3.8 KiB
Editing workspace UX review
These development criteria implement the project goal: reduce system engineers' cognitive load, keep graphical editing intuitive, and provide concise, navigable built-in help. They also address the user's request tracked in Gitea issue #39 to prevent persistent instructional text from consuming editing space. They are review criteria, not a claim that any particular build has passed them.
Persistent content and progressive disclosure
Populated editing workspaces prioritize model content, controls, current state and actionable feedback. General explanations, gesture tutorials and repeated shortcut lists belong in contextual Help, tooltips or explicitly opened details. Do not add permanent instructional paragraphs above a populated canvas merely to explain a feature.
Keep essential control labels and relevant status visible. Offer concise next-step guidance in empty states and while a user is performing a multi-step action. Put longer explanations behind a clearly labeled disclosure near the relevant control or context. Essential instructions must be accessible through an explicit keyboard-reachable route; a hover-only tooltip is insufficient. Reuse the built-in guide for broader modeling explanations.
Distinguish instruction from information needed to act safely. Current errors, pending edits, failed operations, fallback rendering, unavailable actions and recovery steps must remain apparent. Preserve consequential distinctions such as editing a shared definition, changing semantic order rather than saved positions, or applying properties to only one member of a selection. Long diagnostic detail may be disclosed on demand, but its visible summary must identify the problem and a usable next step.
Stable editing context
Selection changes and gesture feedback must not unexpectedly move or resize the canvas, reset its camera, or change the interpretation of the pointer. Compact existing stable layout slots instead of conditionally removing them when their content is absent. Opening and closing help must preserve the model, selection and pending drafts, and return the user to a usable editing context. Explicitly requested panel changes may resize the workspace; verify their effect on focus and navigation.
Native review
Exercise the changed workspace in the actual built application at its configured minimum window size and a representative normal size. Include an independent reviewer for material interaction or layout changes, following the working agreement. Review representative populated models as well as relevant empty, pending, failure and recovery states.
- Inspect whether instructional prose or unused space displaces useful model content. Compare before/after screenshots at the same window size, display scaling, model and panel state when assessing space savings.
- Perform the affected workflow: select, edit, navigate, cancel and recover as applicable. Change between empty, single and multiple selections; exercise affected gestures and inspect camera and pointer stability.
- Find and use the disclosed guidance by keyboard as well as pointer. Check focus, dismissal, return to editing, and preservation of drafts.
- Trigger relevant disabled or rejected operations. Confirm their reason and recovery action remain visible, accurate and reachable.
- Check text, controls, panels and warnings for clipping, overlap, excessive scrolling and lost actions at the minimum size. Do not trade recovered space for unreadable text or unexplained symbols.
Record the tested code version, runtime environment, workflows, observations and representative screenshots in the change's review evidence. Screenshots support layout findings; they do not establish working interaction, accessibility or state preservation. Fix material findings and recheck affected behavior before treating the change as verified.