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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    RE: trolling for guinea pigs
From:       "Poletti, Don" <Don.Poletti () comverse ! com>
Date:       2002-06-17 12:35:09
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>what i have in mind is collecting a group of people's emails / 
>names who are 
>willing to look at UIs (screenshots, UI files, binaries 
>perhaps) and answer 
>supplied questions about them.

Depends on the questions. The safest thing would be to have 
actual apps and see how long it takes them to do a particular
task. Anything other type of question would have to be carefully
thought out since the it very easy to make it leading.

example.
Question 1)
Go to the Control panel X, select tab Y, hot checkbox Z
and press the advance button. Change setting abc.
Question 2)
How long did it take you to find setting abc.

A lot of issues revolve around helping people find the right
dialog in the first place. The even if the order of my questions
were reversed many people will read all the instructions first (
ok at least glance at all of them). The point is the test will point
them into a particular mind set.


>is this perfect? no. is it better than what we have? yes.
>
>is it worth doing? that's my question to you. (my answer to 
>that should be 
>obvious from this email =)
>

You left out do we have time/people to do it? If we can great. But
considering the usability web site still has the app of the week
from march I'm skeptical.

I think this should be combined with a true style guide. For
instance on the background dialog Aaron and I disagree on the 
need for an advanced button. Rather that having to have this
argument over and over and possible going to the guinea pig
trails repeatedly we do it once and use the results for 
future design.
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