delete icon for a merge proposal is in a confusing spot oh the horror

[Elliot Murphy]

Hello! When I go to a merge proposal and want to mark it as approved, I often click the delete icon instead of the edit icon. Several times a day, oh how horrible. I've considered that I'm not a very smart user. However, I think I would make this mistake much less if the trashcan and the pencil were right next to each other, instead of being on different lines. I think they used to be next to each other, and maybe they got accidentally moved apart during some of the excellent improvements that have been made to the merge proposal pages lately.

Screenshot attached.

[Jonathan Lange (jml)]

Egads, you're right!

I bet it's easy to fix too.

[Martin Albisetti (beuno)]

So, I keep thinking about this, and I can't really come up with a good answer.
The edit icon is elsewhere because it actually edits the status, not the MP.
The trash icon is on the title, because it deletes the whole thing.
Now, that we got passed the logic, my question: do you think this is a muscle memory thing, or a genuine confusion users have? :)

[Elliot Murphy (statik)]

Martin Albisetti wrote:
> So, I keep thinking about this, and I can't really come up with a good answer.
> The edit icon is elsewhere because it actually edits the status, not the MP.
> The trash icon is on the title, because it deletes the whole thing.
> Now, that we got passed the logic, my question: do you think this is a muscle memory thing, or a genuine confusion users have?
For me it's genuinely confusing, I'm surprised each time I click the
wrong one and have to hit the back button. It would be neat to be able
to A/B test this, and measure how many visits to the delete page are
abandoned without being completed depending on the location of the icon.

--
Elliot

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

2009/2/20 Elliot Murphy <email address hidden>:
> Martin Albisetti wrote:
>> So, I keep thinking about this, and I can't really come up with a good answer.
>> The edit icon is elsewhere because it actually edits the status, not the MP.
>> The trash icon is on the title, because it deletes the whole thing.
>> Now, that we got passed the logic, my question: do you think this is a muscle memory thing, or a genuine confusion users have?

I think the underlying problem here is that the user model does not
speak of "delete the whole thing" vs "edit this field". What they
want are two possible actions:

 * delete/withdraw/cancel this proposal
 * mark it as approved

I see the yellow pencil icons as basically placeholders til we have
edit-in-place, but there's no need to propagate them more.

--
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

2009/2/20 Martin Pool <email address hidden>:
> * delete/withdraw/cancel this proposal
> * mark it as approved

So how about adding buttons to that effect on this page: one to
delete; the status in a dropdown and a button next to it to submit.
What's more that would save a roundtrip for changing status which is
presumably pretty common.

--
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Funnily enough, Martin's suggestion is quite similar to my original mockup for the merge proposal page, which has a "Withdraw Proposal" button alongside buttons for resubmitting and marking as merged. I agree it makes much more sense to "withdraw" a proposal than to "delete" it.

[Aaron Bentley (abentley)]

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Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Funnily enough, Martin's suggestion is quite similar to my original
> mockup for the merge proposal page, which has a "Withdraw Proposal"
> button alongside buttons for resubmitting and marking as merged. I agree
> it makes much more sense to "withdraw" a proposal than to "delete" it.

I would expect "withdrawing" a proposal to set its status to "withdrawn"
(As opposed to approved, merged, etc.) I wouldn't expect that to delete it.

Aaron
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[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

For sure. Maybe withdrawn merge proposals would stick around for a week or so in case you'd made a mistake or changed your mind, and only then quietly delete themselves. But possibly that's getting a bit off-topic.

If merge proposals should remain instantly deletable, though, it's worth considering putting the Delete action for merge proposals in a place where the Delete/Report actions for other full-page objects (bug reports, projects, teams, polls, whatever) will be able to be consistent with it once they become deletable or reportable. (In the same way that privacy is displayed in the same top-right position for all private objects, for example.) One obvious possibility is near the bottom of the page, where you'll see it once you've scrolled past the stuff that makes you realize it shouldn't be there (e.g. reviewer comments saying "uhhh, did you really mean to submit the branch in this state?").

[Martin Pool (mbp)]

There are other visual problems with those buttons:

 * they're commonly (especially for the heading) smaller than the text
 * they're kind of "soft" and don't look very pressable
 * they're not aligned with anything so are not salient

The combination makes them look more like badges than actions.

[Jonathan Lange (jml)]

This bug is not ready to code -- even grokking the long comment history disqualifies it from being trivial. Marking as incomplete and assigning to beuno.

[Tim Penhey (thumper)]

This is going to be addressed as part of the 3.0 redesign of the page.