Test user understanding of the difference between Modules and Recipes

I'd like to be very clear for folks coming in here:

This is NOT the issue to invent a new name for extensions (including modules and recipes). It's just about doing the research to find where the disconnect is for users, and how to improve it. If you have insights that might help that cause, welcome! But let's skip any naming discussions for now.

Research has indicated that users who are either non-technical or unfamiliar with Drupal (including technically skilled users without Drupal expertise) struggle to differentiate between the concepts of “Modules” and “Recipes.”

Is there a citation for this? I'd need to read the initial research before I could be very useful to this issue, but I'd like to be.

Research completed and documented here:
Visit Testing understanding of ‘Extend’, ‘Recipes’ and ‘Modules’.

Thanks for the write-up this is really helpful.

The perceptions of 'modules' and 'recipes' seems mostly fine for me or even quite good?

Even the concept of modules being 'in the background' and requiring no intervention is true for some modules - zero-configuration modules like big pipe, or plugin-providing modules like telephone you don't have to explicitly configure at all. Some other modules have configuration pages that can mostly be left alone. Modules that require configuration to do anything at all could potentially recommend quick-start recipes on their homepages eventually or may already be used by recipes/default config on the site like Views.

Recipes suggesting instructions is interesting as well - technically this is the design of recipes under the hood, it's just that most of the time it does those instructions on your behalf, more like an ingredients list on a takeaway menu... but because recipes can accept user input now there's some element of wizards involved which might match the expectation more.

Adding 🐛 Missing information about the version of the project going to be installed Active as a related issue which is trying to add more information about the consequences of installing modules via project browser, but this applies just as much to modules pulled in by recipes too.

emma horrell → credited bruna.sd → .

emma horrell → credited dead_arm → .

emma horrell → credited jwitkowski79 → .

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.