I appreciate the ongoing effort put into the mobile markdown editor, so I figured maintainers might be interested in improving navigation too.
I'll be pointing out at some UX issues when trying to navigate in Joplin on mobile. Review is based on Joplin for Android 3.6.20.
Review
Notes and notebooks are hard to find
Joplin users might regularly miss either notes or notebooks. This happens when a notebook has subnotebooks.
When notebooks are collapsed, people may fall into either of those two caveats:
- Tapping the notebook name leads directly to the notes list, then the subnotebooks stay hidden and are missed out
2. Tapping the chevron expands the list of subnotebooks, then notes in the expanded notebook stay hidden and are missed out. Notes from the previously selected notebooks are shown instead
It is not clear that the notebook name and the chevron icon relate to separate actions. Also, the expectation of having a single action per line is reinforced by the desktop app.
Making actions more visually distinct could mitigate the issue, but it would still require people to *choose between two methods to open a notebook*.
Way too many things behave like notebooks
They look like a notebook, they slide in from the right like a notebook, they look like a list of notes like a notebook, but they are not notebooks. These features are implemented in a way that kind of break the spatial model of the app, and they certainly could use more appropriate design patterns.
New notebook
The “new notebook” actions doesn't look like a button, and is totaly disconnected from the notebooks list.
It is grouped with tags, profile, and settings, and closer to the trashbin than to the notebooks list.
Tags
Tags are hidden away from top level navigation
Contrary to notebooks, the sidebar holds a simple “Tags” line, which leads to a separate notes-like view. This differs from the desktop app where tags belong to the sidebar.
Profile
The “change profile” action has a few issues:
- between tags and preferences, it seems put in some random place.
- as it is unlikely to hold more than a couple of profiles, it replaces the current view with an almost empty screen
- it gives almost no clue about the current profile: one has to navigate to the profilr list, and look reallt carefully to notice the use if one slighty bolder typography for one of the items
- even the app itself doesn't seem to be aware of the current profile, as it will offer to restart itself when tapping the already in use profile
Settings
The settings page also slide in from the right, as if it was actual content.
Trash and conflicts management
Trash, conflicts and restored notes are blend into the user's notebooks list, while they would deserve their own categories.
Also, by just looking at it, it is note clear if restored notes are related to the trash or to the conflicting files.
Actions are hard to discover, outcomes are hard to predict
Notebook secondary actions
A part from expand and open, secondary actions are also hard to discover. Nothing indicates they exist, and users have to long press the notebook name.
Notes secondary actions
From the notes list, sorting the display order doesn't come as straight as expected:
- Icon is misleading, as it illustrates a filter rather than a sorting order. It makes wonder how filter and search differ in this context.
- In the popover, text is centered which makes it hard to read
- The sorting order options are not separated from checkboxes, which makes the overall harder to use
Actions for moving, copying or deleting notes are not discoverable. As with notebooks, only a long press will reveal those hidden actions.
What's next?
I've read here there were plans to update the mobile UI. However, I couldn't find any clue how big the update could be, if changes were envisioned only for the notes list or if there were broader goals, and what was the overall direction.
Meanwhile, Joplin contribution guidelines focus mostly on code, and a short bit on translations. It is perfectly silent about design contribution.
So, before jumping right into a proposaI, I would like to ask… How is it possible to contribute design work to Joplin? Are design contributions welcome?
Thanks for your consideration!