1014301 - Display contextual hint about Tabs Tray when opening a new tab for the first time

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Chenxia Liu [:liuche]]

If you don't know that the number tab opens the tabs tray, opening a new tab could be confusing, especially since the tab-increment isn't a flashy animation.

We should show a dropdown arrow hint if:
* User opens a new tab (private or regular)
* Hasn't opened tabs tray before
* Hint hasn't been shown before

Text: "Manage/See/Switch to your other tabs by opening the tabs tray."

Comment 1

[Chenxia Liu [:liuche]]

mfinkle and I were discussing this, and I'd like to get some UX feedback on this.

One thing we talked about is reconsidering a very explicit notification explicit (text in an arrow dropdown) or just a one-time thing that makes the tab tray more visible (highlight) so that we run less of a risk of being considered "annoying."

Any thoughts? I'm happy to implement either or both, if Ian or Anthony want to see something.

Comment 2

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

While I agree that merely an icon along with a number is not enough to tell the user what lies beyond a "tap", I would be tempted to ask if this really needs "a very explicit notification" since they can just "tap" their way out fairly easily. Maybe for when this tray hasn't been opened before (first run), but probably not every time the user opens a new tab.

I think the bigger question here is First Run and how we introduce the user to using this and working this tray into their daily browser workflow.

Another thing that I've noticed is the interactions of opening up a new private/tab, switching between tabs, and opening a new private/tab from the context menu could be improved and maybe we can work in an animation of sorts that would provide more of a hint as to what this icon with a number on it really is?

Comment 3

[Chenxia Liu [:liuche]]

> Maybe for when this tray hasn't been opened before (first
> run), but probably not every time the user opens a new tab.

I totally agree, I don't think any of these contextual hints should be the kind to be shown "every single time," since that's hands-down annoying and would make me never use FF again. The idea behind all these "contextual" hints is that they're triggered when users are doing actions that indicate they might not know about one of our features (we're seeing a lot of complaints or asks for features - *that we already support*).

> 
> I think the bigger question here is First Run and how we introduce the user
> to using this and working this tray into their daily browser workflow.
> 

I would question how effective teaching during first run actually is. Do people take the time to go through first run tutorials? How much of that information sticks, especially if you're exposed to several new gestures and features all at once?

I do think there is value in teaching the basic mechanics of FF in a first run, and I think the aim of that should be to make people comfortable enough using the browser that they don't drop it immediately. However, showing people hints that are related to what they are doing, after they become more familiar with the app, will make the features we introduce stick better. Finding the right division of hints and feature discovery between first run and (delayed, contextual) in-use hints is what I'm not sure about.

> Another thing that I've noticed is the interactions of opening up a new
> private/tab, switching between tabs, and opening a new private/tab from the
> context menu could be improved and maybe we can work in an animation of
> sorts that would provide more of a hint as to what this icon with a number
> on it really is?

I agree! mfinkle mentioned bug 1014631, for adding numbers/badges to each section in the tabs tray (tabs/private/synced) so it's possible to draw a connection between that number and the tabs. This has the added bonus of encouraging users to click on the other sections.

Comment 4

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

(In reply to Chenxia Liu [:liuche] from comment #1)

> One thing we talked about is reconsidering a very explicit notification
> explicit (text in an arrow dropdown) or just a one-time thing that makes the
> tab tray more visible (highlight) so that we run less of a risk of being
> considered "annoying."

Yeah, definitely worth exploring our options here. We could also look at ways of making the "new tab in background" icon animation a little more distinct and whimsical to draw more attention to it. 


> I would question how effective teaching during first run actually is. Do
> people take the time to go through first run tutorials? How much of that
> information sticks, especially if you're exposed to several new gestures and
> features all at once?

Yeah, I agree. The more we move into this project, the more convinced I am that First Run is *not* the place where we hand hold people through a "how to use the browser" experience, and instead that teaching people How To Use Things comes in the form of these contextual tips. And given that, we leave our First Run experience to be more about welcoming people to the browser and helping them set up Sync. 

Luke Wroblewski actually had a realy great video about this very topic recently. http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1878

Comment 5

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

(In reply to Ian Barlow (:ibarlow) from comment #4)
> (In reply to Chenxia Liu [:liuche] from comment #1)
> 
> > One thing we talked about is reconsidering a very explicit notification
> > explicit (text in an arrow dropdown) or just a one-time thing that makes the
> > tab tray more visible (highlight) so that we run less of a risk of being
> > considered "annoying."

I think some hints are good, but to avoid approaching a "Clippy"-like situation is also very important (like you've pointed out:). Also, maybe we want to consider what hints would function/look like system wide before nailing down a specific "text in an arrow dropdown" visual because it seems like it would be destined for a very specific interaction.

> Yeah, definitely worth exploring our options here. We could also look at
> ways of making the "new tab in background" icon animation a little more
> distinct and whimsical to draw more attention to it. 

I agree - I think this falls into the category of "improvements to the interactions of opening a new private/tab". If we can make this interaction better, we can bring both context and whimsy to the user. 

> > I would question how effective teaching during first run actually is. Do
> > people take the time to go through first run tutorials? How much of that
> > information sticks, especially if you're exposed to several new gestures and
> > features all at once?
> 
> Yeah, I agree. The more we move into this project, the more convinced I am
> that First Run is *not* the place where we hand hold people through a "how
> to use the browser" experience, and instead that teaching people How To Use
> Things comes in the form of these contextual tips. And given that, we leave
> our First Run experience to be more about welcoming people to the browser
> and helping them set up Sync. 

Fair points - I just wanted to point out that it sounds like this "hint" would surface itself on first run, AND subsequently right after they go through it since at that point they would have "no tabs" or "have not opened the tray before".

Comment 6

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

Maybe this is a separate bug, but we've also previously talked about doing something like what Desktop does when a download is started. i.e. We could animate the link shrinking up into the tabs button (we may have to scroll the toolbar into view at the same time as well for this to work...) This button is actually a little bit similar to the downloads indicator, so I wonder if there are good lessons there...

Comment 7

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

(In reply to Wesley Johnston (:wesj) from comment #6)
> Maybe this is a separate bug, but we've also previously talked about doing
> something like what Desktop does when a download is started. i.e. We could
> animate the link shrinking up into the tabs button (we may have to scroll
> the toolbar into view at the same time as well for this to work...) This
> button is actually a little bit similar to the downloads indicator, so I
> wonder if there are good lessons there...

Maybe!

But I'd like to focus us back to our v1 tips goals here, and make sure we are addressing the issues we know our users are having, and also not bombarding them with tip after tip just because we can.

In https://mobile.etherpad.mozilla.org/feedback-prioritization we agreed to focus on the following areas: 
* A "try reader mode tip" (bug 1011712)
* A "try private browsing" tip (bug 1014293 and bug 1002303)
* And a "swipe left and right to find your history and bookmarks" tip on about:home (mockup here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=998036#c2 though no dedicated bug that I can see yet) 

I'd like us to really focus down and get those all feeling nice -- and hooked up to telemetry so we can measure their impact -- and then move on to other potential areas where we can help people. 

Besides, I imagine some of our new telemetry stuff that is moving its way up the trains will also teach us about user pain points that we haven't even heard from feedback yet. So, let's take it slow and steady, and make sure we are solving the right problems :)

Comment 8

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.