Core dev respond to GUI criticism

[jaran]

when you view an account that you are following but do not own from your dashboard page and then click on exchange -> market(bts/usd etc) then that account is set to be the default account for buying and selling from.

For example follow account poloniexwallet then go try to trade some bitUSD and it wants to withdraw funds from the poloniexwallet which you dont own.

There should be the concept of active account on the dashboard page and a user can only set an account they own to be the active account.

[tonyk]

I LOVE it as it is. Change nothing!!!

My favourite features:

NO back button for the light wallet

Price - less order books. - After all who the hell cares about prices while trading?

[38PTSWarrior]

Valantine - thank you for your work. I was a bit critical at first, but the more i use this the more i am beginning to like it. The improvements you mentioned as well as the feed back you are getting in this thread will make this even better.

 

 

Maybe crazy but to just make one round button which glows in different colors. A magic gambling button. 3 settings. Green yellow, red.

Like gambling but with 95%, 85% and 80% chance to win.

The gamblings is always a win because the people do what makes the price better. And the software pays the losses. Maybe they can win different assets which will always be a surprise. New asset creators could pay so their assets get spit out when someone wins.

A BitUSD dice game would be great. Especially one that also lets you play in BTS and pays out in BitUSD. Could really help BitAssets and increase transactions.

There are some valid objections to it though 

I know, that's why the bingo never happened. There must be a way to legally do it. I know a large bitcoin miner and he prefers another coin which gives money by just letting the software run once every 2 weeks or a month.

Maybe that's it, getting freebies only for connecting /edit

[Empirical1.2]

Valantine - thank you for your work. I was a bit critical at first, but the more i use this the more i am beginning to like it. The improvements you mentioned as well as the feed back you are getting in this thread will make this even better.

 

 

Maybe crazy but to just make one round button which glows in different colors. A magic gambling button. 3 settings. Green yellow, red.

Like gambling but with 95%, 85% and 80% chance to win.

The gamblings is always a win because the people do what makes the price better. And the software pays the losses. Maybe they can win different assets which will always be a surprise. New asset creators could pay so their assets get spit out when someone wins.

A BitUSD dice game would be great. Especially one that also lets you play in BTS and pays out in BitUSD. Could really help BitAssets and increase transactions.

There are some valid objections to it though 

[38PTSWarrior]

Maybe crazy but to just make one round button which glows in different colors. A magic gambling button. 3 settings. Green yellow, red.

Like gambling but with 95%, 85% and 80% chance to win.

The gamblings is always a win because the people do what makes the price better. And the software pays the losses. Maybe they can win different assets which will always be a surprise. New asset creators could pay so their assets get spit out when someone wins.

[valzav]

Great idea incomming commander: Make a button 'short USD with safe setting'

I don't understand the collateral and other shorting things. A setting with a 90% chance that I can get little richer in the future would be good.

I am sure many people are not talented in thinking about such complex thing.

Let's try to make a dummy button.

Good idea, we thought about this too. When we were planning Graphene one of the features we wanted to have was "market orders" - user specifies only amount and buy or sell order executes at current market price. So in Graphene order can be executed in the same block it's placed and also it can be marked as "fill or kill" - this makes market orders much easier to implement. Now we only need to add simple buy/sell/short form to the GUI where user can specify amount, click Place button, agree with price and confirm.

[38PTSWarrior]

Great idea incomming commander: Make a button 'short USD with safe setting'

I don't understand the collateral and other shorting things. A setting with a 90% chance that I can get little richer in the future would be good.

I am sure many people are not talented in thinking about such complex thing.

Let's try to make a dummy button.

[CLains]

One might see the wallet as just up to speed, but as I understand it the current speed of development is an order of magnitude faster. There also seems to be a million other avenues available from where we are now, so I for one am very optimistic!

[hadrian]

I'm very happy with the GUI, but decided to try to find a way to improve it. This is the first thing I came up with, and I think it's important:

The wallet should "Auto-lock" after an operation (if it was locked beforehand).

As it stands at the moment, if the wallet is locked when you request an operation requiring your private keys, you must enter your password. This unlocks the wallet to enable the operation, and the wallet then remains unlocked afterwards.

I would prefer to see the wallet automatically return to the state it was in before the operation was requested. That is to say, if it was locked before the operation it should automatically lock again after the operation. If it was already unlocked, it can stay that way.

Examples of my reasoning:

• Security best practices - there's no point having it unlocked unnecessarily.
• User doesn't have to remember to lock the wallet after an operation, such as transferring some money.
• Protection from mistakes - the wallet can be locked for the majority of the time, so average Joe can mess around, exploring the wallet without worrying about accidentally doing something stupid. The request for a password would act as a prompt to think, and it offers peace of mind.
• Protection from bad actors, and from children mashing the keyboard in the case of the a wallet left unattended!
• Protection from a malicious person waiting for you to carry out any operation, who could then forcibly take over your wallet and have unhindered access because it doesn't lock itself afterwards.
• The user can always manually unlock the wallet and leave it in that state if they're doing loads of operations.

