MetacatUI

Thanks Rachel, these are some good comments. The MetacatUI installed on https://altsearch.dataone.org is the old 1.6 version of the DataONE theme and has been replaced by the newer design, available at https://search.test.dataone.org. Some of the comments above have been fixed in the newer version. It would be great to see your feedback on the newer design.

I'll make some separate tickets for the feedback here that can be acted on.

• There are no links or breadcrumbs on the site. When the user opens the metadata, for instance, there is no way to get back to the search results except to use the browser’s back arrow. Additionally, sometimes the back arrow takes the users to a new search page rather than their search results.

This is a feature we have implemented but it seems to not be displaying sometimes. See #6695

• It is not clear what the icons do. Recommend that you provide a hover-over that says what the icon does (e.g., abstract, metadata).

This has already been fixed in the new design

• The balloon icon and folder icon seem to take the user to the same place. The balloon icon is associated with geography/maps but it takes the user to a metadata page.

Clicking anywhere in the result row will direct the user to the Metadata View. I can see why someone would click on the icon and not expect to be directed to the Metadata just yet. See #6696

• It is unclear why certain datasets have the balloon icon highlighted.

I hope this has been cleared up in the newer design that has a tooltip explaining the map marker icon.

• The spatial search (with the boxes on the map) did not always work correctly. For instance, I selected a square that said "2" and I got 25 results.

It would be nice to see an example of when this happened to you. I have tried to recreate it in the newer 1.7 version on search.test.dataone.org but haven't been able to.

• Once you selected a spatial square and cleared the results you no longer had the option of selecting a different spatial square.

I will take a look at it and see if I can recreate this bug. It may have since been fixed since there have been a lot of map bug fixes in the past couple months.

• Many users will not be familiar with filtering by data attribute or by Taxon. Recommend providing information on how to use those filters, either as a "?" icon or hover-over. Additionally, what does the grid icon represent next to data attribute? That may not be the best icon.

Can you explain why users will not be familiar with these two filters, especially Taxon? I think adding a tooltip for each filter would help, though. See #6697.

• The black bar on the bottom of the page is vague. What is its purpose? The DataONE logo would be better placed at the top of the page.

The footer has been replaced by the Dataone.org footer in the 1.7 version.

• The top menu is misleading. “About” takes the user to credits. The DataONE logo takes the user to a new search page. Data search also takes the user to a new search page, and Data Summary takes the user to what is traditionally information found on the “about” page. Recommend changing “about” to “credits”, data summary to “about”, and data search to “home” or “new search”, and get rid of “DataONE” as a link to a new search page, and instead use the DataONE logo as a link to the website (what is currently the black bar).

The navigation has changed in the 1.7 version. It would be good to hear if it makes sense now.

• If the browser window is small the information gets hard to read. Recommend decreasing the size of font and size of the items in the search page as the window decreases. For example, if someone is using the search on a small laptop they may only be able to see 1-2 search results per page.

I agree that responsive styling needs to improve, I've started to work on this in 1.7. See #6160

From the Word doc:
2. This bug has been fixed in the 1.6 and 1.7 versions
3. The design where the search results overlapping the map has been changed in 1.7
9. This bug has been fixed in 1.7
12. Solr has some features for sorting results by relevancy. I will look into it.

Another UX evaluation done on the 1.7.0 DataONE theme - tickets created for each new issue. About half of these already have tickets/we are already aware of.

Mike Frame, Matt Jones, Rachael Volentine, and I met on June 3 and discussed a timeline for getting MetacatUI 1.7.0 ready by July 12 for DUG testing. Further use testing will be in a seperate ticket