GeneReviews Book Manager Performance Issues with NCBI MVC Changes to Production BCMS Deployment
@DioneMentis @John.kopanas - cc @deniskar @ErinS
I am providing clips of our user testing with GeneReviews users who must be supported when we deploy the MVP BCMS. They are our most active Word users. This user testing was done on our Production BCMS Deployment that has some MVC changes by Denis, where he removed several backend calls AND the lazy load which our users found problematic and unusable.
In addition to this, there were at least the two GeneReviews users accessing the Production BCMS at the same time of the recorded user testing. They were logged in from their own home networks in the Seattle, Washington area, which is where they work now and will work in the future. They will always both be using the system at the same time in their Book Manager pages as Editors and Org Admin, likely with a third person, NCBI Bookshelf System Admin, in their Book Manager area when troubleshooting.
These are the issues that they noted would cause them problems working and we recorded, some difficult to see and measure the user frustration, in the slowness and lack of responsivity of even moving up and down the page and navigating and clicking between pages and tabs. Such lags are very hard to record in a way they can be perceived by another as they are tactile in nature.
We could not test any actual processing since we tested on our Production Deployment that is not integrated with our Production databases and file systems.
The clips of the testing I am sharing with issues that I think can be clearly observed and need to be met by the MVC and Design Option A improvements are as follows:
(1) Problems with bulk upload of chapters
Includes:
- User sees "Uploading files" when tries to upload files and doesn't understand why as they hadn't uploaded them and doesn't see them on Book Manager page
- User gets kicked out of the modal where it shows the files uploading by the system without choosing to close out of it
- User repeatedly says "it is not responding"
Note in all instances of the BCMS users report they cannot do more than any 1-2 bulk actions right now on ANY Book Manager pages, including those with Denis' optimization of reducing calls to backend. We can provide and record more instances if necessary. In meetings the consensus is that the MVC and Design Option A changes should address these problems doing all bulk actions, but we will need to test this and have GeneReviews redo these usability tests recorded after those changes to confirm they do address these issues with bulk actions.
See clip: genebulkuploadproblems
(2) Problems with the search not showing the search results
Includes:
- User at first tries to type search term and the UI does not show the search term being entered
- Second time, takes 20 seconds (their count while doing it) before user sees their typed text appear
- User cannot use next to navigate to instance(s) of their search terms
- User does not see a filtered list of their search results
Note, this problem I am able to reproduce from my testing instance as well and was reported in additional user testing with LactMed and LiverTox users. We shared the Design Option A search design mockups with these users and theoretically they agree that should address their concerns.
See clip: genesearchissues
(3) Problems with drag and drop of their Appendix items that they will need to order in the UI
Includes:
- Slow to navigate to the Back matter - feels to drag
- Checking boxes is slow - they counted at about 5-6 seconds
- Can't control or see where you are moving a component - it feels to drag and jump around and never stick
- Item never moves to where you are trying to place it
See clip: dragdropissues
(4) Don't see saved Edited Book Metadata changes in the BCMS UI form
Includes:
- User enters two edits to the book metadata: changing text in abstract and adding a license, but when user saves these changes and closes out of the book metadata and reopens it, they do not see those changes recorded in the forms
See clip: metadatadoesnotsave