2020-04-21

Feedback is not the enemy

Feedback on ns-testimonial

Development

Following the demo and discussion yesterday afternoon I'd like to add a little feedback on a couple of points.

We discussed the mandatory and optional fields of this component, the single piece which is mandatory is the quote, the remaining fields are considered optional.

I'd like to suggest that we distil this component to this mandatory requirement, and present it as: <ns-quote> with a variant of type="testimonial". Within this variant we can define the additional mandatory fields that serve the purpose of a testimonial which may include author and medium.

This could allow for the evolution and additional variants where the foundation is a quote.

Here are a few definitions that I used as reference for this feedback:

quote

n. To repeat or copy the words of (a person or a book or other source).

testimonial

n. Something given in appreciation of a person's service or achievement; a tribute.

excerpt

n. A passage or segment taken from a longer work, such as a literary or musical composition, a document, or a film.

Design

I'd like to raise a few points with regards to the proposed designs.

3A I appreciate that this has the appearance of a speech bubble with a friendly and personal touch.

1. The vertically centered content isn't familiar and isn't something that I'd like to see introduced.

2. The quote mark in the circle is introducing an additional foundational element that does not yet exist. If this type of circle element is introduced it may be sensible to consider to introduce this as an additional foundation to accompany our icons and illustrations.

3. The distance between the end of the quote and the author in some cases may be considered to be an accessibility failure. We know that it's important for associated content to live in close proximity.

4. Consider the responsive design and how these may stack vertically. If these were to stack naturally the circle of the second and third card will be very close to the authors' name associated with the card above. This issue has presented itself when designing the section card and the ns-selector with illustration where the solution is to position the illustration to the top right corner (which would could be inappropriate in this case). And neither of these components had content outside of the card at the bottom.

5. Minimum and maximum copy length and how this affects it's appearance when displayed.

3B

I agree that this version is less friendly and lacks personality compared to the other but it does alleviate a few of the concerns raised above.

1. Its content is top aligned and as there's no card, the space beneath doesn't appear awkwardly.

2. The circle does not feature here, which would remove the requirement to discover a new foundational element. It would make sense to align the size and position of the quote mark with our modular scale.

3. The distance between the quote and the author is consistent and in close proximity, so the accessibility concern isn't relevant here.

4. There may well be a similar situation responsively where the quotes could clash with the card above but it's less likely to cause an issue as the author is adjacent to the quote.

5. The minimum and maximum copy length will always be an issue when these are adjacent to each other. However, in this design it is less likely to result in an awkward appearance.