UX/ProgramProposal

Detailed Mission Statement
The mission of the UX Program is to support and facilitate cross-project efforts to improve the overall user experience of OpenStack.  We provide user research to help teams identify any issues preventing adoption of their services as well as help the projects validate design and development efforts to address those issues. In addition, we help the project teams create solutions to address customer needs and pain points. Finally, we will provide the OpenStack community with visibility into any user experience issues related to inconsistency across projects.   The UX team is not prescriptive; our goal is to collaborate with OpenStack’s projects to create better experiences.   The name of the project will be OpenStack UX.  

Definition of User Experience
For the purposes of this proposal, user experience is an umbrella term that includes the following disciplines:   The focus of user experience spans the entire development cycle from needs finding to implementation. For example, user research can be used to identify specific customer needs before development work.
 * User Experience Design
 * Information Architecture
 * Visual Design, and
 * User Research/Usability

Finally, it is also interface agnostic and is able to contribute to development efforts on graphical user interfaces (GUIs), command line interfaces (CLI) and application programming interfaces (APIs).  

Project Contribution
Member contribution to the UX Project would be measured on three metrics:

Members are able to create projects within Invision and add images of their proposed designs.
 * No. of mock submissions to Invision

This is a measure of the number of reviews/comments that occur in Invision for a specific project. This is a measure of the number of studies that are conducted on behalf of the different projects and include both quantitative and qualitative studies.  
 * No. of reviews/comments in Invision
 * No. of UX studies conducted on behalf of the community

Patterns Library
A patterns library is intended to standardize layout and interaction patterns for components within Horizon to drive consistency across the entire portal.

In reality, the library is a actually a visual specification that includes both components and patterns. However, design pattern is used consistently within the industry so we’ve adopted it to avoid any confusion.

https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/UX/PatternsLibrary  

Invision (repository)
Invision is a platform that allows teams to post and review designs on their website and is currently being used as our design repository. The value is that comments can be placed directly on a specific area of the image, so the context of the comment is immediately obvious. Invision provides the community with a free enterprise license provided that it was only used for community activities.  We have 12 administers and 104 managers in Invision that can add users and create projects from companies including IBM, Mirantis, HP, and Redhat. We were very careful to make sure that no single person or company had complete control of the system. <Br> As of June 26th, the following activity had occurred over the previous thirty days: <Br> <Br> Invision is being provided to OpenStack at no charge as long as the projects are shared within the open source community. Invision’s concern was that folks might use our platform for internal proprietary projects, which is not allowed. <Br> It is important to disclose that Invision is not an open source tool. The challenge is that there are currently no open source tools for design review that include the same feature set.
 * Six projects were added to Invision
 * Fifty-seven screens were added to projects
 * Two hundred and twelve stakeholder visits
 * One hundred and sixty-seven comments

However, we are constantly looking for open source alternatives including phabricator (phabricator.org) which is being discussed for adoption by the community as a code review tool. Phabricator also includes a design review that enables users to leave comments on an image uploaded to the system. An added benefit is that both code and UX review would be integrated into the same tool.

It is also important to note that projects can be downloaded from Invision as PDF files that include both images and any comments from users. If the community moves away from Invision, the plan would be to make the PDFs available on the OpenStack UX wiki.

https://openstack.invisionapp.com <Br> <Br>

User Research
User Research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.

A short list of specific methodologies that can be associated with user research includes ethnography, usability studies, card sorts, structured interviews, task analysis and focus groups.

It is important that user research is not exclusively associated with graphical user interfaces. For example, the team is currently planning a study to help the Neutron project understand why operators are not transitioning from Nova-networks to the Neutron service. We’re also planning to run a study on the OpenStackClient (aka OSC) command-line client.

In those cases, the research proceeds designs efforts and are intended to help the projects frame and prioritize issues.

Here is a list of completed and planned studies: <Br> <Br> The UX team has a wiki that includes all studies conducted on behalf of the community along with the results presentations, which can be downloaded as PDFs.
 * 1) Launch Instance Usability Study (generative, Feb 2014)
 * 2) Launch Instance Usability Study (concept validation, Dec 2014)
 * 3) Horizon Concept Study (University of Washington, Mar 2015)
 * 4) Card Sort (open/unmoderated, Feb 2014)
 * 5) Card Sort (closed/moderated, April 2015)
 * 6) Launch Instance Validation Study (planned for July 2015)
 * 7) Neutron/Nova Network Interviews and Survey (planned for August 2015)
 * 8) OpenStackClient Usability Study (planned for late 2015)

https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/HorizonUsability_Testing <Br> <Br>

