UX powerups for your Drupal install

I’m reporting from Drupalcamp London 2015, which was held on the 28th of February to 1st of March at City University London.

So, I did a talk. Hope the people who attended it liked the GIFs (and the talk).

Enjoying the Mario animate gif this morning at @vickytnz UX power ups talk #dclondon pic.twitter.com/O9YNPpspR8

— Eudy Mahoney (@EudyMahoney) March 2, 2015

It would be a little narcissistic do a writeup on my own talk, especially when notes are available.

(I was sad that my talk clashed with a content strategy talk, dammit. And against people just staying in their hotels nursing post-Saturday hangovers, double dammit).

Thanks to the people that said nice things on twitter (and blogs) about the talk.

Some things that came up in the questions were:

1. Content migration tools – there were a few people asking about gathercontent – it’s something we’ve wanted to use at OB but haven’t really had a chance to implement on. However, some people in the audience had used it and had only good things to say about it – apparently there are now Drupal and Worpress plugins/modules for it as well.
2. Changes to individual labels  and microcopy – someone in the audience asked a specific question about being able to change copy on buttons on a page by page basis for end users. I have to admit that this isn’t something I’ve had experience with, but it sounds like a great idea.
3. Tom Banko noted in his talk on Saturday about being careful with the stylesheet module as it can inject extra CSS and screw things up. While this doesn’t appear to affect what I recommended it for – checking notifications – it’s worth keeping in mind. He creates a standalone /styles page that can be openly accessed (not unlike what Lonely Planet do) to make the style taxonomy easily available.
4. Who is the end user anyway? One audience member rightly noted that for websites (and particularly Drupal sites) the end users are also CMS authors. I held off on this area just to be specific, but this was well covered by both Paul Rowell on Saturday, but also Jeni Tehan at other conferences.
5. Using device labs: I forgot to mention this in my talk but there’s a movement for openly available (or very cheap to hire) device labs, usually housed at universities.

Anyone who saw the talk and had feedback and/or suggestions on modules or other things they’d like to hear about at other DrupalCamps etc, please let me know!