Re: [pgadmin-hackers] [PlumAdmin][Weekly Design Update]

Hello all!

This is the first design weekly update from the Plumadmin team at Pivotal. Our goal with these emails is to share out what the design/product team is working on and gather your feedback before we begin development. We'll send these out roughly every Wednesday.

Our process is iterative, meaning we start with assumptions about user behavior and continue to validate those assumptions. This is done through conversations or with feedback on wireframes. Typically, design work runs ahead of development work to minimize the risk of building the wrong thing for users. In this period, we also work closely with engineers to make sure the designs are feasible and lean. We want to do the smallest amount of work that leads to the largest value for users.

The structure of the email includes our current work, future work, and blockers we are facing. We'd love to get your input on the designs, as well as suggestions on how to unblock us.

All weekly updates will be documented in google docs as well: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J_GhsL0nR4dbTI6F-XlxspvXutghzj-3UGjDWf8MtVA/edit?usp=sharing

Shirley

2.22.17 Weekly Update

Current Work

History : Enabling users to be able to see their full queries within the history panel

What we know

• Users want to reuse queries when they are iterating upon previously run queries

• When the changes are small, retyping queries is a painful and time consuming process

• Users tend to use the text editor as their history, choosing not to delete each query after running it, or type out full queries in another application and copy/paste it into pgAdmin when they need to run it.

Current Design [WORK IN PROGRESS]

Questions:

• Is the drop down arrow affordance enough for users to know how to collapse/expand?

• What happens if users scroll down a very long query and want to go back up?

What we’re working to validate

• Do users need to compare two previously run queries? (Is this an edge case we need to account for?)

• What value does seeing time offer? If it’s to see how long ago I ran this query, how might we better display time to enable this?

• What is the best way for displaying a 1000+ line query?

Autoformat: Enabling users to quickly organize unformatted code into something readable

What we know

• Users need to quickly be able to organize it for scanning and reading.

Current Design [WORK IN PROGRESS]

Same notification as v1, with the placement being in the bottom right corner.

Redesign Dashboard: Enable Greenplum users to see only relevant info

What we know:

• We assume that the graphs on the dashboard are not necessary for users of Greenplum to see

• Dashboard elements are useful for other users and they need to view it

What we’re working to validate

• If removing the graph will impact the experience negatively for Greenplum users

Starting up on pgAdmin: Upon opening pgAdmin, enable users to quickly get set up to begin querying databases

What we know

• The current process for getting to the query editor tool is a multi-step task that involves the user clicking into the browser for the right table.

• Most users have said their purpose for using pgAdmin is to write queries, so we want to get users to that point as fast as possible.

How we will validate

• Interviews with pgAdmin users on their needs when opening pgAdmin

• Testing wireframes