Meeting minutes
<Lisa> next item
Lisa Save the last 5-10 minutes for updates
Rain We're continuing last week's discussion about the template
<Rain> Direct link to slide: https://
Rain Don't try to read the image. It is showing architecturally what the patterns will look like.
Rain We are mirroring what WCAG does in showing a summary and linking to separate document on how to do it
Rain We are proposing that we get the core requirement here and then the user goes to a separate page for details on how to do it
Rain It increases our ability to be flexible and do things like show examples
Rain Users told us it will be helpful to have on separate pages
Rain Breadcrumbs will help anchor users to the specific guidance
Rain The table of contents will expand if you click on it or you can use breadcrumbs to get back to the table of contents
Lisa Is "How it helps" part of the normative document?
Rain No. The normative document will include one-sentence summary and "What to do."
Jennie_Delisi I thought our stuff was not normative?
Rain We're using "normative" to mean in the formal document "Making Content Usable."
Rain I'm going to zoom in and out
Rain You're in "Design and build" and you expand the content by clicking on a drawer
Rain When you expand a drawer within a drawer, you get to the patterns. Each has a short description and a link.
Rain When you click on the "How to" page which is actually another page
Rain The goal is for wayfinding to make it super easy to get back to the rest of the content
Jennie_Delisi It's difficult for me when "normative" is used in this context, but I appreciate the explanation.
Rain From now, we'll try to refer to it as the TR document which stands for Technical Review
Lisa It looked like you're trying to get a couple sentences. But we've got "What to do" as a few bullet points. Would they fit in the TR document?
Lisa We also had "Getting started" such as starting with headings and labels and controls
Lisa Where will "Getting started" and "More details" go? In the TR document?
Rain Can I go through the entire pattern? It will answer where all the pieces go
Rain Anyone else on queue?
Jennie_Delisi There were a lot of links that start with the phrase "How to" and I was wondering if the needs of people who use screen readers and sort links alphabetically be considered?
Rain We're not wordsmithing right now, but we will consider that when we get to the wordsmithing stage
Rain I'm going back to slide 19 that shows sub-section expanded to show patterns
Rain We'd have to write the pattern descriptions as short as possible—2 to 3 lines
Rain We found that people were really struggling with the length of the original document. Need to make it short summaries.
Rain Then you can drill in by going to another page with the "how to"
Rain This reduces the overwhelm on the page.
Rain Based on our research, we found the "More details" was overwhelming when everything was in one document
Rain The design pattern page (slide 20): 11 of 18 participants said they felt "more supported" by having option to drill down without having to see everything all on one page, which was overwhelming
Rain We're giving wayfinding experience as if it's in the same document
Rain The "What to do" has links to we used to call "More details"
Rain You can drill into each one and get examples of what to do and what to avoid.
Rain A lot of it is the same content but in different order.
Rain 100% of participants struggled with us trying to do all of this in one page.
Rain We had 100% preference for the multi-page format rather than the single-page format
Rain Slide 25 shows that "How it helps" lists user stories under "What to do"
Rain Participants are looking for "here's what to do" and "here's why" all in one place
Rain Slide 25 shows 4 personas
Rain The final thing for the pattern page is showing the research section at the bottom
Rain Slide 26 notes htat 10 of 18 participants said research was missing from our original document. They felt like they had to go search to make a case for using our guidance
Rain We have to comb through our resources and figure out which ones go with which patterns
<Jennie_Delisi> * Nice work Rain and team! Looks really clean.
julierawe Will the personas have the same headers each time?
Rain No, we'd put a header that ties in the most depending on the pattern.
Rain But you're bringing up an interesting point about how we share those stories
Rain The goal is to get people to go to the personas to learn more
Lisa Fantastic work. I see the advantage.
Lisa I still don't know where "More details" lives
Rain We put the info from "More details" into the "What to do" section
Rain Let me show a side-by-side
Rain We pull 4.2.7.4 More details into the drawers in "What to do" example in slide deck
Lisa This means "What to do" is going to get very long and very technical
Rain But that's OK and here's why—each one will be a summary that people can understand and people can drill down if they want
Lisa We purposefully separated out the stuff that we reckoned half the audience wouldn't need or understand
Lisa Another thing I don't see is "Getting started"
Rain We restructured so we start with the pattern summary, then the "What to do" section pulls in the info that had been in the "getting started" section of the original document
Lisa "Getting started" was the equivalent of Level A in WCAG—the most important thing to start doing, even if it doesn't solve everything
Rain No one was reading what we had because what they want is a checklist.
<Jennie_Delisi> +1 many want a checklist
Lisa Maybe what we need is a three-level checklist. Getting started might be level 1 and More details would be level 3?
