What Would You Test?
If you were free of the logistics of planning a usability test (money, moderators, recruiting, creating the script, equipment, etc.), what KDE software would you want to see tested?
Applications can be tested by themselves or as part of a suite of applications, but I think you get more from testing workflows such as printing a document or emailing an image. This is especially useful for an environment like KDE, because many of the applications are interconnected and work together. It also gives us the opportunity to test more peripheral elements such as system messages and application switching.
Here are some of my ideas for possible studies:
- Install a printer, find a document and print it (System Settings, Dolphin, KPrint)
- Take a picture, upload and edit it, and send it to a friend (Digikam, Kmail)
- Work on homework problems or school report (KDE Edu, Konqueror)
Any one have any additional ideas or comments for a KDE usability test?
seele :: Jan.22.2008 :: General, Open Source, Usability :: 27 Comments »
* Watch, _tag_ and organize your local and _online_ (youtube favorites, etc) films in KDE environment. (Kaffeine - I know it is extragear, Dolphin, Plasma)
[Because there should be easy way of watching all your _favorites_ (play counts, recently added) films wherever thay are.]
[Also if you don’t want to consider putting youtube fav inside applications (which is possible), KDE still lacks possibility of watching favorite film. You can only browse by folders]
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I am working on a scientific paper (kile). At some point I need to document my point of view with some references from a database (kbibtex). I should be able to do so by searching the text in the archived pdf papers (strigi, nepomuk) and just adding the corresponding refernce to the paper I am writing.
The default KDE menu. I often find myself looking for an application that does a particular thing and wonder if it shows up under System or Utilities.
right, as for the usability test,
*) do a collaborative presentation on any topic researchable on the internet with 4 team members, save it on a CD. (Konqueror, Kpresenter, K3B)
forgot to add kopete to that…
i think pasma should get a usability test. its a very young and important project, so you should make sure, it goes -usability wise- into the right direction.
recieve an email with a zipped file, extract a .ods or .doc file from the archive, save it logically, rename it because it has encoding issues. Find the right program to edit it.
I have seen a person to fail completely with that task while using kde.
unzipping with ark left the person with a bright questionmark on the face. Opening the zip file with konqueror made it not clear that it is inside the zip file and how i can be extracted. And finally the encoding was wrong so that openoffice complainted that the file does not exist.
I agree with matthias. My father in unable to work with zipped files.
make a list of some mp3 you want to create an audio cd from and burn them to that. Make the selection on some task that requires to hear the songs first. Lets say all acustic versions from a list of 20 albums.
The question is how to make the list. If you use the file manager you could copy them to a new directory, but most people do not have this idea. You could however not listen to the files that easy from the filemanager.
With amarok you cannot create multiple lists. Especially you can not open one with all files and copy those you selected to another list.
With k3b you can make a selection and burn them, but you can not listen to the files that easy.
I would do usability testing of amarok. Its got a ton of great features, but it needs to be streamlined. I think that would be great before the new version comes out.
Hello,
Test this please: 2 users working on the same document.
1) both have the document
2) A edits it
3) B edits it
4) They want to see each others edits/inserts and make a final merged result.
Just an idea. It could be a spreadsheet or a text document.
Beside to what has been allready mentioned:
Deleting a file and then “recovering” it (moving it out the waste bin).
Visiting a website and adding the news-feed to Akregator. (first there should be an introduction to what a RSS-feed is)
Inserting a CD, creating mp3/ogg-files of the music on the CD and moving (or directly creating them there) them to the correct folder (music in the user’s home) or create a folder with a usefull name.
Then Amarok/JuK could be tested.
Importing IE/Firefox/…-Bookmarks in Konqueror (maybe exporting them before).
A few things from a newb:
-Manage multiple Terminal Services windows in full-screen mode (keyboard shortcuts, multiple desktops) and move files between multiple Terminal Servers using the RDP protocol. (Yep, I’m an Windows IT manager using Ubuntu on my laptop).
-The main menu of KDE… It feels like a mess until I reorganize it myself and get rid of the 3 and 4 layer deep programs/options.
A workflow I would really like being tested is the following one. When producing academic publications in the fields of physics, mathematics and engineering one almost always needs to combine text/paragraphs that contain mathematical formulae with schematic pictures (vector images that often also include formulae).
-create a pdf document with text and formulae
-insert vector images (e.g. a flow chart) that also contain text/formulae
-print this as a two sided document (provide assistance if your printer does not support duplex printing, i.e., tell the user how to take the printed pages and reinsert it into the printer to get a two-sided print)
-do a two-sided draft print with two pages on one page
Bonus: use LaTeX for typesetting/pdf creation via the Kile frontend application (LaTeX is happy if you give it images in the pdf-format)
Thanks a lot!
> Any one have any additional ideas or comments for a KDE usability test?
I think your suggested scenarios should reflect the way that web services are used in 2008. For example, the “take a photo and send it to a friend” case might be adjusted to:
1. Take a photo (using a digital camera or mobile phone)
2. Upload it to the computer
3. Crop or resize it
4. Upload it to an online service (eg. Facebook)
5. Tag my friends in the picture
Step 5 might also include connecting the photos with a particular event which was announced on the same service previously. A variation on this would be to substitute the word “photo” for “video”. The “email it to a friend” case is still relevant if you want to send photos to one person or group of people specifically or wish to retain exclusive rights over the use of the image.
> -The main menu of KDE… It feels like a mess until I reorganize it myself > and get rid of the 3 and 4 layer deep programs/options.
That is partially, but not completely, down to the distributions. Finding applications on a modern Kubuntu out of the box is considerably easier than the first KDE Linux I ever used (Mandrake 9.0) which installed three of everything.
You forgot open irc client logon to #kubuntu/kde channel of your choice.
