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GUI Software KDE

Portable Usability Labs As User Research Tools 60

Posted by timothy from the bookmobile-meets-the-pepsi-challenge dept.
Pete Gordon writes "Do Portable Usability and User Research Labs make sense in the software development life-cycle? This interview (my bias--it's with me, and I have a tool in beta now) covers some of the issues and questions on KDE's news site. I don't have the right answers necessarily, just looking for others input and opinions. Also, here are other links about the subject over the past few months. Info World and Harry's comparison."
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Portable Usability Labs As User Research Tools More

Portable Usability Labs As User Research Tools

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  • Cost? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 20, 2004 @08:05AM (#10574419) Journal
    Open Source projects, more than other types of projects, have serious financial constraints. Is the cost/benefit ratio of performing these labs worth it? Seeing as how Open Source projects typically form the backbone of systems and rarely form the front (user-facing) end, is it worth it to spend time and money on projects that will only be used by developers and hackers?

    • Re:Cost? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by metlin ( 258108 ) * on Wednesday October 20, 2004 @08:12AM (#10574467) Journal
      Short term, yes. Long term, no.

      In the long term, it would be worth it. Hate it as you will, the precise reason Windows does so well in the market is its user interfaces.

      User interfaces play a very very vital role in user behaviour, and usage.

      I do not understand the argument that developers should not have good UIs. Why not? Would you not use a Visual IDE for your development if it had more features that you would use? Or would you rather that we all stick to CLI?

      In fact, I really *like* Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET's IDE -- it's really quite well done, and very well designed with the developer in mind. And guess what? It increases my productivity by a significant amount when I code.

      I'll just say this -- if Linux has to make it big, user interfaces _are_ a big deal.

      There is a HCI maxim that says that the best designs are those that you do not notice -- that is what we should be striving for, Opensource or not. You never know who would be using your Opensource application for what.

      And a good UI design is only going to help it.

      • Re:Cost? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by metlin ( 258108 ) *
        And oh, I forgot to add this.

        Anecdotal evidence - I was suggesting implementing some Opensource solutions to a company, and the CIO quotes JWZ -- Linux is nice if you're not constrained on either time or money (don't remember the exact quote).

        He felt that rather than train the existing users, use Linux and fix the problems, he would take up a reliable and commercially tested solution - not merely in terms of how it works, but also in terms of usability and support.

        I really didn't have a good enough rebut

        • Re:Cost? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by sgtrock ( 191182 )
          I think I understand the point that your CIO was making, although I don't know who or what JWZ is. I've heard similar comments in the past from people. I have found that the best response is to turn it around. Ask how much time and money is spent dealing with problems with an existing solution. :)

          Seriously, OSS is not a panacea. There are some OSS projects which are mind-bogglingly successful precisely because they provide a solution that is more cost efficient overall. This includes usability for t
    • I'd say hell yeah. Usability is becoming huge on every front. There's a lot of complaints (both on /. and other sites) that open source desktops such as KDE are mimicking Microsoft's approach by simply looking at what they've done and copying it. So the argument for the need of real design standards created by usability analysts and designers in hopes of offering something more innovative and better than Windows is definitely there. Whether talented design people who know user psychology are up to the chal
      • It's a nice thought - open source user experience design (user research, interaction design, functionality, UI, not just visual design).

        However, on most OSS projects, if you don't code, you're a second-class citizen. There are regular threads every year on user experience lists about "why the OSS community should listen to us" that are filled with anecdotes of rejection by dev teams when a designer or usability person has tried to get involved.

        I don't have any particular answers either, other than that

        • I would fight this battle with the "Pixels Are Code"(tm) mantra. The idea after this slogan is to remark that HCI experts create a precise, exact output which is a high level description of the final application; something akin to the intermediate bytecode produced by a compiler, just with a very descriptive language. I.e. UI experts produce one step of the design process.

          You should persuade OSS developers that the work of a usability analist requires technical skills and produces careful designed specific
  • At least he admitted that he was posting an interview with himself. And it helps that he tossed out a couple of other links to lend some credibility to the discussion.

    After the recent slew of self-plugging stories and the article about 'marketing' which didn't call it astroturfing but described it, this is something of an improvement.

  • Usability (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RomSteady ( 533144 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2004 @08:12AM (#10574462) Homepage Journal
    Any effort to get usability information is worth it, whether it's a full usability lab, or just sitting behind someone who is trying to use your software with a pad of paper.

    The only people who don't think that usability is worth measuring are the people you wouldn't want working on UI to begin with.

    • Re:Usability (Score:3, Informative)

      by tonsofpcs ( 687961 )

      The only people who don't think that usability is worth measuring are the people you wouldn't want working on UI to begin with.

      You mean like certain e-voting-machine producers???
      I agree.

