Simple-by-default User Experience

[doniks]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I think the user experience of solving tasks is quite cumbersome and outright confusing to new users.

For a user with a little bit of OSM experience but first time on MR, I see the story going like this:

1. I click Start -> The system directly loads an OSM editor and shows me instructions. Great! I'm all set to get to work.
2. work on the task in the osm editor
3. Let's say I can fix the issue. Then I save the changes in OSM. This means I have to click through the normal OSM "Upload" dialog. At first, I'm doubting whether I have to write in words what I did, but after a little bit of hesitation, I realize that the changeset comment is already prefilled. So, good, I guess I'm all set
4. I click upload -> Now, nothing happens by itself but I see the "Completion" widget in MR. So, seems they want to me to also save/commit here in MR, even though I already uploaded in OSM ... can't they detect it?. uhm ... oh well, seems this is not automated, fine whatever. I see a lot of buttons (fixed it/already fixed/not an issue/can't complete/skip) which is a little overwhelming, but it seems clear that "I fixed it" applies to me, so I'll ignore the others for now.
5. click "I fixed it!" -> Now MR loads a new screen. This screen has quite a different layout which is really disorienting. The top navigation bar of the website is gone. The background color is different. There is a map shown, but it's not the editor anymore. It's a different map background and is much more zoomed out then what I just saw in the editor. So I see no correlation to what I just did. The map has a bunch of points highlighted. Some markers pins, some stars, no clue what exactly it's showing my, but I guess I don't have to care?! There is also a text field now with a cancel and submit button. Ugh ... are they expecting me to describe my change now? They prefilled it in OSM, but now I have to type it here?!... whatever, I'm gonna ignore this. I guess (I hope) this is optional and I really don't have anything else to say. Lets just get on with it already. Am I supposed to "Add MR tags". What's an MR anyway? Ah Map Roulette I guess. Well I better hope that the changes are attributed to the MR tasks ... But .. that should have happend in OSM. And I think it did. Whatever, I guess I'll ignore this also. Random or Nearby - I don't care. Do I need to "Load More Tasks"? Ugh this is annoying. Whatever. Lets "Submit" and see what happens
6. Click "Submit" -> System goes back to the previous layout, editor and some "Next task" buttons show up...
7. While I'm trying to figure out what's going on, the system loads a new screen and jumps into the next task. (I think this has just been changed in the last couple of days. It's much better than it was before. Thanks! I don't have to click anything I just have to wait one second.) Uf finally! This was actually a surprisingly painful way of saying "Yes", but whatever
8. I look at this new task but let's say I'm not able to fix this one.
9. So, I'd like to try another task. But how do I do that? Probably one of those other buttons, but which one. Remember this is only the second thing I'm trying to do in MR. I'm not necessarily looking to participate in an elaborate QA process to give feedback to the platform about what exactly kept me from fixing it or how they could design better challenges. But I know I did not fix it. I have a hard time putting it into exact words why I couldn't solve. Maybe it was already fixed, but I just didn't understand it ... Maybe that means "Can't complete" . Let's just go with Skip, it sound's like the safest option. I'm not commiting to anything and creating more of a mess and maybe I or someone will come back to this later.
10. click "skip" -> screen layout changes again, I'm starting to get a headache with these jumping layouts. Again, plenty of options to choose from. Since I wasn't able to solve it maybe I really need to pay attention to all this here? Do I need to Load More Tasks? Random? Nearby? But, how would I know which one to pick. I don't see how any of these options would increase my chances of being able to solve the next task. Oh and of course a comment field again. Seriously, you really, really want me to elaborate on why I couldn't solve it. I have to justify myself. Frankly, I don't quite know. Leave me alone!

Describe the solution you'd like
I think the problem is that there are too many "power user" features placed front and center. This makes the UI very full and the UX quite frustrating.