Project Contribution
Member contribution to the UX Project would be measured on three metrics:

Members are able to create projects within Invision and add images of their proposed designs.
 * No. of mock submissions to Invision

This is a measure of the number of reviews/comments that occur in Invision for a specific project. This is a measure of the number of studies that are conducted on behalf of the different projects and include both quantitative and qualitative studies. <Br> <Br>
 * No. of reviews/comments in Invision
 * No. of UX studies conducted on behalf of the community

UX Meeting
UX meetings were scheduled to occur every other week on IRC but eventually slowed-down because most of the design efforts were specifically focused on improving Horizon. That will eventually change as the UX team engages additional projects. In addition, IRC is a bit difficult to use within a discipline that is largely aesthetic. <Br> <Br>

IRC channel
An additional way to get quick feedback or have a discussion with the UX group is to join the IRC channel on freenode (#openstack-ux). <Br> <Br>

Design Review
There is a design review that occurs every other week were community members are invited to share their design work with the community. These meetings occur via virtual room rather than IRC because the reviews require the participants to “see” the designs in order to provide feedback. <Br> <Br>

User Panel
The user panel was formed about two months ago in order to provide feedback to the community from actual users. In some ways, the user panel is intended to provide an alternative “voice” to the development community.

The panel is struggling somewhat because we haven’t agreed on a format for the meetings. For example, one suggestion was to have a panel members talk about their specific challenges during a session.

Panel members include users from NSA, Cisco, Pacific Northwest National Labs, Orange, Yahoo and Time Warner Cable. <Br> <Br>

Pieter C. Kruithof Jr, MS CPE
Until we have elections, Pieter Kruithof will be the PTL for OpenStack UX.

Piet is an accomplished User Experience (UX) Designer and User Researcher with over fourteen years of focused contributions to both software and hardware development. He is currently a Sr UX Architect with the HP Helion Cloud business unit. His specific focus is engaging with the OpenStack community and helping to drive improvement of the overall user experience. This includes tactical activities such as proposing new designs in addition to more strategic efforts such as providing platforms that help enable collaboration within the community.

Piet was also a former Director with the Board of Certification in Professional Ergonomics (BCPE). The board was established in 1990 as an independent nonprofit organization and is the certifying body for individuals whose education and experience indicate broad expertise in the practice of human factors, ergonomics and user experience research.

His education includes a bachelor's degree in Industrial Design from Western Washington University and master's degree in Human Factors Engineering from Virginia Tech. <Br> <Br>

Jeff Calcaterra, Ph.D.
Jeff has ten years of experience at IBM as a User Interface Designer and Usability Practitioner on a wide range of platforms including ThinkPad mobile computers, marketing and support websites and Eclipse plug-ins.

For the last five years, Jeff have driven user experience improvements into Systems Management software, including patch installation, problem determination and automation. I have a history of innovation including 8 patents pending and several publications. <Br> <Br>

Rob Cresswell
Rob Cresswell is a software engineer at Cisco Systems. He previously worked on an internal project as a full stack engineer, managing all aspects of system design and UI. He is now a core reviewer for Horizon. <Br> <Br>

Richard Jones
Richard is a software developer with over a decade's broad experience working with multiple languages and tools in data archive, metadata systems, computer graphics, business systems, e-commerce and communications. Before joining Rackspace he developed telecommunications and web services for ekit, OpenGL interfaces for Blue Box Devices, and web-based interfaces and support systems for Common Ground and Bizar Software.

Richard is active in several Open Source projects and communities. <Br> <Br>

Ju Lim
Ju Lim is a Consulting Engineer at Red Hat. She has over 12 years experience focusing on User Experience on a wide range of platforms including storage, compute, networking, cloud, and SANs.

In recent years, Ju has been driving user experience improvements in several Open Source projects. She has 4 patents awarded to-date. <Br> <Br>

David Lyle
David Lyle is a Senior Software Engineer at Intel. He has over 15 years experience focusing on User Experience and implementing User Interfaces for enterprise, personal systems and mobile. He is a currently the PTL for Horizon. <Br> <Br>

Melissa Meingast
Melissa is a Master Technologist & UX/HF Research Program Manager at Hewlett Packard.

She is currently the manager of the human factors and usability research program for the Industry Standard Server (ISS) division, as part of the HP Enterprise Design Group. Her primary responsibility is to interface with a variety of engineering and product teams to understand and evaluate their strategic and tactical user research needs, to design and lead research programs to meet these needs based on current scientific research as well as domain expertise, and to serve as a usability advocate throughout ISS. Awarded the title of HP Master Technologist in 2012 for her achievements in this role.

