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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: KDE4 Human Interface Guidelines Survey
From:       "Tina Trillitzsch" <t.trillitzsch () gmx ! de>
Date:       2006-05-24 13:25:43
Message-ID: op.s914w5tana4k2t () localhost ! localdomain
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On Wed, 24 May 2006 09:32:28 +0200, Frank Reifenstahl  
<f.reifenstahl@seelig.de> wrote:

> "user" and "usability" stem from the same root, so I don't agree. I  
> guess,
> e.g., the essence of all usability related wishes from bugs.kde.org might
> lead to a framework that's perhaps not complete but might support future
> discussions.

Actually, a few of us are right now in the process of devising a survey  
for the KOffice diagramming app Kivio. And in the course of doing that, a  
few things have become very clear to me:

I agree with you that user surveys can provide valuable info - they can  
tell you which features are used most frequently and in which context they  
use an application. These factual things are rather easy to ask and  
answer. You can also ask things like how people weigh the importance of  
features you are considering to add to (or remove from!) your software.

But when it comes to questions like "is app x easy to use?" and "are there  
any things that you find hard to use?" it isn't that easy anymore. People  
perceive things very differently, and often they have difficulties that  
they don't even notice anymore, because they've developed workarounds for  
them, or they just assume that it just is like that and they can't change  
it. Or because they have the feeling admitting problems makes them look  
dumb. You can still ask these kinds of questions, but you need to be  
careful about evaluating the results - they are probably only helpful to  
gauge an overall perceived feeling of usability or non-usability.

Another very important consideration, especially for data gathered from  
wishlist items and bug reports, is that people who know about bugs.kde.org  
at all, go there and even get as far as actually posting something there  
are certainly only a very small percentage of actual users. And a very  
technically advanced percentage at that. There might be many more people  
who don't need the things that some person posted in a wishlist item, and  
there might be many more problems than the ones posted there, only the  
people who encounter them don't know or don't want to know b.k.o., or  
can't or don't want to use it.

Similar restrictions apply to web surveys - people who find the invitation  
to such a survey are by definition web savvy and what's more, they even  
hang around the places where the actual developers of the applications  
they use hang around and post survey invitations! This is bound to bias  
survey results greatly. The non-web-savy, non-technically-advanced user  
has a very small voice in these kinds of surveys.

Of course, sometimes these advanced people alone may be exactly the people  
that use your software right now. Incidentially, the question that pops up  
here, again, is who exactly are your target users? And do you want to  
target the people who use your software right now, or do you want to draw  
new users to it?

Tina
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