Rain We also got feedback on repeating content
Rain If we feel like a "Getting started" header is needed, we can put it back in but separate it
Lisa I think it's a debate on whether to lose "Getting started"
<Jennie_Delisi> Highest priority
<Jan> I think the research showed people weren't reading it because they wanted to get to the meat of what they needed. I am for not having it in the document.
I didn't understand until today what we intended with the phrase "Getting started." Can we reword so it sounds more targeted/urgent?
Jennie_Delisi recommended "Highest priority" as an alternative to "Getting started"
Jennie_Delisi People always ask me "What's the risk if we don't do this? What's the highest priority?" They want you to lead them to the place of if-I'm-only-going-to-do-one-thing
Lisa Maybe we could use an icon to indicate highest priority
Jennie_Delisi If the highest priority were identified in the structure, so you could visually see the highest priority, would that address it?
Lisa Yes, but right now it doesn't make sense as a checklist
Lisa It's not necessarily the order you'd do it in
<kirkwood> “Start Here” “Your first Steps” “Immediate Focus” “Step One” “the Essentials” “First Things First” “Top Priorities”
rashmi8 Maybe give "What to do" a higher level heading? And then under that, have "Getting started" and "More details"?
Rain We have limitations within the TR structure
Rain At some point everything needs to be in the table of contents
<Jan> I am concerned with flagging something as the "highest priority" because that may be situational and based on the project itself. I would prefer that we leave judgment / measurement out of our guidance so that end users can decide what is most important and prioritize based on their project.
<kirkwood> We used “Getting Started” in gov’t a lot
Rain It will make the table of contents even longer if we add another heading level
Rain Maybe we could call a section "Checklist"?
Rain We're getting into language and we can tweak that later. What I want to do is focus on the structure.
<Jan> I also think that we need to be careful not to override what was found in the research. Change is hard, but we want people to use the guidance, so I really think we need to prioritize that feedback when we're making decisions about the new design.
Rain We need to make sure that control-F can help people find the links to the pages with the deeper information
Rain Control-F would get them to the pattern and then the link would get to deep detaiks
julierawe I think the renamed "getting started" ("if you only do one thing," etc) should remain at the bottom so people get all the what "What to do" information before they get to the narrowing it down to one thing
Lisa Maybe we should add "How to test" section at the end?
Lisa It might a testability matrix?
Rain That was one of the things that was called out by several participants
Rain They wanted a "How to test" section in the pattern
Rain I didn't put it in because we don't have that information created already
Lisa We could merge in something about how to test and note top priority
Lisa I'm not convinced this should be at the pattern level. Might need to be at the objective level because you don't test individually
Rain That's true if you're doing the testing itself, but what people really wanted was to know how you've gotten the pattern right. Did I understand this right?
Jan Thank you again Rain for all of this amazing work
<Lisa> +1 jan
Jan I am concerned about putting judgments into our guidance about what's most important
Jan We need to be careful about how we approach that. People are going to have to make their own judgment calls about how to prioritize their work
Jan I'm also concerned that the research says people were not reading "Getting started"
Jan I like that we're thinking about rewording "Getting started." Maybe "Suggested actions?"
Jan I am concerned that we use language like "If you only do one thing" then people will ignore the rest of the guidance
Rain We're at time
Rain I have a lot of great feedback and I'm going to work on new version based on this feedback
Rain There will be work ahead of us once we align on the new template
Lisa I recommend we take one of the objectives and start filling it in using the new template so people can see the overall structure
<rashmi8> +1 to Lisa
<Jan> Bye, everyone. Great meeting! Thank you again, Rain. This work is so important and the direction we're going in is really encouraging and exciting.
Lisa I think the feedback is going to be so important. Once we have that feedback on that one objective, then we can see about redoing all of it
Rain I can try to do that for this Thursday
Lisa We have an editors call this Thursday
Lisa It will be good to avoid wordsmithing things twice
julierawe Is the idea to only put one objective in the new template?
Lisa Yes, we'd send out the working draft to Internationalization, etc
Lisa We can get a much better feel for how it's working than if we do the whole document
Lisa When we've got good feedback, then we could each take an objective and fill it out
Lisa I think it's fantastic but I also think we're going to see a lot of practical issues
<Jennie_Delisi> Apologies - have to drop. Have a good holiday season everyone.
Lisa Rain started her presentation by showing the table of contents and then you only get to see one pattern filled out. For our working draft, we'd fill out a whole objective.
Lisa That one objective would be filled and everything else we'd say this hasn't been updated yet
Lisa If we get feedback that the testing section is awful, it's not so painful because we've only done 8 patterns in that objective
Lisa You can't see on a pattern level some of the issues that might emerge on an objective level
Rain I think it's a good idea
Thank you Rain so much!