Are there any arguments against what I've said? I can't think of any good ones...

[MJK]

Valantine - thank you for your work. I was a bit critical at first, but the more i use this the more i am beginning to like it. The improvements you mentioned as well as the feed back you are getting in this thread will make this even better.

 

[donkeypong]

We are very thankful for your hard work so far and hope you continue improving the interface. Thanks, guys!

[BunkerChainLabs-DataSecurityNode]

The idea behind BitShares 2.0 was to create "platform" and provide some basic infrastructure, like blockchain, close to real-time API, reference wallet, referral program and let third parties build and monetize their own solutions built on this platform.

This line out of everything caught my attention... because I think it summarizes very well what people right now need to understand as the right context for their expectations. A 'basic infrastructure' is a good way to describe it.. with the API/wallet/refer/blockchain system for 3rd parties to build on.

I think what people today are forgetting is the 3rd party part. Sadly it will remain this way until they begin to really make a showing and utility really takes hold. I certainly am doing my part on that front very very soon.

As for the rest of your work Valentine I have been at a loss for why everyone is complaining so much for what has been delivered for the MVP. I thought it worked fine for what we needed and then some. I am sadly not going to be very helpful in this area though. I am not much of a designer when it comes to UIs or pay much attention to how difficult or easy things are for me using them. I will however take note from others who are better than I and pass on what feedback I get when I get it.

Keep up the good work! 

[roadscape]

And we are not going to stop here - there are big plans: the help system is under heavy development, just take a look at Membership page to have some idea - we are planning to add detailed help content to almost every page, also there will be "app tour" for new users. React native mobile GUI for iOS and Android should be out in a couple of months, all the backend and keys management are already in place; more gateways support is on the way; most of the blockchain features like proposed transactions; blinded transfers; privatized bit assets - all these are planned to be implemented before the end of year. The architecture we’ve chosen for 2.0 GUI has proven itself to be very effective and we are really getting up to speed (remember on one of the mumble sessions BM said this is the future of web development), and take a look at number of commits to graphene-ui repo - it's close to 2k already - twice as much as toolkit has got being longer under development.

And all these despite the fact that core developers were struggling for months to feed their families due to BTS price decline and dev fund melt down; and the idea to give up and return back to real-world salaries looked very attractive, btw community support was very helpful during that time, so I want to thank all you guys for staying here, even those with negative feedback, if you are still on the forum and you are testing software - this means that you still believe in BitShares and this really gives us the hope.

 

The GUI is definitely an improvement.. and the important thing is that we now have a strong GUI architecture to build on. React is a great choice and hints at where you may be taking it.. Thank you for your work and commitment to further enhancements.

[tbone]

As far as specific GUI feedback goes:

Wallet Management
I agree with a previous poster that wallet management needs to be a little less confusing.  For example, it needs to be MUCH clearer which operations pertain to 2.0 vs. migration from 0.9.3.  Many people seem to be confused between "Restore Backup" and "Import Keys".  I'm not 100% sure either, but I think the former pertains to 2.0 while the latter pertains to 0.9.3.  So at the very least those buttons could be renamed "Restore 2.0 backup" and "Import 0.9.3 Keys".  Although perhaps more ideally, instead of having all of the buttons bunched together, there would be some separation between a) the wallet functions that a brand new user would be concerned with vs. b) the wallet functions for migrating from 0.9.3 (or from the previous web wallet).

Trading Interface
Although I believe 3rd parties will ultimately offer great trading UIs, I think it's imperative that the default GUI is very usable if we want to bootstrap these markets ASAP.  That said, I agree with most of Xeldal's comments.  Here are some reinforcements and additions to his feedback. Others may have posted additional feedback since I started composing this post a couple hours ago, so there may be overlap. 

1. Order Book
It's standard for bids to be at the bottom, asks at the top (for the oddballs, you could have function to flip).  Also, showing the spread in the middle of the order book is unnecessary. It's much more critical to show the last price in this space.  The last price should be displayed red if it was a sell (at or below the bid) and green if it was a buy (at or above the ask).  The red and green may need to be brightened a little to stand out on the dark gray background.  Also, it's unhelpful for column labels to take up such valuable real estate right in the middle of the order book.  I would move them to the top (and perhaps also the bottom) of the order book. 

2. Charts
I also completely agree with Xeldal's chart comments including the position of the chart as well as how to display the bars, etc.  Another important thing is that when you position your cursor over a chart, it really, REALLY needs to show crosshairs (i.e. both vertical and horizontal line spanning the chart) rather than just a vertical line.   This may seem trivial, but I can't stress the importance of it enough. Also, let's allow the user choose from the most common time frames (see below).  If it's necessary to prioritize some over the others to start, I would prioritize the ones underlined below. 