For a power user, I see the value in the following options, but for a new user, I think they are too complicated:

• Precise delineation of the "didn't fix" cases
• Chose between the automatic task selection strategies: Random or Nearby
• Manually select a new task from the map
• leave a comment inside the MR platform about the tasks (as opposed to review request or comment in OSM)
• leave a sophisticated comment where I need to use formatting and need a "preview"
• whatever the story about the "MR tags" is ... I still haven't understood

I would wish the Completion widget could be as simple as having just two buttons. Like "Yes" and "No", or maybe "I fixed it :)" and "I didn't fix it :(". Or just "I fixed it!" and "Skip", since I guess the default way of saying "I didn't fix it" would correspond to the "Skip" status. Clicking either button directly loads the next random task. No layout switches, no comments, no task selection.

And then there would be a checkbox "Advanced options". If I tick that, then that "unlocks" all these other workflows. It shows the other buttons (Already fixed, Not an issue and Can't complete). Also once it is ticked I get back all task selection options and the extra step with the comment field.

Describe alternatives you've consideredA clear and concise description of any alternative solutions or features you've considered.

Maybe another way to improve the UX a little bit would be to just avoid the jumping around of the layout with the "comment and task selection screen".

When clicking any of the five completion buttons, maybe you could just show the comment field in the current Completion widget and show the task selection map in the place of the editor

[CollinBeczak]

Step 5: I agree that the view is a bit excessive—it’s a modal that happens to have no padding around it, so it fills the whole page. It needs to look more similar to the completion modal when you sort by random tasks. It would also be useful to put "(optional)" next to both the MR tags and the comment field to limit confusion. You should be able to hover over MR tags, and it will show "MapRoulette tags." If not, this should be changed. There is also an info icon next to MR tags at the moment, which can help explain what they are and what they do.

Step 6: This is actively being fixed. In the near future, you should see the buttons in the completion widget greyed out while the task is submitting instead of seeing the next task button.

Step 7: Same set of issues as above—the task is completing but marked as complete in the UI. The likely reason it was worse before and better now is that the bug is much more prevalent when your network slows down. This bug should be fixed soon.

Step 8: This could be an issue. I'm assuming you ran into a task-locking issue, but I don't have an answer for why this happened. If it happens again, please try to provide a way to reproduce the issue.

Steps 9-10: We can probably add a description to the UI view and also update the documentation, but resolving the confusion for first-time users will likely require more discussion between devs.

I'm not sure what we want to do about your confusion with the completion buttons themselves—I’ll need to discuss this further with the dev team and gather input from other users.

Thank you for the recording of your experience; it’s very helpful!

[doniks]

Step 8: This could be an issue. I'm assuming you ran into a task-locking issue, but I don't have an answer for why this happened. If it happens again, please try to provide a way to reproduce the issue.

Ah no. What I meant to say was just: let's say a user is presented with a task in a challenge that they feel unable to fix. Maybe just beyond their osm skill level, or aerial is unclear, or too much work and they don't feel like it. No bug specifically here, other than the overall ux flaw

[doniks]

oh and not sure this matters, but to avoid confusion, this wasn't a "live" recording of what I experienced in my first two edits. It's an imaginary story that might happen to a new user.

To be honest, I came by MR years ago, but was just too confused and overwhelmed and gave up. In fact I think I have come back and given up multiple times. Only after I gained much more osm experience had I mustered up the courage to solder through the experience to learn MR. That's not only the overwhelming ux, but also of course sometimes a challenge is not well described or sometimes the challenge might be not interesting to me, or require too much work or a lack of skill. But overall it took quite a long time between my first encounter with MR until I actually became a user.

Only now that I have been able to use it for a while, did I feel in a position where I can even express myself properly to describe in an actionable bug report what I think should be improved.

[CollinBeczak]

I feel like you brought up some good UI fixes that would improve the new user experience that we should definitely fix. I think the solution to the experience-level problem would be to better guide users to well-structured documentation (The documentation of course needs to be updated to be useful)—or better yet, a well-structured set of videos that explain how to do various things in MapRoulette and highlight the nuances of the app. This could be an element on the MapRoulette landing page or a custom widget that displays for new users, etc. I'm open to more ideas for onboarding new users.