Optimized attach/create workflow for relationships (with Scribble)

Motivation

Adding a relationship with “Inline Entity Form” is easy, but in my opinion requires too many button clicks at the moment. (The current system is around 4 steps, the new proposed system is around 1 step)

I created a scribble which shows my proposed feature to optimize this. (See attached screenshot)

Use case: "Add Movie"

The user wants to add a “movie” but does not know if it already exists. If the user does't find an existing movie, the user wants to create it. The following steps are required to do this in the current system.

Current system: 4 steps to achieve the goal

1. User clicks on “Add existing movie” button, modal opens.
2. In the modal, the user clicks in the search field, searches for the movie. No result
3. User clicks "Cancel" button to close the modal
4. User clicks on the “Add new node” button

New system: 1 step to reach the goal

1. User clicks in the autocomplete search field and searches for the movie. Autocomplete returns: “This movie does not exist. Create a new movie?” - The user selects this option and creates the movie

Proposed resolution

The idea is to add a search form above the list of attached relationships. This form contains an autocomplete search box and an “Add new” button. (see attached screenshot)

New field: "Autocomplete search" field

• The user can enter a movie name into the autocomplete search field. The search result is displayed in a selection list.
• - Result found: If the user's search shows a result, the user clicks on the result and it is added to the list
• - No result: If the search does not return a result, a message is displayed: “This movie does not exist. Are you creating a new movie?” - Clicking on this entry creates a new movie entry.
• Initially clicking into the search field automatically displays x results in the dropdown to make it more accessible UX wise. (like the contrib module “Autocomplete Deluxe”)

New field: "Add new" button

If the user already knows that there is no specific result, he can click directly on the “Add new” button.

Final thoughts

I think, this feature will streamline the content creation process with “Inline Entity Form”.

Hope, somebody think, this is a useful feature to implement.

Best, Andreas

Note: Maybe somebody proposed the same feature in the past. I searched of it, but I don't find it in the open issues.