You can also try burning a copy of the kde cd you used to install the OS.
There are also things like try the calculator.
Making sure all the app’s you install that should have icons in the menu list have an icon.
Excellent question! My suggestion is to test workflows where a file is saved and opened using different applications. It would be really good if this could result in improvements for the file dialog, and drag-and-drop improvements. Matthias’ suggestion working with a zipped file is a good example, and I suggest something like that or variations thereof:
1. Download a zipped file, to a specific location (not the default location)
2. Extract part of the file to a specific location (not the default location)
3. Open the extracted file with a specific application (not the default application)
- The application may or may not be already open
This family of use cases annoys me every day. The involved applications differ, but the problem with not having a predictable shared state for recent files bugs me continuously.
I’d want either Basket or Akregator tested. Basket project would benefit of it greatly though, as they are still discussing plans for heavy UI change and as far as I know there is no big usability testing done on the current UI yet.
Suggestion: Copy a document from a windows share to the home folder. Involves adding the windows share, navigating to the directory and copying it to the home folder.
> Basket project would benefit of it greatly though,
> as they are still discussing plans for heavy UI change and as
> far as I know there is no big usability testing done on the current UI yet.
Regarding Basket, I have been trying out Tomboy recently for making notes. I think Tomboy is much the better application owing to a major conceptual difference.
Organisation in Basket is done via a tree, with each entry having a list of things attached to it (Or Baskets and Notes in the application’s terminology), rather like a conventional file system. The problem is that humans don’t think like this.
Tomboy on the other hand uses links for organisation, like the web. To create a new note, you select a word or phrase in an existing note and click the “Link” button, which creates a new note using that phrase as the title. It is a bit like a smaller, simpler, localized version of Wikipedia. When phrases are typed in that match the name of an existing note, a link is automatically created. The only real problem I encountered is that each note is shown in a separate window and a flat taskbar (as found in every desktop that I know of) doesn’t scale to more than about ten windows. Mentally “zooming out” to get an overview of the notes created is easier in basket, but I’m sure there is a solution for a link-based system.
Thinking ahead somewhat, links also provide the possibility for much more accurate search results since you can use pagerank-like algorithms.
1. Managing photos website
The typical usecase $GF seems unable to work through on her own or remember is this one ATM. Maybe it’s time to revisit this :
1. connect the camera, choose “browse with digikam” or sth from the auto appearing menu
2. select new picts and transfer them to some (to create?) album
3. see photos, edit them (rotation mainly)
4. make a selection of photos by control-clicking on them
5. right-clic to copy the selection
6. open a konqueror file manager, go to remote places, choose the ftp access of the online photos album
7. paste the selection by right-clicking on an EMPTY area of the konqueror window
2. Backups copy of documents while editing them
Still a $GF use case (I seem to prefer to rely on commands line myself), where she’s working on an OpenOffice.org document and need to handle backuping to USB flashs. No detailed example here.
3. Remote places usage
I’ve tried to have $GF use remote places to “see” her files on a machine from another, but with no success, seems a to distant thing to do (too much clics away, maybe a desktop icon would do now I think of it).
Thanks for asking & reading, regards;
Not as important as the other suggestions, but something I personally want tested: kdegames. There are many improvements in KDE4, but I am still annoyed with some parts.
1. a) Start and play a game where you mainly use your mouse, such as KBattleship. How long does it take to get started?
b) Start and play a game where you mainly use the keyboard (KTron, KSpaceDuel etc.) Preferably multiplayer.
c) Change the game controls in a “keyboard game”. (For example, if I use the arrow keys, I want to change to wasd).
I’m really doubtful about the new configure shortcuts dialog, especially when used for game controls.
Some other suggestions:
2. Take a screenshot (KSnapshot), edit it somehow (e.g. make a red circle around an area in Krita etc.) and send it to a IM friend (Kopete).
3. An application doesn’t respond. Kill it. (KSysguard/other tools)
4. Extract a file as others have suggested.
I think KOffice could really benefit from a usability test, even though there’s quite a few bits missing before it’s a finished 2.0.
I would test some workflow with remote files on NFS and SAMBA shares.
- Connecting to the share using the file manager (Dolphin)
- Opening files in a few local applications, making changes, saving them without copying them locally beforehand
- Extracting remote zip files content on the remote disk
- Burning a disc from a ISO image hosted on a network share as if the file was local (somehow streaming data to the burner thanks to the network, hopefully no downtime in this operation) without caching the whole file locally first (K3B)
The configuration of printers, along with pointers on what you might need to install etc. I consider myself an advanced user, but the whole process of making a printer work is still annoying and kind of unexpected, to me.
Examples include:
The need to, sometimes, go into superuser mode which can magically make the same steps that don’t work as grunt work like a charm.
The need to select a printer daemon - Just tell me I should go grab CUPS or I will only be able to print to PS/PDF and what that means.
Printers attached to Windows boxes which a search does not find, but entering the correct information by hand will work (tell the user what he should try/install to figure this out)
I realize that not everything in those examples is KDE’s fault, but it should still try and help the user along the way.
Richard
PS: I never even tried to print under KDE4. Perhaps this has improved, perhaps this does not yet work at all. I simply don’t know..
Download and run a windows exe.
What feedback to they get? Are they told to try wine? Does anything happen? I’m just asking off the top of my head; I haven’t tried it myself.
Hook up a projector, and use it to show a presentation. Both options should be possible: the laptop screen showing the same stuff as the projector, and the laptop shoing different stuff (notes, etc).
This is mostly an X problem, but kde 3.5 seems like it is able to handle a second monitor better than 4.0. What does kpresenter do with the 2nd monitor?
How much battery time do you have left?
Need to add the plasmoid, + need a plasmoid that estimates the time remaining.