I wish I knew to join this community couple of years ago!
Here is my few pennies.
(when I say "you" below, I mean Moodle - so this is not personal)
> The results of the research showed that 3 levels of hierarchy were more
than enough for them and the majority of users they spoke to, and that's
why we decided to only apply one level of indentation in the
>short-term
solution. We have the section/topic (1st level), followed by the
activity without indentation (2nd level) and lastly the indented
activity (3rd level). Indentation was removed in 4.0 due to the multiple
>accessibility and usability issues that was causing, and as some of the
users pointed in this thread, indentation is not a good solution to
create proper structure in a course.
1) We at 2024 now, no indentation at my place has returned, not even one, not sure what version do we use, but most likely updated before the fall semester.
2) While I agree with 3 levels, I count it very differently then you - I don't know what is section in your terminology, but in topic format I do not count topic as an indentation, I start counting the indentation inside the topic. I can't say whether I used to more than 3 ever, I would definitely feel better with 3 rather with nothing that I still have, or even one.
3) What makes you think that interviewing 8 advanced users is an exhaustive research? This is a very superficial research (regardless of how many questions each of the 8 answered), it is not a statistically representative population, first because this is 8 out of millions, second not all users advanced as you wish. If you would know your users, you would understand that not everyone have enough time to make "perfect" design that no one needs. You would also learn that not all of your users intent to be course designers even in a long run. Some of us, if not the majority, need a fast, convenient and somewhat structured way to provide information to students, without thinking of "perfect" design.
4) If you didn't intend for the feature to be used as it actually used - learn from it, don't kill it!
5) Think about this, you had different ways to make a "better" design but a simple feature was used by millions. Instead of understanding needs of you users, you remove it. Now, instead of admitting your mistake and immediately return it (at least until we have a "better" solution\alternative in your opinion), you are
a) defend your brutal worst ever change by explaining why your decision is correct.
b) spend multiple years to create a "better", more complex and expensive feature(s?) that will probably solve the same problem, and hopefully will be used as you want it, if at all.
c) just neglected your users, and continue neglecting, to conclude it.
Rule of thumb - good user interface is when the user don't need to read tons of documentations to do what he needs immediately.
Videos is not the best documentation - reading is faster.
Why I adding videos here?
From the thread above I learned about "books" and "pages" (I actually considered pages in past, but it didn't work for me then) and googled for the information - I saw couple of similar videos which doesn't provide enough information, nor being able to convince me this is what I was missing all the time.
Regarding the vertical bloating.
If I'm on a computer, with a big monitor, which DOESN'T HAVE a touch-screen, why should I have activity use two of my fingers space?
How should this help me in any way?
When I try to zoom it - when the space is reasonable - I can't read it, and it hard impossible to find the golden ratio.
You can definitely know when user is on a smartphone and when on a computer, so there should not be an
issue with small touch screens.
Can you at least remove the extra space in editing mode?
Sorry for not being constructive, but I wish I could switch out of Moodle, the last time I loved it was more than 10 years ago.