Workstation Help UX

[ninavizz]

This is a sub-task within #18 and #31

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Problem

When a journalist is using the Qubes Workstation and they see a "Help" or "Learn More" (or similar) link, what will their experience look like to access Help content? If/when contextual help panes are built-in and there's more to learn in a deep-dive, where might that content live locally, if anywhere?

Considerations

This screen is a first-jab from October 2018 explorations.

• Exposure to Read The Docs UI should be LAST RESORT solution
• Showing Help in a Disposable VM is the gist of the above.

Unsure what technical options might be available for contextual help, or something more integrated. Good thing to discuss sooner rather than later, as it's come-up in recent convos. /cc @eloquence @creviera @redshiftzero

Acceptance Criteria

• Clickable wireframe demonstrating interactivity
• Mockup(s) demonstrating VisDe treatment

[eloquence]

My own sense is that we should bias towards 2-3 paragraphs of in-context help using Qt's own rich-text widgets to cover common issues like:

• login failure due to 2FA token re-use
• password forgotten, need to ask admin to reset
• Whonix VM may need to be restarted.

Security considerations aside, launching a disposable VM - or any VM - carries a performance penalty that we may wish to avoid for these common context-sensitive usage tips.

[ninavizz]

Perfect! Far better experience than Disp-VM... not sure why I felt that was somehow a mandatory prerequ. I'll mock-up, accordingly...

[ninavizz]

First stab w/in VisDe direction for Client, explored in the context of network connection issues: https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/KXS6I4C4QA2#/screens/365077762

@eloquence I do feel pictures will be helpful in this window (as we did with low-fi illustrations on the Devices widget how-to in user testing), but did you still want to work forward in the direction you proposed in Feb? @creviera thoughts Queen QT?

[ninavizz]

@redshiftzero feedback on above screen: "Read Docs" button unlikely to work by GA or shortly post-GA, because that would require heavy lifting to provision a unique disp-VM template to allow for that.

Interim idea is to create a "Workstation Docs" menu option in the Qubes menu, or a desktop icon for the Workstation's RTD... but to also just get the content we do show here, really solid (cough, validated in testing).

[ninavizz]

Window Behavior

• Open triggered by a link or icon contextually nested within referenced functionality
• Read More button/link-out to docs not w/in scope for 2019/2020 given VM/security complexities
  • Local device mirroring of docs for offline access being explored, but—scopecreep
• Close triggered by either:
  • The "x" window's upper-right corner
  • The primary button at the bottom of the window
  • The user clicking anywhere outside the window, on the UI behind it
    • IMPORTANT: This is NOT a modal window. It is an overlay. Modals are easier for developers, but make users feel trapped. It is important to make neither the developers nor the users cry, in how we choose to implement this.

[ninavizz]

Iteration based on above feedback from 28 May: https://zpl.io/bWN9qp7

@eloquence Does this issue need any more design work, or could it go into review and/or closed?

[eloquence]

@ninavizz Do we have a Zeplin spec somewhere that shows a help overlay with example content, just so we can see margins and font specs?