Hello community comrades!
We've had a lot of great feedback about the Canvas Guides as we have transitioned them into this new community, from their original location at http://guides.instructure.com . While we have no current plans to retire the guides from their old location, we are still trying to optimize your experience while using the Canvas Guides within this new community.
Per numerous community requests, we have added index pages for each of the guides. w00t! These can be found in the Canvas Guides when you click on a guide link. A great new feature is that you now have an index/table of contents at the top of each guide index!
Our next step is to enhance the guides overview page to be more clean, and inviting. We also want to make sure we are providing the best links to the most important things that should be referenced in the guides. Now we need your help with the following:
- Please post before reading other comments
- Share your overall favorite of the three mockups listed below
- Tell us what you like about the following three mockups
- Tell us what we are missing (what other quick links/buttons would be most helpful, if any?)
- Tell us what could be improved
- Feel free to take a screenshot and rearrange buttons/links/etc, or provide other visual references to present a different approach that you feel might be better
We hope to have the new Guides Overview page go live on Wednesday, July 15th, so hurry and share your feedback, and encourage others to chime in as well (via @mentioning them.)
Onward and Upward!
This is beautiful work, Deactivated user, and much appreciated! I like the clean lines and clear visual separation afforded by the design of Guides Overview - SAMPLE 2 .
And while I'm here, I'd like to offer a shout-out to erinhallmark and the entire documentation team for putting in the hard work that is and will continue to be needed to maintain two separate sets of guides. Thanks! 
My initial pass Is to like #2. However I am looking via iPhone and nothing displays in portrait mode and landscape doesn't let you punch in or out to see the whole thing. Attached are the screen shots of the vertical display.
I particularly access via mobile often when I am in an instructors office and they want to know how do do things. It is easy to pull up the guide and send them the link. Mathis gives them a reference for after I leave and helps get them into the community .
Hey Jordan,
I would go with #2, I think the left side navigation makes the most sense in terms of thematic consistency with the platform. I also like the headers for different sections, makes navigation faster.
My only suggestion is a mash-up for #2 and #1 where the guide sections would have headers but be stacked, like this:
GUIDES BY ROLE (go with instructor, student, Admin, Observer order)
OTHER GUIDES
MOBILE GUIDES
-TED
In general I like where you've gone with the guides page and think they are all a big improvement from the current page. I liked the general layout of #1, but thought it was a bit crunched and seemed a bit busy in the middle. I could see some people not realizing that the bottom row was all mobile, which I think is an important distinction to make. Yet, I definitely like the guides in the middle with supporting documents on each side. I wasn't a huge fan of #2, wasn't sold on grouping by fours or the big extra space between the Search box and the guides, but if we had to pick one #2 is probably my top pick. As for my recommendation for the layout? Bits and pieces of #1 & #2, similar to @ted_coopman , see below:
.png "john_morris"){kind=avatar}
Overall favorite is Guide 3... here's my critique of each:
- Guide 1 - generally like the content available, but organization does not visually separate the guides by role from other items.
- Guide 2 - the organization is better, color and grouping with headings help me get quickly to the role that is of interest to me (instructor). Separating Other from Mobile guides is also useful. I don't like the four items on the left (Guides FAQ, etc) because they appear to be more like the Welcome items on the right. My eye moves from left-to-right and the guides are the primary reason I would be coming to this page, so having the guide buttons appear in my view first is preferred.
- Guide 3 - if this view had smaller button (like 1 and 2), this option would be perfect!
What's missing... probably doesn't relate to this project, but I miss having quick access from the top Canvas menu (#1). I would like to be able to access inbox and activity stream with fewer clicks. Otherwise, all of my frequently accessed resources are available here in these three versions.
Suggestions for improvement... the top four ribbons on the page (1 - grey Canvas menu, 2 - bright red heading graphic, 3 - darker red menu bar and 4 - the Search Canvas Guides field) take up too much visual real-estate on the webpage. I have a large screen and have to keep my resolution at 110% to see pages comfortably (old eyes), even with the browser at full size, I have to scroll to see the bottom half of the web page. It seems like these items can be further condensed since they are so universal throughout Jive. How about cutting the header graphic and menu bar (#2 and #3) and the search field (#4) in half horizontally (shorten left to right), then align the two side-by-side and make them slightly narrower (top to bottom).
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