The Gutenberg team spent the majority of January and February on preparing for and delivering user testing on the new theme.
User testing overview
- In January and early February, the team prepared for user testing:
- A new infrastructure environment was set up for testing.
- An automated form submission process was set up for requesting a new site.
- User testing instructions, interview questions, and email communications were written.
- The workflow for the entire user testing process was demoed and revised by the team.
- Updates were made to the development workflow cycle to restrict unfinished builds from publishing to the test environment.
- User testing occurred from February 10-21:
- 142 test sites were requested.
- 58 feedback surveys were submitted.
- 6 moderated user interviews were conducted.
- In late February, the team reviewed and analyzed feedback from the user testing period and identified improvements that can be made to the theme as well as training opportunities.
User testing results
We would like to thank the web community for participating in testing the Gutenberg team and providing feedback! Your input will help us understand what we still need to improve and where we should focus our efforts in the coming months.
What you said went well
- Utilizing patterns to quickly create engaging content.
- The improved editing experience and design tools available in the Gutenberg editor.
- The ability to easily move things around on the page.
What you said could be improved
- Users would like the UW Link block to show text on the page even if links haven’t yet been added.
- More training on how to use the editor.
- More support for how pages and content displays in mobile.
Status of UW Theme features
Through user testing, the Gutenberg team learned that there was some confusion about which features had already been completed. To help with understanding which UW Theme features are still up for review or are currently in development, we’ve developed a new status webpage.
Next steps
Our teams will be reviewing your feedback and documenting where we might need to make improvements to existing blocks and patterns. We’ll also continue building out UW Theme features and our migration tooling. In the summer, we’ll start developing training and support materials. Along the way, we’ll let users know (via the WP Users group in Teams) when there are additional opportunities for feedback.