I'm creating a website that is a kind of search engine of registered customers.
Out of three offered languages, the customers can choose a default one, just like the visitors.
When a visitor visits a profile of a registered customer, the employer wants the language of the entire website's interface to be changed to a customer's language.
What would be the advantages and disadvantages of this idea?
It's a really bad idea to guess at a language preference regardless of where the data comes from.
As a general rule the viewer's language preference should take priority. If you don't respect this rule, at best you'll annoy a viewer who has to work harder to understand something. At worst you'll make your site completely un-usable for that person.
There really aren't pro's to letting a system decision, or other data setting determine a language, especially when it impacts the entire interface. Instead, you should provide a consistent option (header or footer) to change localization settings AND respect that for at least the entire session.
As a side note: This sounds like a request based on perceived problems and solutions. I would dig to find the real problem and then brainstorm other solutions that don't involve forced language changes. I would also talk to users and get real data. Don't let the business dictate how users want to interact.
This idea might confuse your visitor user and breaks one of the 10 usability heuristics for UI Design: "Visibility of system status". The user should be able to understand what's going on at any time.
Nowadays, apps can detect your device's language settings and display the content for you in the same language. And in this particular case it is intuitive -the user doesn't even realize this is happening. But in your case, you are taking choices for a visitor that the user doesn't know. Maybe you are trying to solve other problem, but you will gain a new one.
You might wanna take a look to those heuristics:
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/
Related
I've just started using SpecFlow. It's a tool for creating business understandable test scenarios in a BDD manner. Basically it transforms user stories to unit tests.
I'm a beginner to user stories and I wonder about its length. Is this a good practice to create very precise user stories? Here's an example:
In order to get help
As a StackOverflow user
I want to add post
with name and content
and add tags to it
and format the content
and the information about my post edits to be stored in the system
and some more things like that
Should I keep my stories compact? If so - how can I manage detailed requirements? Or maybe it's nothing wrong in very long and precise I want section in a user story?
If you could develop an entire system in a couple of weeks, and do that reliably, nobody would ever worry about "user stories". They'd just get you to develop the system, sit with you, and tweak it as it went.
User stories only exist in order to get feedback from people who can't be with you all the time, and to help you learn what it is that your users (and other stakeholders) really want.
Here's how I treat a list like this:
In order to get help
As a StackOverflow user
I want to add post
with name and content
and add tags to it
and format the content
and the information about my post edits to be stored in the system
You want to get help. Which of these actually add to your ability to get help? Is it you wanting help, or do you want to offer help to other people? Do you want recognition for the help you're offering other people? The top part of this seems false (and it's why it's really difficult to have these conversations with fake requirements).
I think there are multiple requirements here, and far beyond the scope of just one user story. With an analyst hat on, here's how I might break this down:
In order to award great content with appropriate recognition,
as Stack Exchange,
we want people's usernames to appear with their content.
Of course, the users want this too, but they're not paying for it (except through adverts). So work out who's paying for this, and why.
In order to get more page impressions and keep people on the site for longer,
as Stack Exchange,
we want users to be able to find similar content really easily.
Hm. This one's a bit trickier. See, the user doesn't really want to spend their entire life on StackOverflow. It's just that if we give them the appropriate recognition, and make it easier for others to find their content, they might do that. Not all "user stories" actually benefit users. Find out who's paying for them, and why; then you find your real stakeholder. It's also OK for a story to benefit more than one stakeholder, and it's easy to see how to rephrase this from the user's point of view as well.
format the content
Honestly not sure about this one. It might be about being able to emphasise important points, etc. There are a ton of aesthetic ideals that don't lend themselves well to BDD and automated scenarios. Sometimes the only way to do this is to try, and get feedback.
In order to avoid retyping my request every time
As the user
I want the information about my post edits to be stored in the system
Well, yes, that would be nice.
The thing is that each of these can be developed independently. If you can think of any feature, any item that you could get rid of and still have the release be valuable, put it in a separate story.
If you can replace "I want to..." with "I want to be able to..." it's likely that what you have there isn't a story, but an entire capability. Most people do this instinctively. Lots of people call those "epics".
I've just shown you how I break them down. It's a pretty simple process.
