Hypersprint Debrief
SourceCred Creditor contribution UI designs
SUMMARY
We tested the prototype with 5 users, some with good familiarity of the goals of Creditor, and some without much exposure to it.
In general, response from users was very positive. The process of voting and creating new contributions was felt to be very intuitive, and users greatly preferred it over the current method of giving Cred.
“This is a really beautiful first start... I’m excited that this is the first version I’m seeing. I see a lot of uses for this.” (User 3)
“This is definitely an improvement over the current discord system. You get to know something about the contribution, instead of on discord just having to trust the person. This has more context. Seems powerful. More flexibility” (User 4)
“I do think if there were appropriate checks and balances in place then it would be a very interesting and useful mechanism. I can see it being used in conjunction with Colony as something that’s quite cool” (User 1)
There were no major blockers to use, however there are improvements that can be made, especially for new users to SourceCred.
FIRST SCREEN
Most users understood what they were looking at without too much difficulty.
It was clear to them that the actions to be taken were to vote on a contribution, search, filter or sort contributions, or create a new submission.
“I feel like this makes a lot of sense to me.” (User 5)
FIRST SCREEN CONSIDERATIONS
For users unfamiliar with the purpose of Creditor, the page could work a little harder to set expectations and provide context, especially for new users.
For example, it’s not clear if this is the Creditor dashboard for multiple organisations or one organisation.
Someone landing here without expectations may take some time to understand the scope of Creditor; what is included and what is not.
Consider the use of copy, a tutorial, or walkthrough explainer to get people onboarded quickly.
CONTRIBUTION DETAILS
The expanded view of a contribution was considered well laid out and contained most of the information a user would need to vote.
Users appreciate seeing Flag as Spam, and love the History Timeline.
However, new users may have trouble understanding some of the terminology used
“‘Tracked on’ is confusing… Is that git branch? There must be terminology here specific to SourceCred that I don’t understand yet… What does ‘occurred’ mean compared to ‘tracked?’” (User 1)
There was some confusion from multiple users about incoming and outgoing cred in this context.
Users were unclear how Edit Contribution might be used.
VOTING INSIGHTS
The 4-step rating was seen as good
“I like the weights rather than emojis which is definitely not optimal. My contributions are not easily quantifiable. Which is why I like this type of voting. It’s more qualitative, it lets people express what people think rather than putting a number on it.” (User 2)
Once users voted, they really liked seeing the percentages and how they voted in comparison to others.
“It’s showing me the percentage of each vote/score. Yeah that’s cool, I really like it.” (User 4)
BLOCKERS TO PARTICIPATING IN VOTING
“I don’t understand how much influence I have and what the consequences are of me voting.” (User 1)
“I need to know exactly what happened and exactly how it relates to the project’s goals… it would be useful to see ‘how it pushes the project forward’ not just what was done.” (User 2)
“For me to understand the contribution, I need to know this thing created impact” (User 3)
“What if I think it’s junk or shouldn’t be classed as a contribution at all?… Someone could put in the effort to make a contribution but it’s not good enough. Last week my team-member spent 2 days writing a blog post and I had to tell them we weren’t going to use it.” (User 1)
“We can’t fire people so we need good feedback loops. In the absence of a negative, I would like to add a comment. Be able to see their next steps. Is this ongoing? One part of a larger puzzle? Are there more plans to come?” (User 3)
BLOCKERS TO PARTICIPATING IN VOTING (CONT)
“It would be nice to see how this contribution relates to other contributions, like a dependency graph. Seems like a nice feature. Especially if it’s an obscure dev task, it’s harder to evaluate if you don’t know how it fits into the larger context/bigger picture” (User 4)
LOGGED-IN STATE ON FIRST SCREEN
There were no issues here, users were very clear about what the action is they should take.
CREATE A NEW CONTRIBUTION
Most users could imagine filling this out with an example piece of work they had recently done.
However, users were a little unsure what to enter for
“What happens when there’s a contribution that doesn’t go under the project branches? It may not be an active project… I see Creditor as a great way to track things that aren’t an active project.” (User 5)
Users are keen to be able to state why they have performed an activity, not just what they have done, especially for emotional labour and similar types of work.
In addition, users are unsure what is the scope of a contribution; a one-off activity such as a meeting or a 3-month activity.
YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS FIRST SCREEN
This screen performed well, but due to limitations of the prototype, it wasn’t very obvious to users what was their contribution, and what were the contributions of others.
Consider using visual difference to separate their work from that of others.
Consider the user experience when a user has made multiple contributions and how they will get to All Contributions below that.
Users loved seeing their increase in Cred in the top chart, and would like to be able to see their progress over different time-frames (1 week/1 month etc)
FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Users who are skeptical of the current method of giving contributors cred (through emojis in discord) will likely come to Creditor with that skepticism. Consider how the benefits of Creditor are communicated to the wider community.
Users could see how this product works well for developer tasks, but there were still questions about its suitability for harder-to-evaluate activities. One user described it as a good replacement for ‘didathing’ but not a replacement for ‘props’. How might someone reward someone else for their work through this system?
Users want to see how the contributions relate to one another.
“For me as someone who touches a lot of different pieces of the project, I need to be able to see the big picture to do the detailed work. See how I can react to the needs of the community… I’d like newcomers to see how it all relates. They can know where to contribute their work, and see what contributions are needed/on standby. It’s the biggest challenge right now; we lose people because of this.” (User 3)
Some users were still unsure about the scope of Creditor.
“I still have questions about whether the tracking of Cred is just Cred though Creditor or project-wide. Is Creditor meant to track just things we record, or also other things seen by the algorithm? Is this meant to be the everything?” (User 5)
Important Files
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