Improvement for Plugin Installations / Updates

Hey,

I’ve been installing and updating a few plugins lately. The process is straight forward but the UI is left behind. It’s 2015 and even “slow and cheap” hosting plans are fast enough. Certainly faster compared to what we had back in the day. The installation / update page for plugins hasn’t changed much but hosting did.

Today the experience of installing / updating a plugin is the following: A bunch of text appears at once on the screen. There is some waiting time. Plugin installed / updated. Further action might be needed.

The design of the experience assumes the hosting server is slow enough so every step of the process needs to be expressed and explained. Downloading, unpacking, installing, removing etc.

What if we could simplified this process with a familiar concept which is also used in the mobile world? A progress bar.

The experience is simple, clean, understandable, familiar.

Since the steps of installing / updating a plugin are discrete the progress bar can increase accordingly. Any waiting time is clearly indicated and understood with the % of progress and bar’s length. Errors can be communicated with color and current strings / messages.

I created a quick mockup based on this idea. Food for thought. Let me know what you think. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kcwe3sk5yyj7swf/AABU_Nyr8zJQIvcS5hzi4bwWa?dl=0

Top is the current UI. Bottom is the new concept UI.