Additional responsibilities include the management of usability consultants to execute user research programs, budget management and forecasting, and the design and implementation of usability testing for servers, storage systems, enterprise applications and software, and portions of the hp.com web site, as well as the production of both strategic and tactical design recommendations and development guidance based on research results. Research methodologies employed include laboratory based user testing, heuristic evaluations, cognitive walkthroughs, customer interviews, needs analysis, and ethnography. <Br> <Br>

Timur Sufiev
Timur is a software engineer with Mirantis and contributes to the Merlin, Mistral and Murano projects. <Br> <Br>

Alex Sulgrove
Alex is a User Experience Architect with the HP Helion Cloud business unit. Alex brings 5 years of operational and consulting experience in UX research and strategy, Usability testing and analysis, Interaction Design, and Information Architecture. Alex has also authored several journal and technical papers on HCI and Interaction Design. <Br> <Br>

Thai Tran
Thai Tran is a software engineer at IBM. He has worked on internal prototypes that made it into several IBM products, everything from designing to implementing. Now he is actively involved in the OpenStack Horizon community as a core reviewer. <Br> <Br>

Travis Tripp
Travis is a Horizon core reviewer and an architect for HP Helion where he is currently focusing on improving the OpenStack user experience. He's led multiple cloud software products intermingling between lead product architect and lead developer roles. He's presented cloud concepts to Gartner, Forrester, and IDC and has contributed to several OASIS specifications. <Br> <Br>

UX wiki
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/UX#Horizon_Proposals

User Research wiki
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/HorizonUsability_Testing

OpenStack UX patterns
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/UX/PatternsLibrary

OpenStack Invision Community
https://openstack.invisionapp.com

<Br> <Br>

Abstract
The full project proposal can be found at https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/UX/ProgramProposal.

The mission of the UX Program is to help the teams improve the overall user experience of their projects. We provide user research to help teams identify any issues preventing adoption of their services as well as help them validate any efforts to address those issues. In addition, we help the teams ideate and implement solutions to address any existing issues or opportunities. Note that the UX team is not prescriptive; our goal is to collaborate with the other projects to create better experiences. The name of the project will be OpenStack UX. <Br> <Br>

Contribution
Member contribution to the UX Project would be measured on three metrics: <Br> Members are able to create projects within Invision and add images of their proposed designs. This is a measure of the number of reviews/comments that occur in Invision for a specific project. This is a measure of the number of studies that are conducted on behalf of the different projects and include both quantitative and qualitative studies. <Br> <Br>
 * No. of mock submissions to Invision:
 * No. of reviews/comments in Invision:
 * No. of UX studies conducted on behalf of the community

UX Meeting
UX meetings were scheduled to occur every other week on IRC but eventually slowed-down because most of the design efforts were specifically focused on improving Horizon. That will eventually change as the UX team engages additional projects. In addition, IRC is a bit difficult to use within a discipline that is largely aesthetic. <Br> <Br>

IRC channel
An additional way to get quick feedback or have a discussion with the UX group is to join the IRC channel on freenode (#openstack-ux). <Br> <Br>

Design Review
There is a design review that occurs every other week were community members are invited to share their design work with the community. These meetings occur via virtual room rather than IRC because the reviews require the participants to “see” the designs in order to provide feedback. <Br> <Br>

User Panel
The user panel was formed about two months ago in order to provide feedback to the community from actual users. In some ways, the user panel is intended to provide an alternative “voice” to the development community.

The panel is struggling somewhat because we haven’t agreed on a format for the meetings. For example, one suggestion was to have a panel members talk about their specific challenges during a session.

Panel members include users from NSA, Cisco, Pacific Northwest National Labs, Orange, Yahoo and Time Warner Cable. <Br> <Br>

Interim PTL
Until we have elections, Pieter Kruithof will be the PTL for OpenStack UX.

Piet is currently a Sr UX Architect with HP Helion Cloud and specifically focuses on improving the user experience of OpenStack. This includes tactical activities such as proposing new designs in addition to more strategic efforts such as providing platforms that help enable collaboration within the community.

Piet was also a former Director with the Board of Certification in Professional Ergonomics (BCPE). The board was established in 1990 as an independent nonprofit organization and is the certifying body for individuals whose education and experience indicate broad expertise in the practice of human factors, ergonomics and user experience research.

Team members include engineers from IBM, Cisco, RackSpace, HP and Mirantis. <Br> <Br>

UX wiki
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/UX#Horizon_Proposals

User Research wiki
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/HorizonUsability_Testing

OpenStack UX patterns
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/UX/PatternsLibrary

OpenStack Invision Community
https://openstack.invisionapp.com

<Br> <Br>