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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 pretty interesting. On a tangentially related note, a guy I work with just install Ubuntu as his first linux. A friend and I were talking about 8.04 and he overheard us, so he walked up and started asking questions about it which we answered. The next day he shows up to work and says that he installed it and is really liking it. What is this world coming to when a normal guy one day hears about linux and the next successfully installs it without asking the local nerds for help? It was really interesting, he said the hardest thing was burning the ISO, other than that he said it was easier to use and set up than windows. Trust me when I say that this guy is very very average when it comes to computer smarts, this was a huge leap for him and it was no trouble at all. That's how I know linux is heading mainstream.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
I agree. I expected this article to be a little silly, but it was well thought out.
The new user was given a bunch of common tasks (play some music, draw a picture, play a video on youtube, use an instant messenger on MSN network, install a commonly used application (skype), edit a photo) and asked to perform them on a default installation of Ubuntu.
Well done. The Ubuntu team (and other linux distributions) can learn a lot from this article alone. Hopefully it will give a target for other usability testing in the future.
(And, no, I have nothing to do with the article author or website.)
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I'd like to see the same test with Kubuntu. Not saying that it's better but I'd like to see the results with KDE as well.
I think many of these observations were valid and maybe points up the need for a "New To Ubuntu" mode that provides extra assistance for common transitional tasks. But, please, in consideration for those of us a little more technically inclined, provide a way to turn the new user mode off. Or offer it as a separate distro.
I'd be willing to bet the larger fraction of Ubuntu users are fairly tech savvy. If the developers try to foist Ubuntu Bob on users that don't want or need it, they'll lose their most loyal users. Bad for all of us. But if there isn't some kind of transitional assistance for new users, that will inhibit getting users from other operating systems into the ark.
The great thing about Linux is that it doesn't have to be all things to all people. You can shape a distro to the specific needs of particular users.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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
And how well do you think your girlfriend would go on a vanilla windows install with no flash installed, MSN account not setup, etc?
If the article's author had setup flash / pidgin / explained the difference between GIMP & Open Office draw, his girlfriend would have had few problems.
I'd suggest to you (honestly) - that if all your gf really does is youtube, mail & chat, then she'd be much better off on Ubuntu than windows.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
At least in Linux you could boot up into command line mode and edit your xorg.conf file to change the resolution. Say what you want about the command line and editing the config file, and how users shouldn't have to do it, but at least the option is available. Any idea if the same can be done under windows? It's the same reason why so many forums are filled with directions on how to accomplish stuff over the command line. Sure it's a little more difficult than clicking around in a GUI. But it's much more likely to work across different distros and different versions of the same distro.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Hi... I'm a girlfriend of a computer geek? Anyway, he helped me get set up on Ubuntu. If you have a girlfriend, show her how to use Ubuntu. Please! Don't leave her stranded on Windoze. Sure, there's a learning curve... but if I didn't have my boyfriend to show me how to get the hang of Ubuntu then I never would have managed it on my own. Just having a computer-savvy guy who could show me the quirks... how to patiently look up fixes on the ubuntu forums rather than sitting here mad at the machine if something breaks... damn that's sexy. Be prepared for your girlfriend being a little confused/frustrated/annoyed at little things that you just didn't even think to be confused/frustrated/annoyed at when you were setting things up on your machine... but once she gets the hang of it, she won't go back. The number of programs freely available to install immediately is fantastic. I agree that Gimp should be set up more like Photoshop. (I hate how each image gets it's own window. What a window-hog. Also, it needs better colour support.)
This is why the problem is so persistent, it is inherent to the open source way of devoloping software. It won't go away any time soon.
What could change it would for example be if a seller of a commercial linux distro would actually pay application developers for modifications, including usability: "-You get $1000 if you can make pidgin girlfriend-friendly following these guidelines", meaning: wizards, simplifications, naming conventions, themes and so on.
I think a universal "undo" command would go a long way. Most people will just try to guess their way through things as a first resort, either because they assume they know more than they do, or they just don't feel like poring over documentation. In many cases it is difficult to read that stuff while making changes to begin with, so they are unhelpful unless you already know what you are trying to do, a situation that probably comes up more often after something gets screwed up.
If software adhered to a universal "undo" command, people who follow the first instinct to click whatever button isn't "Cancel" would at least have some way to back out of their mistakes and get it right on a subsequent try. It would also give us some protection against developers who create crap software and crap documentation.
There are some obstacles to implementing these changes:
1. FOSS fundamentalism - "MP3 codecs and DeCSS are unclean, so let's make it harder to use them". I think Medibuntu should be optionally enabled, and the important components (DeCSS, restricted codecs etc.) automatically pulled in, at installation. There could also be a checklist of what the user wants to install (MP3, DVD, encrypted DVD...) with explanation of the legal implications.
2. Windows users which think Add/Remove programs means Remove programs (because in Windows you can't Add any programs via this menu...). This, however, can be countered by having a package manager advertised properly.
3. Windows way of installing programs by downloading them from websites. The users end up downloading the source and trying to compile it, and fail miserably (I have seen this personally with my brother trying to install Kadu). There should be something discouraging this mode of action.
4. Usability testing spoils a test subject. You need to find new ones every time, because they gain experience the first time they test.
5. Once Ubuntu is loaded with pretty wizards, no developers will use it ("build a system that an idiot can use, and only an idiot will want to use it"). There should be an "expert" mode which turns off all introductory wizards.
From what I see Ubuntu is currently catering to its expected target demographic (medium-level geeks). Because of this, there's PulseAudio, which allows one to route sound over LAN, but no MP3 playback, because it requires something unclean.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.