First, look at your requirements. If there's anything for which you can say, "I want to be able to..." or "Someone wants to be able to..." then you know that's a completely different capability, which means it's going to be a separate story.
You can then separate those into contexts. So you might have stories like:
In order to free up our junior traders
We want them to be able to generate contracts automatically
So that they can help with the trade analysis instead of typing.
If that seems too big for the feedback cycle (typically a two-week sprint), you can divide it further.
In order to free up our junior traders
We want them to be able to generate *orange juice* contracts automatically
So that they can help with the trade analysis instead of typing.
Here, we're focusing on being able to trade orange juice, but we could equally narrow the story down to the FTSE, or the US, or the NY stock exchange. This is how we focus the efforts on the thing that will deliver: protecting revenue, lowering costs or generating value.
To turn these into scenarios, I ask, "Can you give me an example of an OJ trade on the NY stock exchange?" If I see anything generic that I don't understand, I ask, "Can you give me an example of that?"
That example becomes my first scenario. The context (given) is defined by the limits of the story. The event (when) is the performance of the capability. The outcome (then) is the resulting value.
In answer to your question - yes, I think it's important to create precise user stories. That means knowing why it's valuable, defining the context that you're going to cover, and suggesting an example of what the outcome might be.
The example you gave is more than just one story, though. It's not precise enough. Hopefully the advice here will help you to narrow stories down to something useful. One or two days is a good length for a story, but if you're starting down this path and find they're a bit longer, that's OK.
Your changes are also stories.
I always advise the following:
Try cutting your stories in scenarios. The more scenarios, the better you can pinpoint when something is going wrong. Give all scenarios subjective names.
Now for example, your test. If step 1 goes wrong, all your other steps are not going to get tested.
Also use the Given, When and Then tags to read your scenarios easily.
So instead, you could say:
Feature: As a StackOverflow user I want to add a post
Scenario: I go to stackoverflow website
Given I open the browser
And I go to the stackoverflow website
When I click New Post
Then a new page appears to insert my data
Scenario: I fill in data for my post - Name and content
Given I do not modify this page
When I fill in name
And I fill in content
Then I add tags to it
And I format the content
Scenario: Check if information about post edits are stored in the system
Given...
Guess you will get where this is going :-)
There is no right detail level of user stories, as user stories shrink in size (scope) and grow in detail (specifications) over time. This slide shows a nice visualization from Gojko Adzic about this: http://www.slideshare.net/chassa/2015-0214agile-reqend2endcomplete/6
For the question on how precise and detailed a Gherkin scenario should be: Scenario should reveal interesting aspects of the user story to be implemented. They should use concrete (key) examples rather than abstract descriptions. The examples should focus on the aspect that should be illustrated. The scenario title should be an abstract description of the rule or aspect that is illustrated with the example(s) provided in the scenario.
You usually start with a main aspect (happy path) scenario, and then try to “break the model” by coming up with new examples (cases) that explore other aspects of the story. You start by asking the questions “How would you try out the story when it was implemented?” (happy path) and “What should happen if …?” to collect potential scenarios to consider (probably defining some of the questions to be out of scope for this story).
After that, you’re trying to answer these questions (scenario title) and illustrate them with concrete examples (scenario steps). This slide gives an idea of “break the model”: http://www.slideshare.net/chassa/2015-0214agile-reqend2endcomplete/61
We have a SaaS web application (multi-tenant) for creating online documentation (like a wiki).
Right now we only support English. We want to support other languages. We have all the interface controls set up to work, but we just need to figure out how to handle the actual user content.
It seems we are thinking about storing each page for each language separately.
So if they user create a page "how to reset password", and wants it in English, Dutch, and Spanish, we would store 3 different version of that page in the database.
I would love any advice on this!!
Using my own experience as examples - you have two choices really:
Each language is completely seperate
When a user wants to translate the contents of their documentation - they simply start a new, separate, complete version of the docs - and translate each page as they go. You could copy the existing docs as a start point but each language would in any case be independent. For example, this is how the docs for CakePHP are currently organized. Each language is effectively independent which allows the most flexibility. By flexibility I mean, for example, a page in one language doesn't have to exist in all the others - or with the same url/name.
The disadvantage here is keeping the versions in sync, or knowing when a translation needs updating (new changes to master language version).
