Ideas for Usability Hackfest
|
View:
New views
10 Messages
—
Rating Filter:
Alert me
|
 |
Ideas for Usability Hackfest
by Brian Cameron
::
Rate this Message:
A few weeks ago I was asked to help with planning a GNOME Usability hackfest. There is a lot of interest in having the GNOME Foundation be more involved doing usability studies and testing. I have had some discussion with people involved with GNOME Usability and the following ideas came up as being interesting. I think a hackfest that runs from 3-5 days could be long enough to make progress in perhaps a few different areas. For example: - GNOME Foundation Mobile Usability Lab This could involve setting up a mobile usability lab on Foundation provided equipment to be used at various conferences, events, or hackfests when there is a need to do a usability study. This project would involve using the time spent together at the hackfest to actually conduct a usability study and document how it is done, so other projects can follow a template. Something along the lines of what Máirín Duffy already has some experience with[1]. - Next revision of the GNOME HIG The HIG is still in draft form, and does not discuss newer technologies such as clutter at all. The HIG needs some real attention to ensure it continues to be helpful with GNOME 3.0. - Usability Data We need to think of more creative ways to get GNOME users to be able to provide more effective usability data to us, how to do usability studies in a remote fashion, how to store usability data so it is useful. Methods to get more effective usability data might include things like encouraging developers to test paper prototypes with family and friends, instrumenting development builds of software (cf. InGimp: <http://www.ingimp.org/>), or devising self-administered usability tests where users run through tasks that are provided in an email or on a website, and either record themselves doing it (using something like Pongo again) and/or fill in a questionnaire afterwards. - Ongoing Usability Some time could be spent on activities such as making progress to develop a better set of usability personas, doing paper prototyping, card sorting, etc. Perhaps the GNOME Usability team could improve the Usability Wiki to provide some more concrete help for those interested in doing usability testing. For all of these tasks, there is no reason to wait until a hackfest to get started. A lot, I think, could be done in preparation, including things like deciding what should be tested, how subjects are selected, setting up hardware, putting together confidentiality/release form for subjects to sign, deciding how to improve documentation or the Wiki, etc. Since I think there would be further preparation needed for this kind of event, I think it makes the most sense to give ourselves time to discuss further before deciding on a timeframe for the event. The Boston Summit is coming up in a few weeks (October 10-12). I am wondering how many usability people are going to this event. If there is an interest, and enough people going, we could plan to get together there and discuss these ideas further. Any interest? So, I am interested to hear what people think. I am interested to know who is interested, who are the right people to be involved with a project like this, and who might be available to help with organizational things. Thanks, Brian Cameron GNOME Foundation Secretary [1] http://mairin.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/open-source-portable-usability-testing-lab/ _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability |
|
|
Re: Ideas for Usability Hackfest
by Ted Gould-2
::
Rate this Message:
On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 17:36 -0500, Brian Cameron wrote:
> - GNOME Foundation Mobile Usability Lab > - Next revision of the GNOME HIG > - Usability Data > - Ongoing Usability They all sound good. I guess my only concern is that it is much easier to gather the data than analyze it. That was what was most interesting to me with the inGIMP stuff is the calibration to sit down sessions, then the ability to use that more broadly. Of the list there, I think the HIG is probably the highest priority to me. There is now lots that it doesn't cover :) > The Boston Summit is coming up in a few weeks (October 10-12). I am > wondering how many usability people are going to this event. If there > is an interest, and enough people going, we could plan to get together > there and discuss these ideas further. Any interest? I'll be there, let's talk! I unfortunately have to leave Sunday night so earlier rather than later please :) > So, I am interested to hear what people think. I am interested to know > who is interested, who are the right people to be involved with a > project like this, and who might be available to help with > organizational things. I suck at organizational things, but I'm willing to try and help. --Ted _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability |
|
|
Re: Ideas for Usability Hackfest
by Shaun McCance-2
::
Rate this Message:
On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 17:36 -0500, Brian Cameron wrote:
> A few weeks ago I was asked to help with planning a GNOME Usability > hackfest. There is a lot of interest in having the GNOME Foundation > be more involved doing usability studies and testing. > > I have had some discussion with people involved with GNOME Usability > and the following ideas came up as being interesting. I think a > hackfest that runs from 3-5 days could be long enough to make progress > in perhaps a few different areas. For example: > - Next revision of the GNOME HIG > > The HIG is still in draft form, and does not discuss newer > technologies such as clutter at all. The HIG needs some real > attention to ensure it continues to be helpful with GNOME 3.0. If there's a HIG planning session, I'd like to join in. -- Shaun _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability |
|
|
Re: Ideas for Usability Hackfest
by Brad Taylor
::
Rate this Message:
On Thu, 2009-10-01 at 10:34 -0500, Shaun McCance wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 17:36 -0500, Brian Cameron wrote: > > A few weeks ago I was asked to help with planning a GNOME Usability > > hackfest. There is a lot of interest in having the GNOME Foundation > > be more involved doing usability studies and testing. > > > > I have had some discussion with people involved with GNOME Usability > > and the following ideas came up as being interesting. I think a > > hackfest that runs from 3-5 days could be long enough to make progress > > in perhaps a few different areas. For example: > > > - Next revision of the GNOME HIG > > > > The HIG is still in draft form, and does not discuss newer > > technologies such as clutter at all. The HIG needs some real > > attention to ensure it continues to be helpful with GNOME 3.0. > > If there's a HIG planning session, I'd like to join in. Count me in also -Brad _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability |
|
|
Re: Ideas for Usability Hackfest
by Calum Benson
::
Rate this Message:
On 28 Sep 2009, at 23:36, Brian Cameron wrote: > - Next revision of the GNOME HIG > > The HIG is still in draft form, and does not discuss newer > technologies such as clutter at all. The HIG needs some real > attention to ensure it continues to be helpful with GNOME 3.0. A few of us got chatting off-list this week about possible direction here, attached is the summary so far (thanks to Shane Coughlan)... thoughts welcome. === Stuff people talked about === The reference document in the past was "The GNOME HIG" and it started out well. The wiki version was very useful. However, the HIG as it stands is a massive confabulation of style, interaction, and experience guidelines that's been brought together in so much detail nobody cares to read it any more. It contains: * Spacing guidelines * Icon guidelines * Dialog layout * Language guidelines * Shortcut key conventions * Menu item conventions * Input interaction * Detailed information on the placement, usage and application of each widget * and much much more... It's become a book, in fact it's even called the HIG-book. We need to think about short documents which engineers actually use; guidelines which are actual guidelines and a book which is just a book, not a book of guidelines. The way forward may be to create two documents. (1) Style guidelines that contain a gallery of window layouts and their relevant applications, padding/spacing and framing, alignments, icon guidelines and generally anything which is "GNOME Style Guidelines" worthy. This document becomes the main Bible of UI design for GNOME applications. It has an overview of simple things that UI designers can do to ensure a consistent look and feel with GNOME. A pattern library would be ideal, as I understand it what you'd be expecting here is a library of common widget arrangements matched with a task and applicability, for instance; 'My application needs to browse a series of folders to populate the main view' - Use a sidebar, this is how ... dum de dum ... The problem with these kinds of libraries is browsability, a semantic data store could work in the following way; sidebar app tabbed app / \ / /\ / \ / / \ nautilus multiple docs / web browser \ / \ / \/ gedit This would allow a developer to think "x app is similar to mine in this respect", and then find all of the patterns related to that app. Here are some examples of the pattern method: <http://www.welie.com/patterns/> <http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns> <http://www.uie.com/articles/elements_of_a_design_pattern/> Ultimately what might suit GNOME best would be a two-tier system -- an immutable set of core patterns/guidelines that are provided by the HIG team up front and considered stable, and an unstable or pending set that's open to contributions from GNOME users/developers (but reviewed by usability folks of course), which might be tweaked, replaced, or moved into the stable set over time. An ancillary section could be code snippets. It could be cross-linked rather than incorporated it into the pattern library itself. A simple coding examples library would be a benefit in itself, in there we can have anyone contribute an example to fulfil the requirements of the example, and people could translate those examples into various languages. (2) User experience guidelines would be the second primary document, detailing information on the kind of language that should be used for error messages, usage of widgets/controls, input interaction, default shortcuts and anything else which becomes UX relevant. Essentially these two documents can become a simple set dos and don'ts for developers to make sure they've got things right. The HIG in its entirety should probably be renamed to "The GNOME Human Interaction Specification" - or something equally official in order to signify it's detail. The shorter more accessible documents can be generated by reducing content from the existing HIG. There's a massive amount of redundant or obvious information in the HIG at present which can safely be removed during the process of reducing to these shorter simpler documents without opening up any gaping holes in the consistency of the desktop experience. When it comes to practical application it is worth noting that GNOME previously had IRC-based UI reviews prior to each stable release, where we got some usability, a11y and docs people to look everything over post-UI freeze. In theory, anything that didn't pass muster could be dropped from the release, although that never happened in practice. <http://live.gnome.org/UsabilityProject/Archives?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=howto_write_ui_review.html > There were problems with that approach, though (never managing nearly enough coverage, and happening too late in the cycle to do anything other than papering over cracks anyway), and we haven't done one of those since 2.14. So right now, in reality, there are no official usability checks before (or indeed after) a module is proposed. A new review process could be created to deal with the known faults of the existing systems once the two new usability documents are created. The strictness of application has to be defined, but it is worth considering a situation whereby if something does not fit with the guidelines then it isn't accepted for inclusion in GNOME, but can still be hosted on GNOMEs servers. I think it's very important for us to show that we want to tackle the consistency and usability in a formal manner from now on. === End of summary ==== Cheeri, Calum. -- CALUM BENSON, Interaction Designer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:calum.benson@... OpenSolaris Desktop Team http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability |
|
|
Re: Ideas for Usability Hackfest
by Brian Cameron
::
Rate this Message:
Ted: > On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 17:36 -0500, Brian Cameron wrote: >> - GNOME Foundation Mobile Usability Lab >> - Next revision of the GNOME HIG >> - Usability Data >> - Ongoing Usability > > They all sound good. I guess my only concern is that it is much easier > to gather the data than analyze it. That was what was most interesting > to me with the inGIMP stuff is the calibration to sit down sessions, > then the ability to use that more broadly. > > Of the list there, I think the HIG is probably the highest priority to > me. There is now lots that it doesn't cover :) I encourage you to discuss ways that you think the HIG should be improved. It would be good to have more discussion. >> The Boston Summit is coming up in a few weeks (October 10-12). I am >> wondering how many usability people are going to this event. If there >> is an interest, and enough people going, we could plan to get together >> there and discuss these ideas further. Any interest? > > I'll be there, let's talk! I unfortunately have to leave Sunday night > so earlier rather than later please :) Sounds good. I think there will be a fair group of Usability people at the Boston Summit, so lets plan to spend some time working on these things. >> So, I am interested to hear what people think. I am interested to know >> who is interested, who are the right people to be involved with a >> project like this, and who might be available to help with >> organizational things. > > I suck at organizational things, but I'm willing to try and help. I think just participating in the discussion is the best way to help. A lot of decisions need to be made in terms of how to improve the HIG. Brian _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability |
|
|
|
|
|
Re: Ideas for Usability Hackfest
by Máirín Duffy-3
::
Rate this Message:
On 09/28/2009 06:36 PM, Brian Cameron wrote:
> Methods to get more effective usability data might include things like > encouraging developers to test paper prototypes with family and > friends, instrumenting development builds of software (cf. InGimp: > <http://www.ingimp.org/>), or devising self-administered usability > tests where users run through tasks that are provided in an email or > on a website, and either record themselves doing it (using something > like Pongo again) and/or fill in a questionnaire afterwards. To the latter point, simply watching a user interact with their computer and let them dictate what tasks they need to do can result in a quick (in this case 1 hour) set of data, without requiring any special equipment at all: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/UserObservationData ~m _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability |
|
|
Re: Ideas for Usability Hackfest
by Máirín Duffy-3
::
Rate this Message:
Hi Calum!
On 10/01/2009 12:32 PM, Calum Benson wrote: > (1) Style guidelines that contain a gallery of window layouts and their > relevant applications, padding/spacing and framing, alignments, icon > guidelines and generally anything which is "GNOME Style Guidelines" > worthy. This document becomes the main Bible of UI design for GNOME > applications. It has an overview of simple things that UI designers can > do to ensure a consistent look and feel with GNOME. > > A pattern library would be ideal, as I understand it what you'd be > expecting here is a library of common widget arrangements matched with a > task and applicability, for instance; 'My application needs to browse a > series of folders to populate the main view' - Use a sidebar, this is > how ... dum de dum ... The problem with these kinds of libraries is > browsability, a semantic data store could work in the following way; It didn't seem to be mentioned in your summary so I wanted to bring it up - in working with developers writing UIs for GNOME, one resource that some had not even heard of but found very useful is the 'gtk-demo' app. It has running demo apps that show the usage of various widgets in GTK+, their source code, and some brief remarks about them. It might be cool to build in some more user experience centric documentation right within the little demo app to talk about what kinds of data sets are best represented with this widget, which are not well-represented with it, and maybe provide the demos in a pattern-centric style navigation than a widget-centric navigation. (Does that make sense?) I was thinking, if it's not a document but is more interactive like gtk-demo, developers may be more likely to read it than a doc. ~m _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability |
|
|
Re: Ideas for Usability Hackfest
by Calum Benson
::
Rate this Message:
On 7 Oct 2009, at 19:27, Máirín Duffy wrote: > It might be cool to build in some more user experience centric > documentation right within the little demo app to talk about what > kinds of data sets are best represented with this widget, which are > not well-represented with it, and maybe provide the demos in a > pattern-centric style navigation than a widget-centric navigation. Yep, providing code snippets for the patterns is certainly something we thought would be a good idea in our initial ideas knockabout, and building on gtk-demo could certainly be one way to kick-start that particular aspect of the project. Even if we don't end up doing it that way, your point about interactivity is a good one, and I think we'd probably want to think about how to provide some sort of animation/interactivity where appropriate even in a web-based pattern library. A few frames of animation is often all it takes to replace half a dozen paragraphs of descriptive text. (The downside, of course, is that it's not so good if you want to print out a particular pattern for reference...) Cheeri, Calum. -- CALUM BENSON, Interaction Designer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:calum.benson@... OpenSolaris Desktop Team http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@... http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability |
signature.asc (204 bytes) 
| Free embeddable forum powered by Nabble | Forum Help |
