Re: Plasma icons!

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Re: Plasma icons!
by Leo S on Monday 18/Jun/2007, @22:13

Ah, but the best test is on real users. I fully support putting this into KDE4, and in a few months it will be much clearer whether it is good or not, based on user feedback.

I'm running a full blown usability study on some of my software right now (20 non-disabled subjects, and 5-10 people with various disabilities), and it's not an experience I necessarily want to get into again without some serious consideration.

While it can teach you a lot, it is also extremely difficult to get any sort of generalizable results from usability testing in a lab setting. Either you control your environment so much that the results are very specific to your task, or you make the task more open and end up with confounds. It's a delicate balance, and usually you are better off just creating the feature and trying it out on real people.

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Re: Plasma icons!
by Aaron Seigo on Tuesday 19/Jun/2007, @09:45

agreed. here's what i've been doing for the last while:

- the "coffe house method". take my laptop to a coffee shop or other relaxed and open environment. invite people to try out application X and accomplish a few tasks. this way real people are using real software in a real environment as they might if the machine was theirs and they were doing some work/play in a coffee shop. the results tend to be pretty accurate and revealing because of this, ime.

- the "jane goodall method". i invade my friend's offices and sit behind them and observe them using their current computing system to see what fails them and what works. every so often i'll ask a quick question about what they are doing or why they did it that way. when doing toolbar research i actually managed to get people to log their toolbar icon usage for me.

both approaches involve real people in real settings and don't take up a lot of there or my time. it's amazing what people will do for you if it is for an ethical, not for profit global project.

it's also a cool way to spread the word about kde, especially in the coffee house approach.

i've also blown a few minds when something fails for the person in the coffee house method and i take the laptop back, type madly for 10 minutes or so then give them the laptop again to try with the changes. very few people have had a chance to see the software development practice up close so it's pretty neat to see the look on their face when you bring them changes for testing based on their experience and feedback from a bit earlier.

i'm not a huge fan of lab based research, partly because it feels so boring but mostly because, as you pointed out, it's both labour intensive and of questional utility.

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Re: Plasma icons!
by Martin Stubenschrott on Tuesday 19/Jun/2007, @18:23

Wow, that post was really useful to see how you do testing of new features, thanks for the info.

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