Hi Matthew On Wed, 2009-01-21 at 13:48 +0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hi Jon > > Jon Bolt wrote on 19/01/09 21:11: > >... > > I want to start contributing my user experience expertise to the Ubuntu > > community. Currently I work for a user experience consultancy as a > > usability analyst, although my background is in software development. > > Welcome, and thanks for getting involved! > > > Although I will have to okay it with my employer, I would like to start > > working with different projects under the Ubuntu or Gnome umbrella. I > > have experience in using a wide variety of usability techniques, both in > > academic and commercial environments. > > Excellent. One thing Ubuntu (and Free Software generally) has been > chronically short of, so far, is methodical user testing. If you have > the resources to do that, it would be very useful to test basic tasks > such as acquiring a copy of Ubuntu in the first place, installing > Ubuntu, connecting to the Internet, getting a photo off a digital camera > and printing it, sending an e-mail message, printing a birthday card, or > finding and playing a video on YouTube.
I think looking at key user journeys like you listed above is a really good idea. First of all I will have to get a decent lab set-up going, which involves recording the desktop and capturing the web cam. This is something we do in work with Windows pretty successfully and the clients seem to enjoy the end product. I will have to look into how to set this up in Gnome. Getting participants is the issue, however. If its the general public we want, they would expect rewards. We typically give £50 an hour to people. I am sure there are Ubuntu users who would be willing to give up their time for free, however, that probably isn't the user segment we are looking at. The cheapest option is probably head up to my local university and give students £5 for taking part. Other than that, my friends and family I guess. It would be good to get something going at local Ubuntu events, kind of a bring-a-noob day, where there could be a portable usability lab set-up and people could try to get their windows or mac friends to come in participate in usability testing. > For improving specific programs, it's generally most productive to work > on changes with the individual projects themselves, many of which are > part of Gnome. <http://live.gnome.org/UsabilityProject> Hopefully in between doing user testing I will look to do usability reviews of different projects, reporting issues and recommendations where appropriate. It's kind of hard to know where to start but I would probably just look at some of the most active projects out there. Kind Regards Jon -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
