Andre Schnabel wrote:
Hi,
Ben Coman schrieb:
..
Virtual machine images have long been used by software developmers to
run test cases against a known baseline. It would be useful to have
a standard downloadable image to run with VMWare Player, so that
users can have a second configuration to compare with their own. If
they observe it working in the image and that it is not "just
OpenOpenoffice", they can more confidently work to isolate the
configuration causing the issue, which they can then then report
against the baseline.
Further, part of effectively isolating an issue is being able to
reliably break a working system. Being able to play without fear of
breaking an existing setup would be useful.
For testing purposes I think, it is a very good idea to have a VMware
image. The only problem at the moment I see, is that we need somebody
to setup maintain these images and some web space to host them.
Thanks for your positive comments, and I'm sorry I don't have the time
myself at the moment. However, how does the standard test frame work?
Is the hard drive overwritten with a baseline image at various points?
Perhaps that baseline can loaded onto the virtual machine, the tests run
in it, then upload it. Equivalently, any existing system could be
ghosted into the virtual machine.
The web space problem could be resolved ... so if we have people who
like to maintian such images, I'm all for it.
The way low-tech users explain problems is sometimes misleading.
They often summarise error messages, and remote controlling their PC
to "see" the problem is often required. The virtual matching image
might include a standard utility to do annotated video recording.
This might first be processed by a community help forum.
Further, (not that I've experienced this, but I was taught that...)
usability labs record a user's keyboard-mouse-menu choices to perform
some standard tasks. They run statistics on these to identify the
dead-ends users end up in as they try to discover how to do a set
task. The image could be preconfigured with a standardised tool to
generate such reports that a user can send in. This data could be
made available to student research projects or for the community to
organise.
I thought of something similar. But I don't think, this would work for
broad for usability tests. There are three main reasons:
- a preconfigured Image (including a complete Operating System) would
not be downloade by the average user
- an average user (or an unexperienced user) would not be able to get
the VMWare session running. If he would .. I'd say he is at least at a
intermediate level .. so you'll never be able to get results from
newbies.
Not that much harder than installing OOo in the first place:
1. Download VMWare Player, run setup clicking <Next> on all questions
2. Download image
3. Start Player, go File > Open, choose image
4. Log on with given default user/password
5. Desktop has OOo icons to start the programs.
OpenOffice is now running with _no risk_ to messing up anything in their
existing system.
Its not necessarily for complete newbies, but also for seeing how
experienced people adapt from other systems. Sometimes that
"experience" has molded people to expect things a certain way. While
you don't want design to be completely driven by existing habits, being
able to identify stumbling blocks to adoption and perceived "user
friendliness" might be useful (but whether the reward is worth the
effort is another story).
- last (and definately) not least .. by recording user's input. maybe
video screening and collecting a lot of data, it is very likely to
face legal problems. Many countries (such as Germany) have very strict
laws, how to deal with such data. In fact it is likely that collecting
such data would need to have contract signed. And this is
(unfortunately) nothing what "the community" can do.
Fair enough. I had only considered having a very obvious ON/OFF
indicator, be saved recording locally is a format the user could review,
and performing the upload outside the actual program would be sufficient
- but I acknowledge there may be more complexity there.
