Brainstorming about "Bite-Sized" Fluid Contributions to uPortal

At the uPortal 2007 Developer Workshop at Johns Hopkins University, we brainstormed a few ideas for places where Fluid could help with the user experience of uPortal by building new, reusable UI components. This was just an initial start at thinking about the needs and priorities for uPortal within Fluid, and we will continue to collect ideas, patterns, and results from usability studies and heuristic reviews.

Please feel free to add your own ideas to the list.

Ideas for Fluid UX Improvements in uPortal

• uP3 Admin Tools

  • Portlet Manager

  • Groups and Permissions - start with uP3 and then perhaps back-port to uP2

  • Error Portlet

• Yale's Drag and Drop Preferences Editor

  • Dragging and editing tabs

  • Columns: simple & advanced

  • Simple design tweaks, terminology improvements, etc.

• Disclosure and hierarchy widgets

• Icon sets

• Portal affordances: "Will this link take me out of the portal?"

• Responsive disclosure: "Get More" links, etc.

• Login

• Errors and messages:

  • End-user permissions

  • Availability of resources

• Holistic Useability Reviews of existing channels/functions/portlets

• developer guidelines

• HIG/layout guidelines & best practices documentation

• Accessibility Guidelines

• High contrast/large text skinning/display