Merge pull request #577 from olekzabl/sprint

Add notes from the design sprint of 23 Mar 2016.

Author: bryk

docs/design/sprints/scale_ux_20160323.md

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+# Kubernetes Dashboard Design Sprint (Łódź, Poland, 23 Mar 2016)
+
+## People
+@bryk, @cheld, @digitalfishpond, @floreks, @maciaszczykm, @olekzabl, @zreigz
+
+## Goals
+Sketch the directions of the development of the UI to achieve:
+* scalability for the variety of types of K8s objects we want to handle
+(currently: replication controllers & pods;
+desired: replica sets, daemon sets, container, nodes, volumes, secrets, deployments etc.)
+* scalability for the number of such objects
+(currently: cards are suitable for <20 objects; desired: show >100 pods in a nice way)
+* good UX for various use cases
+(monitor, debug, deploy, explore)
+* more aware about namespaces
+
+## Agenda
+* agree on the meeting’s goals
+* split into 3 groups - propose a general UX vision - discuss them together, unify
+* split again - sketch the system in more detail - discuss, unify
+* split once more - sketch a chosen page, in yet more detail - discuss
+* decide when and how to publish the results
+
+## Decisions
+
+### General navigation
+* constant, basic-purpose navigation menu on the left, containing:
+  - items describing important _classes_ (coarser than _types_) of objects e.g. “apps”, “services”, “config”
+  - under them, sub-items describing _types_ of objects
+  - possibly, other special buttons, e.g. “resource explorer”
+  - possibly, minimizable
+
+* context-dependent action bar on the top (below the main “K8s” bar)
+  - buttons for basic actions, e.g. “create”, “edit”, “delete”
+
+* namespace switcher on the main “K8s” bar
+  - single namespace / all namespaces / multi-choice / filter
+  - shall it be visible also on the object details page?
+
+### Cards
+* will be generally replaced by table rows
+* possibly thicker to contain few more data items and/or some graphs
+* much more clear sorting; sort triggered by clicking on column name
+* easier pagination
+
+### Home page
+* does no more list all objects (or RCs) in the cluster
+* instead, it shows:
+  - important messages (errors/warnings/suggestions)
+  - a few selected objects (last visited/most visited/most important)
+
+### Details page of an object
+* general requirements:
+  - has possibly (but reasonably) unique design across various object types
+  - allows convenient navigation to all _directly related_ objects;
+by this we mean e.g. that a pod shows links to all volumes it uses, and conversely, a volume shows links to all pods using it
+  - contains a number of sections (described below); 
+some of them may be moved to other tabs if everything does not fit in one page
+(e.g. we will need several tabs for RCs, but not for secrets)
+
+* section (main tab): a brief description of the object status
+  - for a simple object, this contains all its properties
+  - for a more complex one, this contains most important properties, while all properties are gathered in another tab of the page
+
+* section (main tab): visual summaries for all directly related objects (aggregated by type)
+  - example: for a RC, these could be activity graphs of all involved pods, volumes, services etc.
+
+* section (main tab, bottom): navigation links to directly related objects
+  - grouped by type 
+  - each type is headed by a user-friendly description of type, and of the relation to the current object (e.g. '_volumes mounted to_ this pod', '_pods mounting_ this volume', etc.)
+  - limited to e.g. 10 top items, to make them all fit in one page
+(this has the form of a table, so clicking column names allows adjusting the meaning of “top”)
+  - if there are more related objects of some type, we provide a link to the list of all of them (see below)
+
+* other sections (main or additional tab): history, logs, (more?)
+
+### Summary page for objects of type X
+* can be:
+  - global (with namespace restriction applied), reachable by left menu panel
+  - scoped (all objects of type X related to object O), reachable from O details page
+* similar visual design to the object details page
+* upper section: general metrics of involved objects
+* lower section: list of all involved objects, tabularized
+
+### Supplementary ideas, questions etc.
+* resource explorer
+  - goal: give a larger-scale insight into cluster structure (beyond “directly related” links)
+  - shall easily support filtering
+  - two considered views: 
+    - “filebrowser view”: very compact but difficult to model all relations in a cluster
+  (a volume may have many pods mounting it as “parents”; network communication between pods is not at all a “parent-child-sibling” relation)
+    - “graph visualization”
+  - in any view, exploring may be enhanced by showing an additional details preview side-by-side
+
+* error messaging policy
+On the details page of a RC, do we want to show that 3 out of 100 its volumes are broken?
+Is this important enough? Generally, what is sufficiently important? How do we decide on this?
+
+## Images
+
+![Image 1](scale_ux_20160323_a.JPG)
+![Image 2](scale_ux_20160323_b.JPG)
+

