[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #37661: A New Experience for Discovering, Installing, and Previewing Themes in the Customizer

[WordPress Trac]

#37661: A New Experience for Discovering, Installing, and Previewing Themes in the
Customizer
-------------------------------------+-------------------------------------
 Reporter:  celloexpressions         |       Owner:  westonruter
     Type:  feature request          |      Status:  reviewing
 Priority:  high                     |   Milestone:  4.9
Component:  Customize                |     Version:  4.2
 Severity:  normal                   |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-screenshots has-     |     Focuses:  ui, accessibility,
  user-testing has-ux-feedback       |  javascript
  needs-patch                        |
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Changes (by celloexpressions):

 * keywords:  has-patch has-screenshots has-user-testing has-ux-feedback =>
     has-screenshots has-user-testing has-ux-feedback needs-patch


Comment:

 Thanks for the detailed feedback and updated design concept @melchoyce and
 @folletto!

 [attachment:customizer-theme-showcase-i4.png] feels really good to me,
 particularly as a simplification of the experience to suggest a single
 clear user flow through the interface. It also offers a minimal base upon
 which we can easily iterate and add complexity. I've seen a similar layout
 in some conceptual mockups by @melchoyce to include a header with UI at
 the top of the preview area - this is a good prototype for potentially
 using something similar elsewhere in the future.

 [attachment:customizer-theme-showcase-i4.png] does a reaally good job of
 addressing the UI feedback in [comment:175]. A few throughts on the
 questions:
 > What if you tried lo-fi sketching (paper and pencil, etc.) out a couple
 different browsing and filtering flows, and then posting them up here on
 the ticket to review? Seems like it could potentially be faster than
 coding up some different ideas, though of course that's up to you and
 whatever process you find easier.
 Incidentally, [attachment:customizer-theme-showcase-i4.png] is a better
 version of the last hand sketch I did on this (looks like it never made it
 onto the ticket - I think I shared in Slack). Definitely something we
 should all try to do more, and that I'll be better at now that I produce
 hand sketches every day professionally :)

 > Are there any other products that let you live preview hundreds of
 available skins, templates, or themes? What do they do well? Where do they
 fall short? Auditing a couple could be a good way to draw some inspiration
 for this feature.
 There are several aspects of other existing experiences that would be
 useful. Many things would require adjustments to theme readme standards or
 other .org/theme-team projects.
 [https://creativemarket.com/themes/wordpress Creative Market] does a great
 job with hierarchical categories with filters for structured data in
 addition to generic tags, for example. This would be great to explore in
 more detail in a joint effort with the theme review team in future
 iterations. It already feels like we're trying to do too much at once
 here, so hopefully [attachment:customizer-theme-showcase-i4.png] works as
 a good way to use what we have for now.

 > Can the performance improvements you mentioned be implemented before
 merging the UI?
 It's tricky to break the initial changes into smaller pieces because we're
 doing a major retrofit of the existing themes section and control objects,
 preserving some existing functionality and building a new foundation under
 it. [attachment:customizer-theme-showcase-i4.png] does a good job of
 preserving the importance of the installed themes section, which is
 existing - this approach effectively-de-emphasizes new UI to refocus the
 majority of the changes on improved functionality/flow, and performance
 and extensibility via the new foundation.

 I think I've gotten set back up with the GitHub pull request, so I'll
 modularly commit changes there, then post a summary patch back here to the
 ticket once we're at [attachment:customizer-theme-showcase-i4.png] (I'll
 work on it this weekend and hopefully have a first pass up by end of day
 tomorrow).

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/37661#comment:177>
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