Compact Person Page and Source Links

LegacyUser

Steven Ricks Hansen said: So, I could have added this to older discussions. Many people have asked for a more compact format. I just wanted to refresh this topic by starting it over again with a picture.

The person page is far too spread out & cluttered. Perhaps a seemingly small & simple thing, but I believe it would have a great effect on users' quick comprehension of the page if it were simpler & more compact. When you have a page that is viewed so many times as this, it really pays to improve it. Right now things are so spread out that users typically have to scroll to see everything (regardless of the device used). It doesn't need to be this way. See the attached picture for the improvement that could be made. It shows the current layout (left), compared to a more compact one (right).

The blue text should each be an active link that leads to a similarly-compact page about that piece of information, with the list of sources that support it & a snippet of the indexed information each source contains. This would aid the user in deciding if the sources really justify the chosen information.

LegacyUser

Jordi Kloosterboer said: Eww

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I agree with Jordi. The "compact" version that was illustrated is something that I would never use. I want to see the information and be able to edit it as needed.

What you want is basically a name list where you can list not only the names of the persons in your ancestral lines, but also many of the fields involved.

There is a solution and that is with most family tree management programs. Of those available in the solutions gallery, I use Ancestral Quest because it is most like its predecessor, the PAF program. The free version of Ancestral Quest is likely where the PAF program would be today, had its functionality been expanded by FamilySearch. Both programs have the same author.

Roots Magic and Legacy are the other two programs and since I don't use them, I don't know if the name list in those programs have the same capability as the name list feature in Ancestral Quest.

What I do know is that I can display a lot of information about a person in the name list and as such, find it very useful if I want to look for records for my ancestral lines people for a given event and place. I found it most useful when I wanted to capture death certificate images for Illinois while at a FHC. I cannot do that from home because of restrictions on the images.

If I want to include all of my ancestral lines that are in the massive tree, I can download them through my program. Both Roots Magic and Legacy have the same feature, even in their free versions.

LegacyUser

Steven Ricks Hansen said: All of the information on the graphic on the left is available on the graphic on the right. Only the format has changed, and the linked text.

There is always an option to see more with the Detail view. The problem is that people don't want to have to scroll. They want to comprehend the information at a glance, and the format on the left has a bunch of extraneous Edit and Source words that break up the important information.

It's all about information accessibility, and helping the user do the job they are trying to do on this page.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Steven

There is probably a strong argument for effectively doing the opposite to what you are proposing. Currently, each section on the Person page can be collapsed. Unfortunately, this makes it easy for users to miss important notes and reason statements that could prevent them from making incorrect merges, etc.

Another user said recently she put certain detail in Life Sketch where "everyone can see it", but I admitted I kept this section closed on my pages (as I never use it). But I am generally in favour of encouraging all users to keep all the sections open (especially the Vitals one) so they can not only see the bare facts but the evidence, where available, for them being inputted.

For purely viewing purposes you seem to have a great idea, but not if we wish fellow users to examine a wider profile of the individual and avoid persons of similar identity being confused and possibly merged.

It took several years for FamilySearch to introduce an enhancement that allows direct view of comments against the vitals (unfortunately, they are still hidden in the Couple Relationship section), so I would not want the effects of that enhancement to be diluted by having your display option available.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Even though all three of us who replied are against this option, that does not mean that it will not be developed.

The argument about scrolling is killed by at least a half-dozen of my ancestors. They lived in an area that conducted yearly enumerations and as such have a very lengthy residence listing, so even collapsed, a person would have to scroll down to see everything in the "other information" section.

Just as I was reading through the other comments, it dawned on me that the timeline provides the same information in a different format. Not only that, but it goes beyond the information for the person and can include family connections.

My local program cannot do that (I haven't fully explored all of its features).

What would need to be developed is a multi-position switch for the Details, with three or four possibile positions. The fourth option would be collapsed, which is currently controlled by another "switch" on the details page. The other three positions would be "condensed" (your proposal), "full view" and "detailed" (which two are currently provided).

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Steven,

First of all, I do agree with the premise of your suggestion. From the constant changes of the layout, font set, coloring, and effective use of white space, there really doesn't appear to be a person who is really expert in typography who is on staff at FS with some degree of authority, and so things seem to change with the wind.

I wondered if you were familiar with what the pages used to look like back in early 2018. It incorporated many of the aspects that you are suggesting (e.g., active links on the data itself to initiate editing, etc.). Then in September 2018, FS revamped a large part of the layout and sprung it on the general public without any warning. Page contents were moved around. Fonts, layout of line items, and use of white space changed too. Many people yelled about it and wanted it all reversed, but FS made it clear that it was going to stay.

