Results from Kubuntu Install Usability Testing
In late April I managed a 3 teams of graduate students who conducted usability testing studies on the Kubuntu installation process. 9 participants of various backgrounds (including a computer science student and system administrator) were asked to install Kubuntu along side Windows. For the most part, the installation process only had minor issues which could easily be addressed, however, the partitioning process was a failure for all 9 participants. Partitioning was an unknown concept to all but two of the participants, but even those two participants (who had advanced computer knowledge) did not understand enough to complete the process. Issues with technical labels such as root and swap were difficult for all of the participants. This poses an interesting problem of trying to support less technical and more technical users when there is a large conceptual gap between the two groups of users.
Comments and questions are welcome. Many of the recommendations in the report are superficial — appropriate for the minor issues — and more planning and discussion will be necessary for the major issues.
Usability Testing of the Kubuntu Installation Process (PDF 1.4MB)
seele :: Jun.12.2007 :: General, KDE/Kubuntu, Usability :: 4 Comments »
Good to see that these issues are being addressed. I used to use Ubuntu on my old computer and the worst part of the setup (and the reason why Ubuntu isn’t on my current machine) is the whole issue with partitioning my drives.
I’m assuming Ubiqity is the same on Ubuntu and Kubuntu. I noticed Feisty has a different partitioner, Partman. I can’t stand it. GParted was much more intuitive. Drag the slider til it looks big enough OR enter numbers. Partman is all numbers. Not cool. I’d say for the naming on partitions, root could be “system” and swap could be “virtual memory” (as that’s what it is). /var and /usr are usually not partitioned separately unless it’s done by someone who already knows a lot about Linux, so I don’t think those would need to be worried about. /home seems self-explanatory enough to me as well. I think the “use largest free space” option and the simple slider “take about 1/3 of the disk and divide it however it should be” were good options. Now it seems there’s only “whole disk” or “manual partitioning.” Automatic partitioning should come back.
[…] One of the major points on my agenda was to get together with the correct people and discuss the results from the user-based testing I conducted on the Kubuntu installation process. This feedback was also beneficial to Ubuntu since ubiquity is pretty similar for both projects. […]
[…] One of the major points on my agenda was to get together with the correct people and discuss the results from the user-based testing I conducted on the Kubuntu installation process. This feedback was also beneficial to Ubuntu since ubiquity is pretty similar for both projects. […]