Nextcloud Files : Poor UX for indication of sharing origins and locking in list mode

[Jerome-Herbinet]

In the file list, the profile picture (or initials, if there is no profile picture) of the user responsible for sharing and/or locking appears on the line of the file(s) concerned.

The problem is that unless you hover the cursor over the profile image, you don't actually know what it corresponds to, and so you wonder why these profile images appear.

Historically, it seems to me that the image of the user behind a share has been appearing in Nextcloud for a long time, and this is acceptable if it's the only case where it appears. But in my opinion it becomes a big UI/UX problem when two images appear side by side, one concerning the received share and the other concerning the lock, because as already said, unless you hover over them, you have no direct and intuitive way of knowing what they mean...

I think the interface needs to be improved here to make things clearer and more precise; for example, a padlock and a share icon should be added somewhere, respectively in the areas where the share sender and lock initiator are displayed. This applies even if there is only one share and no lock, or vice versa. In other words, the profile image should no longer be left alone without any visual explanation, and from a UI/UX point of view, a simple tooltip at the cursor position is insufficient, even if there's a notion of the column to help understand what it's all about.

The share and/or lock icon should be displayed as an overlay on top-right of the profile or initial image (with a higher z-index).

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[Jerome-Herbinet]

@nextcloud/designers

[jancborchardt]

We could show a little "Edit" pencil icon (or pencil lock icon) on the bottom right of the avatar of the person who is responsible for locking the file?

Also yes, a viable alternative would be to just show the lock icon and not any avatar for the person who locked it – wasn’t this how it was before @juliushaertl? Cause those details are shown in the action menu.

[juliusknorr]

The reason we switched to an avatar was to differentiate between a user lock and a collaborative lock while potentially multiple people are in text or Collabora.

But I see this might be confusing, maybe we use those instead

Manual user lock https://pictogrammers.com/library/mdi/icon/account-lock/
Collaborative lock https://pictogrammers.com/library/mdi/icon/pencil-lock/

What do you think about that?

[jancborchardt]

@juliushaertl does a manual user lock expire after some time (30 mins)? If so I would say let’s use these:

• Manual lock: https://fonts.google.com/icons?icon.set=Material+Symbols&icon.size=24&icon.color=%235f6368&selected=Material+Symbols+Outlined:lock_clock:FILL@1;wght@400;GRAD@0;opsz@24&icon.query=lock
• Collaborative lock: https://fonts.google.com/icons?icon.set=Material+Symbols&icon.size=24&icon.color=%235f6368&selected=Material+Symbols+Outlined:lock_person:FILL@1;wght@400;GRAD@0;opsz@24&icon.query=lock

Please note we should use the original Material Symbols rather than Pictogrammers to look for icons, as sooner or later we need to move over.

[juliusknorr]

@juliushaertl does a manual user lock expire after some time (30 mins)? If so I would say let’s use these:

By default not, but can be configured by admins. We can use this one when a timeout is configured but the lock_person one does not fit well in my opinion.

[jancborchardt]

@juliushaertl ok, then I’m fine going with your icon suggestions. :)

[juliusknorr]

@jancborchardt Since we recently had discussions in our planning call around if we want to work towards indicating currently active users on a document rather then share owner, maybe we should actually reconsider showing the avatar there for the share itself?

Ref nextcloud/server#43763 (comment)

• Indicate active collaboration in the files list (for text/collabora/whiteboard)
  • Partly already there with files_lock app but not real time

[jancborchardt]

@juliushaertl right, but I would say let's get that collaborator display implemented before we get rid of the share owner display. Otherwise we'll have no avatar indicator and that's also not nice.