UX issues on first screen instances
As a new user of Fedilab, here some UX thoughts…
The first screen you see is the "enter instance" screen. (And first impression matters, y'a know.
- which has a big popup explanation of what this is, which is good
- text: "instance hostname" – hostname is technical slang and no user can be expected to know what this is suggestion: call it "domain" or similar, which is still somewhat less technical (or "hanlde" if you combine it with the user name)
- the text explains that you should leave out the
https://
at the beginning suggestion: this can be solved technically, don't burden that onto the user, i.e. if https:// is entered, just automatically remove it -> then you can remove this part of the long explanation. (same with www. or so maybe – just let the program determinate the exact correct instance domain) - the text explains the functionality of the "login" button
I see where this is coming from and I see the intend as a programmer, but I think this is not really helpful. Several reasons:
- warning triangles are scary, let's not use them if we can avoid them
- BTW, the text says "the login button", but the button is actually named "connect" in my case (remember German translation again)
- typo
erreuchbar
BTW - okay, not BTW this time: instead of warning of potential errors/things before they even happened, better display a useful error (helpful message or similar) afterwards only if they happen (which should not be the case in 80% of the cases likely, I guess) -> this avoids this scary warning
These were my first thoughts. Now you need to know I am also a dev that had to implement a similar login for Mastodon handle (in my case) verification/user input in a Firefox add-on and for thus I had to consider the failure cases that can happen (many actually
- empty input -> "instance seems to be invalid" -> maybe have a more specific message ("Did you forget to enter an instance name?" if you want some funny one, or more serious of course)
- random text that is not even a domain -> toast message "Error while loading the Client ID" -> two issues: 1. totally useless error message for the user (client ID???) 2. why is this now a toast and no red message?
-
example.com
(no Mastodon instance) -> no error, get to login screen -> uhm, this is obviously bad, is not it? It should definitively check for a valid instance first. -
https://
-> toast message "Error while loading the Client ID" -> see above, just strip the HTTPS for the user -
http.badssl.com
-> client ID error again -> suggestion: as I guess it can determinate that this is a network error, show a specific message (see my testing guide or test my add-on for examples) - any http error (500, 400 etc) -> client ID error -> again the same suggestions as above, this client ID error is bad
Also:
- when you have entered an invalid instance (examples above), you cannot just "go back" (in any way) to correct this. You need to close and re-open the app -> add back functionality
BTW:
- wow, the autocomplete functionality is really great! That is very useful.
😃
What I did not understand:
- if I entered an invalid instance domain, I got a built-in username/password screen, in case of a valid instance, I got a browser-view
🤔
Also:
- similar to the "follow handle" that Mastodon displays when you try to follow/interact with a user on a remote instance, you could also consider to let the user enter their "full handle" instead of the domain name only. I really don't know whether that would be better. This is something that needs to be evaluated.