Usability

[Wim De Smet]

Hi,
> On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, you wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 03:05:42PM +0200, Anders Lindback wrote:
> > > Alistair Davidson skrev:
> > > > Bernhard Reiter wrote:
> >
> > > > > From my perspective we do not have the ressources yet to run
> > > > > or buy usability tests.
> > > >
> > > > That's a shame. It's nice to have an answer to the question though.
> > > > Thought: maybe we could get a company to sponsor them (I'm sure IBM
or
> > > > whoever would love the PR).
> >
> > > The cost of a usability test is dirt cheap.
> >
> > Compared to the impact it is cheap.
> >
> > > Its easy to make your own test if you know what how to do it.
> > > The truth is that you only need a sample of 5 persones and some time.
> >
> > Actually my company is offering usability tests
> > so I know what is necessary.
> > Setting them up and use the results takes a lot of time.
> > I do not have time to do it for the FSFE
> > as administrative things keep me busy.
> >
> > > A simple usebility test should find somthing like 90% of all problems.
> >
> > You need to work out what to test.
> >
> > > The problem is not money, it's a problem of too little knowledge among
> > > programmers about this issue.
> >
> > Agreed.
> > I never said that it is a monetary problem.
> > We are lacking people with usability know-how and time to help.
> > Anybody feels like organising usability tests is welcome.
I'd opt for something small-scale. Maybe encourage newbie users to join a
mailing list in which they can voice their problems with the setup? IMHO,
this would reveal some prevalent problems. I don't really see the point of a
fully scientific and objective approach if usability is the goal. With
day-to-day usage problems reports we could do a lot, I think. One problem
off course is that usability is kind of a hard as a general issue in
GNU/Linux. I think people installing and running Debian GNU/Linux would
report very different usability problems than people running for instance
Mandrake Linux.

Greets,

Wim De Smet
wdesmet at yucom.be