Maryland LoCo Usability Testing
The Ubuntu Maryland LoCo met at the Howard Public Library last night. I didn’t get a chance to go, but they did talk about some interesting stuff. Many of the members are familiar with my work with KDE and Kubuntu, and wondered if the LoCo could go around and do usability testing on friends and family.
To tell you the truth, any monkey can run a participant through a script. It’s just if the monkey knows what he’s doing, he’ll observe more findings than the monkey who just poops on the keyboard. We’re not trying to do science. This is craft in practice. We’re not trying to get x usability findings per n dollars. The goal is to get real feedback from real users who are using Ubuntu right in front of us. It is not to prove any usability metric.
It will take some planning, but I think we could pull it off. Let’s talk about it.
seele :: Mar.21.2008 :: General, Open Source, Usability :: 3 Comments »
I run Ubuntu Hardy Heron with KDE 4, my girlfriend do the same on her computer. My daugter Age of five and my Son age of four do it on my Computer and on mams. Grandma do it on a laptop, some friends of their systems. First of all it runs, without bigger problems.
i am 51 and my start with computing was the eighty-column card.
i wish to help to you, but there is a big Problem the language. Its enough to read a english book, to order something to eat and drink but not enough to tell difficult things. Thats need to much time.
A little example
My Children couldnt read. So the icons are there direction markers in the menue and on all other places. So they find there Programs. And they tell her grandma the way to the structure of the menu. But it is not the same on all places. If you want to go back deep out of the structure from a menue, there is a back field on the left side, which is only in this part of kde and which breaks the icon-based menu with text.
Sure the is in the First, second and me be third line a text, which is not clickable an ist a break in usability.
That not realy a problem, but, if i want to tell you this, i need to much time. In German i net seconds.
I think we need a structure of people who get the information in natural speaking and put them together and translate it. This people may know, how ist working on which part, and the also know, when the Probelme is known.
Hi!
What is your take on this? Is there any merit to the point made in this artikel and what can be done about it.
http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200803/pij_03_10_08a.html
@Peter: Yikes, if I can ever make sense of this guy’s writing and logic, I’ll definitely post a response.