One of the goals for 3.5 is to redesign and improve the workflows for uploading and selecting media in WordPress. Over the next week or so, we’ll be working to flesh out exactly what this will entail from both a technical and design perspective.
Scope
To ensure we stay on track, our focus and top priority is to improve the “Upload/Insert” modal window. Anything outside of that modal UI is technically out of scope — nice to have, but by no means necessary.
For the 3.5 cycle, we have allotted two months for feature development. Due to the size of this project, a lot will be going on at once. Development on basic structures will begin this week.
What can I do?
Over the next few days, feel free to comment with:
- Ideas
- User tests (for the current UI)
- Concepts and wireframes (quick sketches or text descriptions, it’s all good)
Keep in mind…
We should also be keeping an eye towards the future: we should build modular components that can be adapted for other workflows and potentially be reused in inline UIs.
The media modal currently covers media in posts, galleries, custom headers, and custom backgrounds. Several elements in the modal also blend into the media section of the admin.
Most workflows include a handful of processes:
- Uploading media.
- Selecting item(s) from the media library.
- Editing media details (both item-specific and workflow-specific).
I highly recommend reviewing our current media model. It is fairly complex, and reducing it to a simple system will be quite the challenge.
Let’s talk!
If you’d like to chat with myself and other UI team members about media, comment here, or ping us in #wordpress-ui (especially during office hours).