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Usability Testing Hardy Heron With a Girlfriend
toomin writes "Reviews of the latest Ubuntu version, 8.04 Hardy Heron, are everywhere, but most of them are undertaken by geeks familiar with Linux. This guy sits his girlfriend down at a brand-new Ubuntu installation and asks her to perform some basic tasks. Some of them are surprisingly easy, others frustrate and annoy. There are lots of little usability tweaks he stumbles upon just by seeing the desktop experience from the point of view of the mainstream user."
That's how user testing should be done. It is really much too difficult for someone familiar with the program or OS to see what is not obvious or confusing to a novice user. The people that program the UI don't always think like a user - they usually think like a programmer, and that doesn't always work.
2) Watch youtube. Unsuccessful. No Flash.
11) MSN. Unsuccessful
Yeah well, I have a girlfriend too, and all she ever does on a computer is watch music videos on YouTube, write e-mails and chat on MSN. Maybe you'd like to weight your rating based on how important something is to the person tested (by asking them). Downloading a torrent and changing your mouse speed will probably rate to 0 while MSN will probably rate to "Why the hell would I need a computer if not for MSN?".
You just got troll'd!
I wish I'd taken that train of thought a little further before clicking submit.
... it's not necessarily "better" because it's "different" ... in fact I think the opposite.
IF Ubuntu (or release of your choice), WAS more like Windows, just think how much higher the adoption rate would be for it. Imagine how EASY it would be if you could show people with only a Windows background, "look, you do the same things and get the same result - only this one is free, doesn't come cluttered with DRM, isn't susceptible to malware etc etc".
It could be the BIG selling point, if only you'd give in to the pressure. But comments like this just perpetuate the "elitist" attitude of Open Source
If only you'd see the wood for the trees, you could have your open source "revolution" we've been waiting for for 25 years.
And most people would rather stay with XP instead of moving to Vista. Just like they'd rather stay with XP than moving to Ubuntu.
Yeah, have had that problem with YouTube on ubuntu as well, and it only happens if YouTube is the first site you go to, they fubar their refer to adobe.
If she had of gone to, say, ANYWHERE else first it would have been fine and just popped up with a bar saying "i can haz plugin?", say yes and bam, its all good.
Long and short, it should have flash already on it.
Oh and she was lucky it was the 32bit version, installing and using skype is pretty hard when there ain't a 64bit binary available for the platform (last time I looked anyway).
...
>she should have read the release notes
Ahaha, good one. I thought the very point of this exercise was that users do not behave like developers expect or would like them to. Reading release notes is certainly among the things they rarely ever do, and so this hints at Ubuntu doing something wrong more than anything else.
- Frozen Bubble is available on Linux, as well as a lot of good games
- Less viruses than XP, and so no need for an anti-virus
- Firefox and "MSN" chat are available on Linux
- Free IT support when I'm available at home
I know that it may seem redundant but computer noobs switch for very strange reasons and we must listen to their needs if we want Linux to "succeed on the desktop."The article several times suggests that the solution to some of these problems is, essentially, user education: having balloons that signal "new item installed" or wizards open the first time you launch a program, telling you how the program works.
The problem is that this approach often doesn't work. For one thing, it annoys the piss out of experience users. For another thing, new users tend to ignore most of that information... mainly because they are being overwhelmed by new information and can't possibly assimilate it all.
Take, for instance, the problem that was encountered when changing screen resolution. The tester changed the resolution easily, but then she clicked the "Keep settings" immediately, which locked her into graphic settings that were hard to change back. Part of the problem, I suppose is that the system allowed the user to make a ridiculous change. But part of the problem is also, perhaps, that the user is very used to clicking "OK" on any dialog that gets in the way: there are too many new things to read and learn, and the easiest way to get things done (in the mind of a new user) is to dismiss those annoying boxes as quickly as possible. Would a second popup, that described in detail why this low resolution was a bad idea (and how to undo it when desired), have changed anything? Doubtful. Most users would just click "OK" without reading it.
All this to say that I'm by no means convinced that adding more balloons, wizards, and dialog boxes will magically make it easier for users to figure out what's going on. I don't know what the solution is: usability is a tough problem. There is a place for helpful information (balloons, tool-tips, etc.), reminders, and wizards. But too much of this becomes decidedly counter-productive.
And how well do you think your girlfriend would go on a vanilla windows install with no flash installed, MSN account not setup, etc?
Quite fine, there is the Windows Messenger that comes by default in Windows Xp.
And about Flash? the first time you go to a flash-based site, it tells you you must install Flash and asks you if you want to install it, after there, just clicking YES YES NEXT NEXT ACCEPT YES will take you to a fully working Flash IE.
If the article's author had setup flash / pidgin / explained the difference between GIMP & Open Office draw, his girlfriend would have had few problems.
Yeah, but that is the main idea with this Usuability testing/QA issues. You do not want having to explain to everyone about such things. By the time you are telling them "GIMP... which stants for GNU Image Manipulation Program.. GNU is for GNU is not Unix" they lost all interest and just tell you to please resintall Windows.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The number of comments in this thread from people who are dismissive of usability tests is indicative of the gap between Linux fans and everyone else.
Usability is more than checking to see if a user evenrtually figured out how to get something deon. E.g., it's disastrous if they can't figure out how to open a file. But, the fact that they managed to open the file is not necessarily an indicator of a good design.
Usability is something people pay cash for. Just ask Apple and the Photoshop folks.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Yeah, and it's a huge part. It's the 800 pound gorilla part.
