Broad Ideas for Usability

[rosstroha]

For context, this is the Discord message that inspired this discussion

I don't want to come off the wrong way, but I do wish the terminology was more user-friendly. And it kinda seems like a lot of it is up to the manufacturer, too. There's just a lot of technical implementation details in the UI

Problem: Manufacturer chosen naming and terminology, that regular users would find confusing, ends up in the UI.

What does EP2 or Lifeline mean?!

My ideas:

1. Include hover-over hints and/or inline explanations of features, terminology, etc. in more places. When viewing a node, the Values header could state that the values are populated from the device. The implication being that Z-Wave JS is only showing what it's given. This might help people understand why some nodes have certain values and why other nodes might not.
2. Glossary - it could help explain what an Endpoint is in relation to a Node, let's say (and that a Node is essentially a device). Or it could define Association and its implications (like if two endpoints are associated, it means one can control the other). Maybe visual diagrams of the hierarchy, too?
3. Guides - Basically, how-to's for popular configurations. Grouping nodes or... how to figure out which endpoint to use when creating an association or... How to setup scenes in Home Assistant using Z-Wave JS.
4. Link to relevant docs in the UI - ex. add a docs link on the Scenes page which explains what it's used for, as well as how to use it.
5. The docs for the developer and user-side of things need to be distinguished, in my opinion. I googled "z-wave js docs" and the first hit is the page for node-zwave-js which isn't what a typical user needs. Maybe the various documentation pages can link to each other via a message at the top pointing people in the correct direction.

These ideas are only bandaids, though.

The only other idea I had to actually solve this problem is to create "translations" that would normalize the terminology. This seems like a huge task to me, though.