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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Plans
From:       "Jonathan Bacon" <j.bacon () delta ! wlv ! ac ! uk>
Date:       2001-08-30 13:18:37
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Hi all,

Sorry if this email is a bit long, but I have triesd to keep it as short
as possible.

It seems it would be a good time now to formally discuss what we plan to
do in the KDE Usability Study, and what we hope to get out of it. This
is an important project which could help KDE a great deal in it's use
and acceptence, so we need to think carefully.

As some of you will be aware, I have been toiling away at the website
recently building some facilities that will aid us with the study. I
will cover what I have done a bit later.

To get us started, let me explain my personal set of ideas for the
study, and I what I would like to see done myself. Others are welcome to
chip in ideas, and even more importaantly (!) volunteer to help with a
particular part.


IDEAS

	> Usability Maintainers <

	My plans initially with the study were to identify problems with
KDE, and I developed 	the idea of Usability Maintainers. This idea has
gained some popularity, and we can 	see people coming ahead to
volunter. The main thing about this initiative is to supply
	useful, OBJECTIVE reports to the developer. I capitalised
objective as this is the
	main priority. A report maintainer should have the following
duties:

		- read submitted usability problems from users and
select pertinant issues
		- add these issues to a report
		- liase with the developers to get as many of the issues
fixed as possible

		And optionally...

		- conduct tests on the applications usability

	The report maintainers are the core of the study, so we need to
develop some 	guidelines for what makes an objective report. Any
volunteers to write these
	guidelines?

	> Data Gathering <

	Another important aspect of the study is to gather research from
users on what
	problems and issues they have with usability. Also to gather
research on the type of
	users that we have and their needs. With this data we can make
KDE more suitable to
	our audience.

	Data gathering can be done via online questionnaires, tests on
real world users and
	other methods.

	> Usability Research <

	We could do with setting up a KDE Usability Research Lab
project. In this project we
	would develop test software to develop new and innovative
usability designs. An
	example would be developing a new method of opening files. We
would code a prototype,
	release it, gather research on what people think and then
publish the research. We
	ideally need usability researchers and developers to get
involved in this. We could
	then develop new and possibly unseen user interface concepts and
metaphors.

	> Test Suites <

	KDE as it stands forms a lot of content. We need to test this
content to see where
	it has flaws. Examples of tests could include:

		- Icons - Do the icons work well? Are they and easily
understood?

		- K Menu - Is it well laid out and planned? Could it be
improved?

	These are just two small examples, but we need people to take
one of these, develop
	a test and gather research from users on what they think and
then submit a report.

WHAT WE HAVE NOW

I have been developing recently a usability tracking database. This
would enable the following:

	1) A user uses an app (eg KControl) and he/she finds part of it
badly designed for
	   usability.

	2) He/she goes to usability.kde.org and goes to the problems
submissions page. They
	   fill in a form to report the problem.

	3) The KControl report maintainer can then log in and view a
list of reported problems
	   for KControl. He/she can then create a report of these
problems.

	4) Creating a report is as simple as selecting a problem from
the list, clicking Add!
	   and writing optional comments.

	5) When all problems relevent have been added, the maintainer
can publish the report
	   by simply clicking on a button. The issue is generated and
added to the site.

This has been pretty much 100% coded. I have a few bugs to fix here and
there.


Another project is the Question API. This comprises of a number of
typical questionnaire
questions. These questions can then be simply plugged into a
questionnaire to form a
questionnaire. This would save us having to write questions every time
we need a questionnaire to be written.

The question api is early in development but on the go.


SO WHERE DO WE GO?

Where to now then? Well first of all, we need volunteers for the ideas I
mentioned above. We also need the report maintainers to keep writing
reports and sending them to the mailing list and relevent developers.
When the new database system is ready we can then migrate to it.

We also need to develop the research lab. We could do with developing
better ways to interact with software and developing prototypes to test.


CONCLUSION

To conclude, KDE is a great piece of sofware, but it still has lots of
work to be done to it. With all the talk of the GNOME usability study
and everything, it is particularly important that we club together to
work on things. Together we can develop a number of stratagies for
making KDE as easy to use as possible.

Thasnks everyone for reading this...I know it has been long...and I look
forward to your comments.

	Jono



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