Testing for useability needs to come in much, much earlier in development, and it needs to involve a much wider cross-section of human beings. And as it's being done, development of adequate documentation and help needs to go hand and hand with it.
It's so easy to disparage girlfriends, the middle-aged, and the elderly--in short, anyone whose job or study is not technical--that I think it's becoming ingrained in the cultures responsible for developing the various operating-system distributions and open-source software packages. This is going to cause them to suffer over the long haul. It's what makes them such a tough sell to people in business.
There's an immense population of middle-aged people, for example, still in the work force. And interestingly enough, they've actually now all got 20 or 25 years' experience as end-users of computer systems. They're not stupid. They all have jobs that they need to get done. They're not interested in being part of user communities and forums. They're not interested in the ideals of free and open-source software. They're not interested in sticking it to Microsoft. They're not interested in that warm feeling of accomplishment that until recently accompanied getting your printers hooked up to OpenOffice--after wasting hours of productive time doing it. They're interested in using their computers as tools to accomplish their current day's work.
Issues of usability and documentation aren't much fun. They're probably the least glamorous and most boring functions of developing the software. That's why they get such short shrift in open-source development. Nobody really wants to take them on, so we're treated to excrescenses like having people guess how to get out to a command line to install their audio player or their scanner or their printer.
Large-scale developers of proprietary software know precisely where their bread is buttered, and they attend to all this as a matter of course.
"Girlfriend" articles seem to appear quite regularly every few months, so at least somebody is thinking about this even at a ridiculous level. A lot more people need to be thinking about it at a much more serious level.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
I'm sorry, but I'm sick of things like this - his girlfriend HAS to be some untutored user who has no clue about computers, tee-hee. As a female computer programmer, should people assume my husband is computer illiterate? No? Then why assume his girlfriend is?
Isn't it enough to say that the installation was tested with a novice user instead of putting stupid assumptions and implications right in the freaking headline?
And of course, what kind of replies do I expect to my post around here? People marveling that a woman is posting on slashdot that will be modded up as funny. Given the nature of my post, I also expect some responses telling me to calm down or calling me a feminazi. There, I've taken care of those responses, you can stick to ones that actually address what I've said.
If you're talking to a novice you're not going to go into tons of detail about acronyms and such, you're going to say "GIMP does stuff that photoshop does"
I think your argument is silly.
You do realize that people who actually have girlfriends have plenty of time to spend with them, and doing one thing doesn't preclude another?
In any real-world relationship, even one with a good amount of sex, most of the time will be spent doing other things.
Ubuntu certainly has come a long way in terms of usability for the average person. But it's still not nice enough for the average person.
I built a computer for my fiancee and put Ubuntu 7.04 (and later 7.10) on it. She thinks it's just OK. She recently quit her job to go back to school. She wants a laptop, and she insisted that it have Windows XP. I didn't even suggest that she let me put Linux on it. Her current Ubuntu workstation is used for casual tasks that aren't that important: MySpace, YouTube, email, listening to music, etc. Since these tasks aren't of great importance, she's willing to wait for me to fix things that break (and they do break). But I can't expect that of her when she's got a paper to turn in or an online assignment to complete.
I know there's a huge debate (maybe even a holy war) about whether open source desktops should innovate or just copy Windows. Fortunately there's enough choice that different projects more or less have both avenues covered. But---and it pains me to say this---emulating Windows (pre-Vista Windows anyway) is probably the way to go if converts are really wanted. Even though doing things in Windows isn't always consistent or elegant or even easy, it's familiar. Computer geeks like myself like differences: they are fun to explore and play with and foster ideas. But the rest of the world just wants to get their work done. They don't care what's going on behind the scenes, and they don't have the patience to mess with "restricted drivers", the command line, "Synaptic", or different document formats just to get something done.
Right now sound isn't working on her Ubuntu machine. All I did was run the update. Looks like a buggy ALSA driver got installed (do a search for "ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:864:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave"). But for the life of me, I can't find a fix, other than to upgrade to 8.04.
When I initially set up her computer, there was some version mis-match or something like that with the packaged flash player. The solution was to download a specific version of the .deb file and do a manual dpkg (or apt-get) install. Relatively easy for me, but my why should I expect my fiancee to have to go through all that? Even in the article, the author said it was YouTube's fault for redirecting a browser that doesn't have Flash installed. It doesn't matter---in Windows, when you go to a Flash site without having Flash installed, you get the same behavior: "Click here to install flash", and you're done.
I installed Skype on her computer; it mostly works, except that the emoticons aren't animated like they are on the Windows client. Not a big deal, but it's just one more thing that makes Linux feel like a downgrade to her. This is one example where the Linux world lacks the polish of the Windows world. Polish may not mean anything to the geekier among us, but it does make the typical person feel like they've take a step backwards.
She recently got an iPod Shuffle... this sort of works. I forget the name of the application that auto-loads when the iPod is plugged in, but about half the time it crashes. No error message or anything, the whole Window just disappears. Sometimes we'll start sync'ing songs to the iPod, minimize that application, go do something else for a while, and... where did that program go? Looks like we have to start the process all over again.
There's been a number of other issues, off and on, that require my intervention (i.e. track down the bug or quirk on the web, then install/uninstall/upgrade/downgrade a package, and possibly hack some things on the commandline). But the biggest killer for her is still OpenOffice.org. That program also crashes randomly. (Ironically, one of the crashes was when I was having her make a list of things she liked/didn't like about Ubuntu, and what she needed for a laptop. I can't think of a more simple/straightforward task: start OOWriter, create a bulleted list and save.)
But the MS Office to Ope