jupyterlab/design/launcher.md

Design of the launcher plugin

This document describes the design of the launcher plugin. This document illustrates how our research on personas and other solutions translates into the design decisions made to improve the launcher plugin.

Personas

William Shar

William Shar is a high school student who has learned to code in his own time through taking codeschool classes. He was told about JupyterLab from his older brother and decided to try it out.

Goal: Utilize launcher as the main way to open new documents

User tasks

Users should be able to:

• See the Launcher as the only open tab when JupyterLab starts
• Immediately open a document/activity of different types (click on icon)
  • Notebook
  • Terminal
  • Text editor
  • Console
• Open the JupyterLab Tour (button or link)
• Close the Launcher (x button)
• Reopen the Launcher if closed and have it be the active tab/panel (Jupyter menu, command)
• See the Launcher when they have multiple tabs open (it should be named “Launcher”)

Visual design

• Work with Matt on icon design for 4 activity types.
• “Take a tour” text underneath icons in launcher

Design questions

• Should the launcher show only when there are not tabs/panels open?