There were many things I didn't like, but several of them I can really understand why they were done. An example is the addition of the "Edit" button on each event, instead of just clicking on the text itself. The multiple Edit buttons add a whole lot of clutter to the layout and take up space. However, there is a large demographic of folks using this site who are not very computer savvy, and may not use the site very frequently. FS has been tasked with making the site friendly and usable by people in that group as well as the rest of us. This is a conflict in requirements that I am sure FS finds very tricky to balance.

Apparently, the question of "how do I change the value of..." continued to come up at FHCs. So FS decided to spell out the word "Edit" on a dedicated button instead of assuming that everyone already knows to just select the text that you want to change. So far that approach has been implemented fairly consistently across the site.

So when you said:

All of the information on the graphic on the left is available on the graphic on the right

it is not exactly true. The number of sources tagged to each data point is not shown on the right, and a description of how to change a value is also not on the right.

As a side note, I almost always have the Detailed View turn on. I like to see when and by whom each item was last touched, and the reason for it. I suspect that as the number of data points increase, some of the benefits of the compressed layout could soon become a liability.

So we have already seen specific changes over the last 2 years to move away from some of the aspects of your suggestion. However, I do believe that it could still be improved upon.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: I would agree with Jeff in so far as I personally feel that the user interface seems to take up more space on the glass than is necessary. And it keeps changing. Whether the issue is with vertical spacing or horizontal - or both - I am not sure.

And there's font colours and weights (bold, etc.) to worry about...

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Nor is it just the Tree - look at the layout of this forum and compare it to that of the new FS Communities.... I would say this forum packs a lot more into the view with a clearer and simpler arrangement. No idea where the Community software comes from...

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: This forum is developed and maintained by GetSatisfaction (or whatever their current name is). I believe the FS Community is all custom developed by and under the control of FS.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: I'm slightly surprised if the Communities are FS custom developments - I have nothing to suggest that they aren't, by the way - rather that board type software seems to be a standard off the shelf purchase. But the Communities do seem to be, err, less compact than GetSat.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: There are a number of off-the-shelf and even open-source forum software packages. Many of them have been around for a very long time. The Community software from FS has had a few enhancements to make it respond a little faster, but it still is not as quick as it should be when compared against the other portions of the FamilySearch site.

I think that one of the unpublished (to the public) goals is to have complete control over the internal site (and application) software. But that is purely my speculation on the matter.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: Tom's correct. FS Communities is a third party offering that is customized for FS. The desire is to have better integration to Support services.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Thanks Joe - that was sort of what I suspected - something external as the basis but tweaked in some fashion for FS.

LegacyUser

Steven Ricks Hansen said: Knowing where to click might be a brief hang-up, and even require an explanation for some. However, I believe that even non-computer-savvy users would get the hang of things very quickly, and extraneous information slows everyone down.

The guiding principle in product development should be: What jobs are users trying to do when they view this page? (Looking at product development from a job-to-be-done standpoint is one of the main points of the book "The Innovator's Solution" by Clayton M. Christensen & Michael E. Raynor.) So, if we put the right information on the page that helps them do those jobs, and remove information that does not help them do those jobs, then the changes are good. As users become more familiar they will come to appreciate the features.

The job I mostly do on this person page is to view the information & compare it with something else. For this job, a compact (but clear) format is helpful. (One that does not require me to scroll.) Another job of this page is to serve as a switchboard of links to more detailed source information. This can also be accomplished effectively using the compact format. Upon further research, we might find that a significant percentage of users also use this page to see which information has sources behind it. That could be another job to consider doing on this page. However, we want to be careful not to plan for users to do too many jobs in one space - especially if their requirements are conflicting. From my own experience, I do not use the person page to see how many sources there are & how well they all support the information recorded. I click on the link to go to a page where I can more effectively do that job. (Which also needs to be improved, by the way. See https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea....)

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I agree 150%

Obviously the user interface on the FS website could be much better. Sometimes solutions to problems are over simplified which exacerbate the issues. Like the situation I mentioned before. Trainers and FHC consultants kept reporting that folks kept asking the same question "how do I change the data?". Their solution that was implemented in the big change September 2018 was just to create an "edit" button in front of everything.

As you pointed out, this is not consistent with the way things are in most places, it's inefficient, the old way is easily learnable, etc. But in FS, they had resolved a documented problem, which is good.

Many of the solution implementations that I observe on the FS website are frequently not systemic in nature. They are not eclectic in nature. They solve the one problem at hand but frequently ignore other requirements that need to be maintained. In fact, they can occasionally BREAK other features.

For example, the "Edit" buttons mitigated the issue of persons asking "how do I change the data?", but it also cluttered the user interface making it more confusing to the very people that were asking the original question. I personally would have preferred to see a single message at the top of the page that said something like "Click on data in order to make changes to it" instead of all the redundant "Edit" buttons.

However, I have no idea of what other "requirements" FS is trying to simultaneously meet. But having a more efficient interface with fewer "bells and whistles" cluttering up the interface would be nice, at least from my perspective.