Usability & Design Improvements - start here!

Start here for:

• Ideas on design or user experience improvements, including usability bugs
• Research and discussion for implementing larger design changes or ideas

Topic

During the first few months of 2026, two groups of students from a graduate course on usability studies are working on usability research for the p5.js website. This analysis includes user studies. The result will inform what work will be prioritized on the website, and opened to contribution.

Updates will be shared on this issue, so you can "watch" it if interested. Many thanks to all who have already participated in the user studies, and everyone who is interested but has not yet shared their experience will be invited to discuss the outcomes of the research when they are shared.

If you're a designer, educator, and/or anyone who uses the website and would like to be part of this effort, I hope you stay tuned here!

Another way to get involved and help right away is to look through past open issues or PRs, especially ones that got stuck in review and/or are proposing significant changes to design or function of the site (for example: related to the "search" function), and mention them in the comments below.

Research Reports

(more coming soon, both reports and further detail, analysis, and data)

[1] Presentation by Abdulrahman Alobaid, Bill White, Chad Brandon, Su Min Kim
[2] Report by Lina Wang, Nara Ho, Riti Upadhyay, Sifan Xue
[3] Report by Abdulrahman Alobaid, Bill White, Chad Brandon, Su Min Kim

Besides analyzing the site as it is, I hope these reports can help us test usability in the future. Additional to reports the students have also shared their protocols and other materials, which we can reuse, and which I will link.

Please reference the reports in the comments using "[1]" or "[2]". I'll keep the numbers above consistent. Thank you!

Start by reading the linked usability research reports [1], [2], and [3], then review the discussion and related website issues or pull requests mentioned in the issue. This issue is gathering research and ideas rather than naming a specific change, so completion depends on future prioritization and separate actionable issues.