docs/design/sprints/scale_ux_20160323.md~

@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+# Kubernetes Dashboard Design Sprint (Łódź, Poland, 23 Mar 2016)
+
+## People
+@bryk, @cheld, @digitalfishpond, @floreks, @maciaszczykm, @olekzabl, @zreigz
+
+## Goals
+Sketch the directions of the development of the UI to achieve:
+* scalability for the variety of types of K8s objects we want to handle
+(currently: replication controllers & pods;
+desired: replica sets, daemon sets, container, nodes, volumes, secrets, deployments etc.)
+* scalability for the number of such objects
+(currently: cards are suitable for <20 objects; desired: show >100 pods in a nice way)
+* good UX for various use cases
+(monitor, debug, deploy, explore)
+* more aware about namespaces
+
+## Agenda
+* agree on the meeting’s goals
+* split into 3 groups - propose a general UX vision - discuss them together, unify
+* split again - sketch the system in more detail - discuss, unify
+* split once more - sketch a chosen page, in yet more detail - discuss
+* decide when and how to publish the results
+
+## Decisions
+
+### General navigation
+* constant, basic-purpose navigation menu on the left, containing:
+  - items describing important _classes_ (coarser than _types_) of objects e.g. “apps”, “services”, “config”
+  - under them, sub-items describing _types_ of objects
+  - possibly, other special buttons, e.g. “resource explorer”
+  - possibly, minimizable
+
+* context-dependent action bar on the top (below the main “K8s” bar)
+  - buttons for basic actions, e.g. “create”, “edit”, “delete”
+
+* namespace switcher on the main “K8s” bar
+  - single namespace / all namespaces / multi-choice / filter
+  - shall it be visible also on the object details page?
+
+### Cards
+* will be generally replaced by table rows
+* possibly thicker to contain few more data items and/or some graphs
+* much more clear sorting; sort triggered by clicking on column name
+* easier pagination
+
+### Home page
+* does no more list all objects (or RCs) in the cluster
+* instead, it shows:
+  - important messages (errors/warnings/suggestions)
+  - a few selected objects (last visited/most visited/most important)
+
+### Details page of an object
+* general requirements:
+  - has possibly (but reasonably) unique design across various object types
+  - allows convenient navigation to all _directly related_ objects;
+by this we mean e.g. that a pod shows links to all volumes it uses, and conversely, a volume shows links to all pods using it
+  - contains a number of sections (described below); 
+some of them may be moved to other tabs if everything does not fit in one page
+(e.g. we will need several tabs for RCs, but not for secrets)
+
+* section (main tab): a brief description of the object status
+  - for a simple object, this contains all its properties
+  - for a more complex one, this contains most important properties, while all properties are gathered in another tab of the page
+
+* section (main tab): visual summaries for all directly related objects (aggregated by type)
+  - example: for a RC, these could be activity graphs of all involved pods, volumes, services etc.
+
+* section (main tab, bottom): navigation links to directly related objects
+  - grouped by type 
+  - each type is headed by a user-friendly description of type, and of the relation to the current object (e.g. '_volumes mounted to_ this pod', '_pods mounting_ this volume', etc.)
+  - limited to e.g. 10 top items, to make them all fit in one page
+(this has the form of a table, so clicking column names allows adjusting the meaning of “top”)
+  - if there are more related objects of some type, we provide a link to the list of all of them (see below)
+
+* other sections (main or additional tab): history, logs, (more?)
+
+### Summary page for objects of type X
+* can be:
+  - global (with namespace restriction applied), reachable by left menu panel
+  - scoped (all objects of type X related to object O), reachable from O details page
+* similar visual design to the object details page
+* upper section: general metrics of involved objects
+* lower section: list of all involved objects, tabularized
+
+### Supplementary ideas, questions etc.
+* resource explorer
+  - goal: give a larger-scale insight into cluster structure (beyond “directly related” links)
+  - shall easily support filtering
+  - two considered views: 
+    - “filebrowser view”: very compact but difficult to model all relations in a cluster
+  (a volume may have many pods mounting it as “parents”; network communication between pods is not at all a “parent-child-sibling” relation)
+    - “graph visualization”
+  - in any view, exploring may be enhanced by showing an additional details preview side-by-side
+
+* error messaging policy
+On the details page of a RC, do we want to show that 3 out of 100 its volumes are broken?
+Is this important enough? Generally, what is sufficiently important? How do we decide on this?
+
+## Images
+
+![Image 1](scale_ux_20160323_a.JPG)
+![Image 2](scale_ux_20160323_b.JPG)
+