Usability & Design Improvements - start here!

[ksen0]

Start here for:

• Ideas on design or user experience improvements, including usability bugs
• Research and discussion for implementing larger design changes or ideas

Topic

During the first few months of 2026, two groups of students from a graduate course on usability studies are working on usability research for the p5.js website. This analysis includes user studies. The result will inform what work will be prioritized on the website, and opened to contribution.

Updates will be shared on this issue, so you can "watch" it if interested. Many thanks to all who have already participated in the user studies, and everyone who is interested but has not yet shared their experience will be invited to discuss the outcomes of the research when they are shared.

If you're a designer, educator, and/or anyone who uses the website and would like to be part of this effort, I hope you stay tuned here!

Another way to get involved and help right away is to look through past open issues or PRs, especially ones that got stuck in review and/or are proposing significant changes to design or function of the site (for example: related to the "search" function), and mention them in the comments below.

Research Reports

(more coming soon, both reports and further detail, analysis, and data)

[1] Presentation by Abdulrahman Alobaid, Bill White, Chad Brandon, Su Min Kim
[2] Report by Lina Wang, Nara Ho, Riti Upadhyay, Sifan Xue
[3] Report by Abdulrahman Alobaid, Bill White, Chad Brandon, Su Min Kim

Besides analyzing the site as it is, I hope these reports can help us test usability in the future. Additional to reports the students have also shared their protocols and other materials, which we can reuse, and which I will link.

Please reference the reports in the comments using "[1]" or "[2]". I'll keep the numbers above consistent. Thank you!

[ksen0]

@SableRaf's comments:

1. (over Discord) on [1] recommendation of educational resource being made top-level: "I’d suggest making it a “Teach” page rather than “educational resources” to keep it consistent with the rest of the menu."
2. Consider adding Fathom analytics

My additional observations:

1. Another note: the reference breadcrumb is not meaningful for p5.sound.
2. Offline download should be reinstated

[Nishthajain7]

We could improve the scrollability on the NavPanel by moving some elements outside the panel. One way to do this is by moving out the Start coding and Donate buttons so that the same space can be used to extend the Jump to Section and there is no need to scroll down. Reference Figma

Can I create a new issue for this so that more ideas can be discussed

[ksen0]

HI @Nishthajain7 yes please feel free to create a new issue and link it here. (If you can't make it a "sub-issue" of the current issue, no worries, I can add it.) In terms of the design: I think "search" in top right does make sense; so: Language | Accessibility | Start Coding | Donate | Search. I think keeping the behavior where in mobile these 2 buttons are hidden, but it may take a bit of effort to make that work. Because it's a pretty major design change, please keep in mind that even if it works well technically, it may take a while to get merged in order to get feedback. Thanks again for the proposal!

[Nishthajain7]

I do not have access to create sub-issues. Here is the link to the new issue I created. I would be a little busy with exams in the upcoming week but I'll try to work around the behavior for mobiles. In the meantime, I'll wait for feedbacks and ideas from others as well.