Summary

Over the course of product development, missteps are going to happen. In April of 2017, the current layout of Earthdata Search was introduced. This layout was informed by feedback received during an initial round of usability testing along with some input from various stakeholders. Over time we have come to learn that some of our decisions and assumptions do not hold up very well for our user base. There are certainly some benefits to the current layout, but in general it does not perform very well.

In the name of doing what is right for the application, we need to move back to a "vertical panel" approach. There are a few things that are different this time around that will help us avoid both the usability issues that were discovered in that initial round of testing as well as issues that have come out of the new layout:

  1. We have a lot more data to base our decisions upon. We have performed multiple usability studies since the release of the current layout and have received unsolicited feedback from a wide variety of users.
  2. We have a new codebase that allows for better user flows to be created. In addition to the user flows, it is easier to make "smart" panels. For instance, in some cases it just doesn't make sense to so the map. We can now trigger full screen panels when it makes sense, and allow for map interactions with condensed panels when that makes sense more easily.
  3. We have a better understanding of what are users are trying to accomplish with our application. With more time on this project the team is constantly learning what are users need from EDSC and what they are trying to accomplish with EDSC. This learning can be poured into improving the panel layout.

Benefits

The main benefit to this effort would be a vastly improved user experience. Specifically, we are looking to:

  1. Reduce mouse clicks
  2. Provide the right information, when the user needs it, where the user wants it
  3. Provide more map visibility (when it makes sense)
  4. Provide list views (when it makes sense)

Some of the tangential benefits to performing this work will be:

  1. Improved responsive design for smaller form factors. That includes small laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. While going all the way down to the phone size should be it's own effort, because the use cases are different from a phone, implementing vertical panels is the first step in make EDSC fully responsive. Our metrics show that a majority of our users do use small laptops where vertical panels would be more beneficial.
  2. New layout customization options. As mentioned above, we now have an easier method to create "smart panels" that will allow users to fine tune their preferred search interface.

Approach

The high level plan to work up a set of interactive wireframes that would show how the vertical panels would work along with a set of hi-res comps that would show exactly what data would be shown in each panel and what it would look like. Once those wireframes and designs are approved, we would move forward with implementation of those designs.

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