Store translations as versions of the original
Alternatively you could store translations as versions of the master/main language. that is how we did it before. It made it easier to track what was being translated but at the cost of flexibility.
The disadvantage here is it's potentially too rigid - it may not be easy to add a page that is language specific, adding a new page in not-main-language could also cause problems
This is analogous to "we would store 3 different version of that page in the database".
Both of the mentioned approaches are quite valid, pick the one that solves the most problems whist giving the least issues :)
The best way to deal with documentation in multilanguage applications is to avoid it by embedding the documentation in your application, but not as entire pages, just as sentences..
Try to make the usage of your application as simple and intuitive as possible, include hints in the UI and for those who need more provide a forum split by languages.
Now, be sure that you have at least one person for each language that will report back any issues in the interface, so you could improve the texts or the design based on the input from them.
I know that some website are applications, but not all websites are applications (albeit maybe just a brochure viewing site)
Is there an in depth dummy use case for a brochure type site which would be beneficial to use.
When it comes to a corporate front facing website for example I suffer from feature blindness, although for an actual database driven application (for example a purchase order system) I feel within my element.
Is there any resources that can help me view "brochure" sites in the same light than I do with a pro bono database driven applications.
This is really useful thread. I have always battled with use cases for brochure sites, despite totally espousing the use of UML... I often feel caught between UX agency outputs & trying to ensure the whole Requirements Spec ties together, especially when agencies tend not to use UML.
There are several use cases that do apply beyond view menu / view brochure page - site functionality like print page, search site etc, sometimes accept a cookie to view specific content - but not much on classic brochure-ware. (All that ties well into user journeys / personas without having to restate the UX deliverables)
However, once using a system eg a CMS to create the website content - then I think the use cases get properly useful (as per comments above), as there are not only (usually) several actors inc the system, but also varying cases per content type so you can reference those UX deliverables without duplication and start filling in the gaps, plus tie up content strategy type deliverables (eg workflow & governance) by looking into the business processes and the system / user interactions. At the end of the modelling & specifications, you can get useful test matrices this way; plus class diagrams that relate objects to taxonomies (more agency deliverables to tie together in Functional Rqmts / Specs stage).
That's the way I'm trying to tackle it these days.
Use Cases can be used to model requirements of a system. System is a structure with input and output mappings. So if you have a static web page, you cannot interact with it in a other way than to view it.
As discussed in comments, if you think you did not understood the goals of stakeholders (what that word document sent by your boss ment...), you have to ask more and find them, use cases are a good technique for this.
In a cycle, discover actors (systems and roles interacting with the system you have to develop) and use cases (what needs of those actors the developed system should ssatisfy). Every time you find an actor, you may ask what other needs (possible use cases) he has and when you find an use case, you should ask who will participate in it and who is interested in it (who is the next actor and who are the stakeholders). Then you can define the scope boundaries and prioritize...
I'm trying to figure out how to best implement a public data hosting service.
How do websites that let users upload pictures enforce their terms of service regarding obscene pictures? Do they use image processing algorithms to flag potential violations (too many skin-colored pixels)? I think Imageshack looks at the websites that their pictures are hotlinked on, and checks for keywords. If it detects anything porn related, then it removes the picture and bans the account. Are there other methods?
Is enforcement largely automated or is it based more on user reports?
I suppose it depends on the scale of your "public data hosting service".
If it's something small with maybe a couple hundreds pictures per day flowing in, you can moderate them on your own.
If it's a couple hundred thousands you'll need an amount of human beings sorting the weeds out. It's either a moderator team or users themselves who submit abuse reports.
Which one to go, can be dependent on your budget/financial success of your service as well as on the type of the service. If it's something simple like Rapidshare where one does not see what the other does, the chances that users will see each others content and through this notice and hopefully report unacceptable content are small. If it's something very social like Flickr you can bet on it reports will be flowing in.
I suppose you could automate something but it's almost an impossible task. You can't automatically detect porn. You can't automatically detect images violating copyrights - making footprints of copyrighting material in order to compare them with the uploaded stuff is a real challenge for companies with resources like Rapidshare, Youtube and others. For now this kind of work can effectively be done only by humans.
