Operation history mockups

Hi everyone, hope you're all having a lovely weekend. As I wrap up the Operation History project, I wanted to share some screenshots from the Figma file here.

Firstly: the icons. We associate each type of operations with an icon, to help guide the user as they get to know the tool and understand the types of operations they use the most, in what order, etc. My hope here is that it will help less experienced users - and less technical users - wayfind better through their history as they learn to use the tool.

Here, we have two screenshots of the main interface. You'll note the following changes:

  • The buttons up top have changed to "Recipes" and "Extract Recipes" in order to simplify this for users. The design eliminates the need for an "Apply" button, and the "Recipes" allows users to access recipes (or, histories) from other projects they've generated and saved in OpenRefine.

  • Instead of "Filter" I've written "Search."

  • The tab is now called "History" instead of "Undo/Redo" in order to more accurately convey how it actually works.

  • Users will see icons appear next to each operation in the history.

  • History can be viewed in two different ways, both vertically oriented: as a chronological list, or in a pipeline view.

Here's the list view:

And the pipeline view:

When users press the "Recipes" button on the left, the following flow will be triggered:

Users select a recipe from their archive, and in the next window, can match columns from one project to another.

Note that if there's an error in saving, the text in red will appear.

And when they press "Extract Recipe" on the right, they will be led here:

On the left, users can select the steps they would like to save. The highlighting interaction allows them to either a) select all steps, b) select a two or more consecutive steps, or c) selected two or more non-contiguous steps. As they make selections in the frame of on the left, the pipeline graphic on the right automatically changes.

Then, they can name the recipe so they can find it in OpenRefine in the future. There's also the option to save it for themselves, to make it easier to share with a colleague.

The option to save and share a JSON file is also still available.

Note that if there's an error in saving, the text in red will appear.

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Thanks for giving us the opportunity to review! I think I need more than pictures to understand this and be able to provide useful feedback.

What does the branching tree structure of the pipeline view represent? Is it some type of DAG? Does it flow from top to bottom or vice versa? What do the multiple terminal nodes represent? Intuitively, I'd expect a single start and a single end.

I might be able to work some of this out from the text of the undo history, but I can't make it big enough to be legible.

Tom