By Private Profile 60f01f57 on 2016-12-13 22:31 in User Experience Team

This update is a summary of JUX Team activity over the past two weeks.

Team News 

The Transistion Team has officially concluded Cliff Pfeifer will remain as JUX Team Leader. We would like to thank the Transition Team for their time, effort and diligence in resolving this situation. 

Team Leader Update 

As of now, the JUX Team is my only focus in this community. I have officially stepped down from all of my other community positions in order to lead this team more effectively.

Our team has faced a great deal of criticism recently, most of which I feel is unfair. We have made a significant impact within our community this year despite having no official resources or direction until recently. The progress has been difficult and we have faced many challenges, but we are all volunteers, and the progress of any team in this community is often determined by our available contributors and resources. We have done everything we could possibly do in 2016 and I am proud of what our team has accomplished. Above all, we have created a foundation for our future by interacting with our users in new ways and establishing ourselves within the community. 

I would like to personally thank all of our users, contributors and everyone who has supported our efforts thus far. We are looking forward to creating a brighter future for the Joomla platform and community through our work. We are working hard for this community and our work continues.
- Cliff Pfeifer, JUX Team Lead

Team Updates

Communicating with the JUX Team

The JUX Team is a resource to the Joomla Community and establishing lines of communication between users, contributors and other working groups is always a priority for our team. There currently are several ways you can communicate with our team:

JUX On Github

The Joomla Github repo now has a “UX” label which may be used to flag issues for JUX team attention. You may also request a review by mentioning @cpfeifer in any comment or thread. We are actively searching through Github to find issues that our team can help with. We are here to help, please help us help you by directing our attention to issues.

JUX On Glip

We have 3 JUX rooms:

• JUX Community Chat is a public room. Anyone may join to ask questions about anything related to UX or the JUX Team.
• JUX Working Group is a private room reserved for our official team members and contributors. If you are interested in becoming a member of the JUX Working Group please contact us through the Glip chat room or the JUX volunteer portal page for more information.
• JUX Leadership is a private room reserved for team leaders so we may communicate with each other more effectively regarding high level strategies and team directions. If you are interested in becoming a leader within the JUX Working Group please contact us through the Glip chat room or the JUX volunteer portal page for more information.

More communication = more collaboration

Our team structure and project charters are in progress. A key feature of both is a collaboration charter which clearly defines points of contact within other teams in the community and the points of contact within our team for specific roles and tasks. Our goal is to improve communication so we may work and collaborate within the community in a more effective way. More details are coming within the next few weeks.

Sub Team and Project Updates

Accessibility Team

New Joomla Accessibility statement is in progress. Final draft pending review and discussion.

JUX Research Team

• A detailed report and analysis of all research collected in 2016 is in progress and will be made public before the end of the year.
• We are actively seeking a usability testing platform to meet our short term and long term goals. Currently, we have no budgeting or resources to work with, our hope is this situation will change in 2017. For now, we are seeking partnerships with open source friendly usability testing platforms while investigating options with free plans or free trials to evaluate services and perform short term usability testing to assist in moving out projects forward. Implementing a usable short term option is our top priority.
• We are laying the ground work for a long term research and usability testing strategy to serve the Joomla community in 2017. We will be refining our existing personas and developing new ways to interact with our users.
• In the short term, we are identifying Github issues and establishing a usablity testing process relating specifically to Joomla 3.7, Custom Fields and Media Manager, as those are the most pressing production concerns for the community.

Custom Fields

Our first project charter is nearing completion and will be made public within the next week. The time frame for improvement is very short and we realize the impact our team can have on the 3.7 release may be limited, however we are committed to helping as much as we can. While the all improvements we discover through the initial efforts may not be possible to implement in the 3.7 release, we can certainly identify improvements for future releases. If nothing else, the project charter we have developed for this project will serve as a template for future projects

Media Manager

Our team provided a short list of recommendations based on user feedback to the media manager team for consideration during their recent sprint. Since then, we have been contacted by the media manager team to assist and provide direction to their efforts and the new media manager project will be the first UX driven community project. We are meeting with the Media Manager team this week to begin the process. 

Joomla 4

The Joomla 4 backend template process has come a very long way in a very short time and we appreciate the efforts of all who have been working on it. Overall, we feel the progress is heading in the right direction. One area of concern is that it has been unclear how the JUX team fits into the J4 backend process, or how the efforts of the J4 team fit into our process. The immediate goal of the JUX team is to define roles, tasks and clarify the direction so we may contribute to the process in a more effective way and enable others to do the same. We will be working with the J4 team and PLT to clarify these matters as soon as possible.

Joomla X

We are meeting with the Joomla X Architecture team on a weekly basis and staying up to date on their progress. 

Final Updates

We have been actively working behind the scenes and we will be resuming regular team meetings this week. We have a lot of work to do in the short term, and we are actively creating our long term strategies in the process.

We are looking forward to a great year in 2017 and our UX sprint in January will help us get the year started in the right direction. Thank you again for the opportunities and we look forward to serving the Joomla community in every possible way now and in the future.