There are also legal issues to it. In some countries the service owner is not liable for what users contribute (well, if he's cooperative enough to delete certain content at request), in others he will get the charges himself for not having premoderated all the incoming content. Also think of this with regard to whatever and wherever you are going to launch.
I don't have links, but while it's certainly a difficult task prone to errors, software to detect improper content does exist. Or at least that's what the Security Manager at NASA told me - if if was just a means to scare me I don't know ;-)
I believe several of us have already worked on a project where not only the UI, but also data has to be supported in different languages. Such as - being able to provide and store a translation for what I'm writing here, for instance.
What's more, I also believe several of us have some time-triggered events (such as when expiring membership access) where user location should be taken into account to calculate, like, midnight according to the right time-zone.
Finally there's also the need to support Right to Left user interfaces accoring to certain languages and the use of diferent encodings when reading submitted data files (parsing text and excel data, for instance)
Currently I'm storing all my translations for all my entities on a single table (not so pratical as it is very hard to find yourself when doing sql queries to look into a problem), setting UI translations mainly on satellite assemblies and not supporting neither time zones nor right to left design.
What are your experiences when dealing with these challenges?
[Edit]
I assume most people think that this level of multiculture requirement is just like building a huge project. As a matter of fact if you tihnk about an online survey where:
Answers will collected only until
midnight
Questionnaire definition and part of
the answers come from a text file
(in any language) as well as
translations
Questions and response options must
be displayed in several languages,
according to who is accessing it
Reports also have to be shown and
generated in several different
languages
As one can see, we do not have to go too far in an application to have this kind of requirements.
[Edit2]
Just found out my question is a duplicate
i18n in your projects
The first answer (when ordering by vote) is so compreheensive I have to get at least a part of it implemented someday.
Be very very cautious. From what you say about the i18n features you're trying to implement, I wonder if you're over-reaching.
Notice that the big boy (e.g. eBay, amazon.com, yahoo, bbc) web applications actually deliver separate apps in each language they want to support. Each of these web applications do consume a common core set of services. Don't be surprised if the business needs of two different countries that even speak the same language (e.g. UK & US) are different enough that you do need a separate app for each.
On the other hand, you might need to become like the next amazon.com. It's difficult to deliver a successful web application in one language, much less many. You should not be afraid to favor one user population (say, your Asian-language speakers) over others if this makes sense for your web app's business needs.
Go slow.
Think everything through, then really think about what you're doing again. Bear in mind that the more you add (like Right to Left) the longer your QA cycle will be.
The primary piece to your puzzle will be extensive use of interfaces on the code side, and either one data source that gets passed through a translator to whichever languages need to be supported, or separate data sources for each language.
The time issues can be handled by the interfaces, because presumably you will want things to function in the same fashion, but differ in the implementation details. To a large extent, a similar thought process can be applied to the creation of the interface when adjusting it to support differing languages. When you get down to it, skinning is exactly this, where the content being skinned is the interface, and the look/feel is the implementation.
Do what your users need. For instance, most programmer understand English, there is no sense to translate posts on this site. If many of your users need a translation, add a new table column with the language id, and another column to link a translated row to its original. If your target auditory contains the users from the Middle East, implement Right to Left. If time precision is critical up to an hour, add a time zone column to the user table, and so on.
If you're on *NIX, use gettext. Most languages I've used have some level of support; PHP's is pretty good, for instance.
I'll describe what has been done in my project (it wasn't my original architecture but I liked it anyways)
Providing Translation Support
Text which needs to be translated have been divided into three different categories:
Error text: Like errors which happen deep in the application business layer
UI Text: Text which is shown in the User interface (labels, buttons, grid titles, menus)
User-defined Text: text which needs to be translatable according to the final user's preferences (that is - the user creates a question in a survey and he can also create a translated version of that survey)
For each different cathegory the schema used to provide translation service is different - so that we have:
Error Text: A library with static functions which access resource files
UI Text: A "Helper" class which, linked to the view engine, provides translations from remote assemblies
User-defined Text: A table in the database which provides translations (according to typeID of the translated entity and object id) and is linked to the entity via a 1 x N relationship
I haven't, however, attacked the other obvious problems such as dealing with time zones, different layouts and picture translation (if this is really necessary). Does anyone have tackled this problem in a different way?
Has anyone ever tackled the other i18n problems?