            1w  |  3d  1d  |  12h  6h  4h  2h  1h  |  30m  15m  5m  3m  1m

3. Market History
Regarding Market History, I'm not sure if it's empty because it only shows trades that occurred since I loaded that market on the screen, or because there just haven't been any trades in that market yet.  Either way, it really needs to show the last x trades regardless of whether you leave that screen and come back. 

4. Markets at-a-glance
Market History really doesn't need to take the whole vertical column.  Some of that column could be used to display a list of your "pinned" markets including the 24 hour volume and price change.  So now while you're on the full view (chart, order book, market depth, order form, etc.) of one market, you can see all of your other important markets "at-a-glance" and easily toggle between their full views. 

5. Market Depth
Finally (for now?), I really don't think the market depth needs to take up so much real estate. It's really just a visual aid and can be much smaller.  It would also make a lot more sense if it's orientation was vertical rather than horizontal (see below, click on link for actual size).  In this orientation you can visualize not only the buy and sell depth, but if you look at the bright red and green line, you can also much more easily visualize how steeply or gradually the price would go up or down with a given amount of buy vs. sell volume. 

http://i.imgur.com/K8GxLV2.jpg
     

Also, positioning your cursor on the depth chart could pop up some details (see second image below). 

http://i.imgur.com/NNBXQRV.jpg


By the way, I do understand that it may be very useful to have the market depth chart visually showing the Settlement Price, Margin Call Price, and Call limit lines.  If those items cannot be displayed in a smaller version of the depth chart described above, then perhaps allow the user to toggle between a larger version of the depth chart and the main price chart (with the default being the price chart, of course) as was the case in the previous GUI.  In this case I would still have the smaller vertically oriented version visible elsewhere.

I hope this feedback helps.  I'm confident that much of this could be implemented without much trouble at all.  And I look forward to seeing the GUI evolve quickly in the very near term.  Thanks for all of your efforts!

[tbone]

Thanks for that Valantine, it's great to hear your perspective. I hope people will provide their feedback in the form you asked for, I can see that is much more useful than the general form usually offered. I will certainly keep that in mind as well. I tend to look at things from a detailed perspective and usually feel like I have to guess a lot to get things done.

And we are not going to stop here - there are big plans: the help system is under heavy development, just take a look at Membership page to have some idea - we are planning to add detailed help content to almost every page, also there will be "app tour" for new users. React native mobile GUI for iOS and Android should be out in a couple of months, all the backend and keys management are already in place; more gateways support is on the way; most of the blockchain features like proposed transactions; blinded transfers; privatized bit assets - all these are planned to be implemented before the end of year. The architecture we’ve chosen for 2.0 GUI has proven itself to be very effective and we are really getting up to speed (remember on one of the mumble sessions BM said this is the future of web development), and take a look at number of commits to graphene-ui repo - it's close to 2k already - twice as much as toolkit has got being longer under development.

This is as close to a roadmap as we've ever seen IMO, and it needs to be formalized and prominently publicized. There's a lot of things CNX could publicize but chooses not to for various reasons, but I feel like when it comes to milestones and schedules much more should be said. I hope you don't catch hell for posting this, I know there's been issues in the past of too much disclosure. I hope we can leave those things behind us and look forward to more open discussions of priorities and goals.

Why would he catch hell?  I don't think he's saying anything bytemaster hasn't already said.  He's just reminding people because it seems many have either forgotten or never really understood what the Bitshares 2.0 / Graphene GUI is supposed to be.  Personally, my expectation has been for the new GUI to be 3 things: 1) a much more usable interface than we had before, 2) the beginning of the new governance model, and 3) a working demonstration of the platform's capabilities so that business builders would be able to more easily wrap their minds around what subset of functionality they would like to build into their own GUI, how they can add value, etc.  So we should really be looking at the audience for this GUI as investors, early adopters, and business builders...NOT typical end users. 

The entreprenuers and business builders among us will create the GUIs that attract the end users.  As mentioned by OP, some will develop trading platforms, some will develop wallets, etc.  They are incentivized to do so by the referral system, and much development is already going on behind the scenes. 

Speaking of the referral system, I do think we probably need to modify the fee structure and therefore the referral system itself.  But that's fine because the new governance model is taking shape, so we can debate the specifics and make whatever changes need to be made.  So as far as I'm concerned, things are on track and anyone that can look past the current share price will prosper greatly. 

By the way, I saw on another thread that one of our fine community members (was it Phillyguy?) suggested to lzr1900 that as a large shareholder now, he might want to consider being a little more positive/constructive in the forum.  lzr1900 responded by asking something along the lines of "how am I supposed to do that"?  My answer to that would be: "have some damn vision, man".  Geez Louise.