re: discussion with Eloy about the new course backup features planned to Moodle 2.0 on August 10th, 2009

The issues with backup can be described using three Moodle UI guidelines:

1. Wizard - http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Wizard
Lack of basic Wizard controls: users are not aware of how many steps there are left, nor of whether they can go back if they make a mistake. The Back button does not always preserve form data in browsers.

• A separate issue is that although wizards should otherwise have Previous/Next buttons as in the prototypem, the button to actually start the backup process should be labeled with an action verb: "Start Backup" so that users are aware that this is the point of no return and there are no further data gathering/confirmation screens.

2. Visual hierarchy - http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Major_usability_issues_in_Moodle#Visual_hierarchy
In the Moodle 1.9 implementation, UI elements were grouped such that it was hard to instantly recognize what was related to what. The visual hierarchy has been improved in the prototype, also taking into account the new wizard controls.

3. Feedback - http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Feedback_%28User_Interface_Guideline%29

• Backup is potentially a long process, and the user should be given feedback about the fact that the work is still continuing to help users trust the application has not hung, for example. A progress bar would be great to display users roughly the amount of work left. I assume using MDL-18224 may solve this though I have not seen it in action.
• The lack of wizard controls means users don't get the necessary feedback of their progress in the process