Round 1.3: Test user understanding of layout and labels for content section in Drupal CMS to align with Drupal Canvas

Summary of findings

Testing with users revealed strong understanding of these labels: "Moderated content," "Scheduled content," "Webforms," "Blocks," and "Content types." However, users struggled with "CMS Content" (assumed all content was CMS content), "Utilities" (no clear understanding), "E-commerce" (unclear if product list or setup tools), and "Templates" (confused between page/site templates).

Summary of recommendations

We need to think about other ways to label the unclear menu items—particularly "CMS Content," "Utilities," and "E-commerce"—to better communicate their purpose and align with user mental models. We should consider more descriptive terms that clarify whether options lead to content lists or configuration tools.

Problem/Motivation

As development continues to align Drupal Canvas within Drupal CMS it is important that users (both new to Drupal and used to it) are able to make sense of the options in the Content section, so they can complete their content-related tasks. More specifically, our goal is to make sure the routes for site builders to be able to structure their content and manage site content from the admin menu are as intuitive as possible.
Adopting concepts from Drupal Canvas and Drupal CMS, we prepared a mocked-up interface including ideated menu labels for options within the Content section, but we needed to test with users to see if this made sense to them.

Objective

To assess users’ understanding of ‘Pages’ within the Content section with terms including:

• CMS Content
• Utilities
• Blocks
• Templates
• Content types

Hypothesis

Presenting the content options using the proposed labels will be understandable to users both familiar and not familiar with Drupal. The presentation of the options would support them to complete their content tasks.

Important note:

This issue is about conducting user research to identify where users face challenges and how Drupal can better communicate key concepts. It’s not the place to share opinions on what should be in Drupal CMS. If you’d like to help, we’d love your input in defining or running the tests, or sharing insights that directly support the research. Join us on the Drupal Slack channel #ux-working-group. For general ideas, join us there and open the discussion there or open another issue. Thanks for helping us keep this focused and productive!

Details of tests: participants, scenario, tasks

People who had experience of setting up websites (not necessarily Drupal) sites. All five participants came from a Higher Education background. Participants came from the UK, US and Canada.
Participants were asked to imagine a scenario where they had set up a Drupal CMS instance to manage their content. They were then shown the screenshot linked to this issue (with the mocked-up options for the Content section) and following usual UX protocol, they were asked to speak aloud and talk through what they saw and what it meant to them.
When they had been shown the screenshot, they were asked questions like:

• What do you think each of the items in the left-hand Pages menu (within Content) are for?
• Are there any that you’re unsure about? Which ones?
• What would you expect to see if you expanded these items? How would you expect it to work?

Specific findings from the research

All participants recognised that the vertical menu was there to help them access and manage their content, and to complete content tasks.
General impressions of what the menu was for
One participant (familiar with Drupal) commented: “This menu looks like a mix between what you would currently see in the content admin menu and what you would see in the structure admin menu”
Participants who were in content editor roles were unclear whether the options would contain specific content items or would contain functionality – so for example, they weren’t clear if ‘Webforms’ would take them to a list of published or a way to configure or structure their web forms)
Participants’ understanding of specific menu items

• Moderated content:

Understood by all participants to mean content that would be ‘signed off’ by someone with the right permissions. They felt choosing this option would enable them to control who moderated what.

• Scheduled content

Understood by all participants to mean content to be published at a specific date and time, choosing this option would enable them to set that up

• CMS Content

Not understood by participants. Representative comments: ‘I assumed all my content would be CMS content’ ‘Would this show me a subset of the content in my CMS?’

• Utilities

Not understood by participants. Representative comments: ‘I really don’t know what I would find here. Not a clue’

• Webforms

Understood by all participants as an option to choose to manage their webforms

• E-commerce

Not understood by participants. Representative comments: ‘Would this be a list of products for sale?’ ‘Would this be where I would go to get all the parts I need to build like a shopping cart and way to take payment through a site? – that would be really handy’.

• Blocks

Understood by participants familiar with Drupal, and those unfamiliar with Drupal got the idea, Representative comment: ‘So this is like a block of content?’.