouldn't @lapingvino's proposal include a passivity of the people? I don't like functions that support passivity. We all have to learn, that democracy is getting better by activity of people. What do You all think? But I also want Loomio to be easy to use for that there won't be a handicap for any kind of people (only for those who don't have access to private or public computer :-().
My proposal better explained:
As I read the comments in this discussion I felt that we need to give a sign to Mr. Richard "The Code" Bartlett (@richarddbartlett Thanks for Your good work!) and the Loomio team for what we think that is needed what kind of Adding we don't want. So I started with this one. With "After this proposal:" I just gave a hint, what proposal I would try as next. But as You all know - its not my discussion, its ours.
I thought that it is a kind of fact, that we would like to have the possibilty to add/invite people to groups/subgroups. For this it wont be necessary to ask "Would You like to be able to invite/add people to groups/subgroups?" and then ask for the possibilty to invite by mail. Do You understand what I try to explain?
So, only 3 have voted this proposal is collapsed by a hair's breadth. ;o)
Should we start this one again in better explanation or is there another proposal useful?
Greg Cassel · Fri 13 Nov 2015 11:03PM
^ good magic, man :)