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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: feedback from the gnome usability study.
From:       "Jennifer E Jobst" <jobst () us ! ibm ! com>
Date:       2001-07-26 15:00:52
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Hi all,

There have been some good suggestions for various icons for KDE, and 
Charles makes a good point about icons being not only culturally dependant 
but also user-level dependent (i.e. what makes sense to a newbie may not 
make sense to you or me).  One thing about usability is that you cannot 
make *everyone* happy, no matter how hard you try.  But there are some 
things we could do to make a larger number of people happy.  For example, 
since some icons are culturally dependent, during install if the user 
selects a particular language, there could be a set of icons that are 
appropriate for that language.  The icons would generally be the same 
(e.g. a toolbox), but would be modified so that users of the culture 
associated with that language would recognize the icon.  This basically 
plays on Denis' idea for theming, but it's used in a cultural context.  It 
could also be used for different user groups, e.g. newbies vs. standard 
users vs. uber-geeks.  Newbies might get a stripped-down version of the 
desktop that only has the most commonly used functions and provides tips 
by default, where as uber-geeks can  have anything and everything on their 
desktops (and wouldn't get those annoying tips).

Of course, having differnt icons/desktops for different user groups opens 
a whole new can of worms (pardon the culturally dependent idiom ;) ).  If 
you're writing a manual and there's a picture of an icon, that picture may 
have to be different for every language the manual is translated to (as a 
writer, I know the doc team would have a few not-so-nice things to say 
about this much work).  And if someone in France is helping someone in the 
US configure something and they say to "click on the XXX icon," if the 
icons are different, the US user will not know what the French user is 
talking about.

(An aside here.  I know the idea of different options for different user 
levels is not new, but I know it hasn't been done before.  The closest 
thing anybody's got is how Windows hides the less-frequently used options 
in the pull-down menus. I _don't_ know why that is.  It may be for the 
reasons above.  Any ideas from anyone?)

If we decide we want to change some icons,  may I suggest that we do a 
test to see which ones fit which user groups.  I've done some tests like 
this before, and the results have been very useful and directly 
contributed to the icons used in the final product.  There are two ways to 
test icons:

1.  If you're trying to decide from amongst a number of possible icons the 
*best* icon to represent a particualr task, you do is create a list of all 
the suggested icons.  Give the list to the test subjects (including a 
"none of the above" option), and ask them "Which icon would you click on 
to do XXX?"  They'll pick whichever one makes the most sense to them.  You 
can also ask them why they picked the one they did.  You may find out that 
they had to think about it for a while (which indicates the icon's not as 
intuitive as we'd like it to be) or that it just "seemed to be the right 
one."  If that's the case, bingo, we've got a winner.  If they picked 
"none of the above," they should have a place to explain what the icon 
would look like to them. Of course, everyone won't choose the same icon, 
which makes compiling the results even more fun. 

2.  If you're trying out a set of icons, all of which mean different 
things, show all the icons to the tester and then ask them what each icon 
does.  This tells  you not only if the icons are recognizable, but also if 
there's enough difference between each icon to tell their functions apart.

Anyway, if we've got a graphic artist who can create a few icons from the 
sugs we've had on the list, I'd be willing to put together a usability 
test for them. 

Comments? Suggestions?

-j

Jennifer E. Jobst
Linux Information Development
IBM Linux Technology Services
(512) 838-8298, T/L 678-8298

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