RE: Pre-CFC - Redundant entry

NB: If we get stuck on this, I’d be inclined to fall-back to the plain-English version of ‘steps’ that we started with and explain it in the understanding doc.

I see Andrew’s point, and I agree with Detlev about granularity (which wasn’t an issue if you don’t define step). If we considered these things in a hierarchy, it would probably be something like this:

Level 1: Process
  Level 2: Pages/views
     Level 3: Accordion or similar show/hide widget within a page (optionally, not all pages use this)
        Level 4: Inputs on a page/view
           Level 5: User action (to fill in an input, you could even interpret that as a letter at a time?)

Of course, previously it didn’t matter and you could consider a user-action at a higher level.

We were aiming to put ‘steps’ above level 4, i.e. above the input level, but below whatever thing(s) you have to navigate between to show the inputs.

I tried adjusting the definition of process, but the problem is that all of these terms (actions, tasks, etc) are used in various ways, I don’t think there is a perfect (or even suitable) term for what we want that is sufficiently clear.

Instead, how about taking out the reference to ‘actions’, so:
Step in a process: a set of user-interface controls where selecting a link or button is required to reach another set of user-interface controls in the same process

Cheers,

-Alastair


From: Detlev Fischer

To me, a “step in a process” feels not as fine-grained as each individual user action in it - it seems to refer to the way longer processes are compartmentalized by the author into several pages or views (often with a sequential navigation) or into several (expanded or injected) segments of a form. It might then be advantageous to define ‘process’ as “an interaction consisting of one or more tasks” (like ‘provide contact info’, ‘provide shipping address’, ‘provide payment details‘, etc.) rather than as ‘a series of user actions’. That definition seems to lose the level of granularity that we need.


I don’t understand why “steps in a process” is a “set of controls to achieve particular user-actions” – that doesn’t’ square with the definition of process.

Process: series of user actions where each action is required in order to complete an activity

Why isn’t “step in a process”: A single user action in a series which is required to complete an activity