      Also, reading one of the links [usersfirst.com] on the KDE News article [kde.org], they suggest 'Why Apple [usersfirst.com]', giving reason that "The Macintosh was the pioneer in providing a Usable Graphical User Interface." This is completely untrue. Xerox made the first GUI, and I believe the first usable GUI was either Intuition (Amiga's Workbench [wikipedia.org]) or GEOS [wikipedia.org].

      • The key word here is Useable. Xerox wasn't available to normal people, and the Wikipidia link shows that Amiga and GEOS were released after the Mac.
        • Please re-read my post, I did not say Xerox's system was usable, in fact, i said the early Mac system was not, and said that imho Amiga and GEOS were the first usable GUIs.
          • Just about everybody else in the user interface design field disagrees with your asessment of the first Macs. The first Mac was quite usable, and a quantum leap beyond anything else commercially available at the time.

            Note that Apple paid Xerox parc for the right to use the results of the Alto project research.

            Note also that I owned and used an original Mac (128kB RAM, one 400kB internal floppy drive, 64kB ROM) as my only machine for over a year (until I upgraded it to 512kB RAM and added an external flopp

  • Ppl and PC's (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ex-MislTech ( 557759 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2004 @08:12AM (#10574463)
    As Engineers and coders etc etc, we tend to take alot of things
    as granted, and already understood ie. intuitive for our mindset .

    But for the common man sometimes it does not jive .

    If you think that alot of ppl still have flashing 12:00 on their VCR's
    its gonna take some serious simplicity to get past their (fear?) of
    the technical or just grasp of it .

    I think monitoring computer usage amongst beginners and maybe even
    intermediates could show were ppl are frustrating themselves, and
    perhaps tools that could be provided to ease the road more
    travelled , ie. the electronic office/school/home .

    Ergonomics is for human physical comfort, this might provide
    one for mental comfort of sorts .

    Best example I can offer is tech manuals that leave out a step
    that is obvious to the person that wrote it or coded the app,
    but leaves the first time user sitting there thinking its obvious
    something was left out, but not sure how to proceed .

    Computer literacy is still pretty weak IMHO, and on the level of
    Linux and nomenclature of OS subcomponents even more so .

    The more we understand the users, the better we can adapt the
    interface .

    Ex-MislTech
  • Great. Here's where I can get into the corporate BS, thanks.

    At least he's honest.

  • A good thing, but not indispensable (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TuringTest ( 533084 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2004 @08:17AM (#10574503) Journal
    Elizabeth Neal has recently written on this subject, and the title says it all:

    Why You Don't Need a Usability Lab [webword.com]

    Promoting the mindset for usability and user-centered design inside the KDE project is a very good thing, though.

    • Re:A good thing, but not indispensable (Score:4, Insightful)

      by platos_beard ( 213740 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2004 @08:56AM (#10574825)
      I don't think the most important factor determining usuability is addressed in either article. User interface design should be done by user interface designers, not programmers. They need a completely different skill set. While programmers need to understand the working of a computer and be able to extract essential information from documentation, UI designers need to understand the people and processes in the domain they're designing for and be able to extract essential information from people.

      Put simply, programmers need computer skills while designers need people skills. Sometimes they overlap, but no more than random variation dictates (and possibly somewhat less). And even if they do, its a different mindset while doing one job vs. the other.

      And both jobs are hard. A good UI designer has to get beyond the specific suggestions from users to see what the underlying need. UI designers have to find a way to get users to envision a system that doesn't exist yet and figure out how it could work best. Prototypes are essential. Skills to run meetings are essential.

      The toughest part is dealing with criticisms of proposed designs. Sometimes the criticisms are because the new design isn't understood well enough, but other times the criticisms reveal a design flaw. Distinguishing between the two, and correcting misunderstandings of the proposed design without stifling further criticism (which you need) is a delicate art.
  • The most famous comes from anthropology. Watching and Observing Chimps in the wild like Jane Goodall.

    Aha. Up to now I thought that Margaret Mead [loc.gov] deserved the honour.

    CC.

  • If you are biased in your own favor (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    why do you ask a question instead of making a statement?
  • Usability testing is absolutely essential to producing good software -- I've seen too many applications that left the developers hands and went right to market and were utter crap, because the developers put together what *they* thought people wanted, rather than actually verifying at any point that they were on the right track. (And then, most developers have the nerve to get pissed at the user for suggesting they make changes. Go figger.)

    Usability testing also mitigates most of the round-and-round arguments developers will always have between themselves over some feature or another. Instead of butting egos, ask the users.

    Portable usability test environments are not all that hard to come by. Here, we use a couple of Windows Laptops with TechSmith's Camtasia to record users sessions. We can take the laptop to them, present them with whatever we're testing, record the sessions, bring them back, play back the sessions, make our notes and changes, and go about our business. It works rather well for us, and it's much more affordable than building a dedicated facility. Much more convenient for the users, too.
    • Usability testing often takes the 'throw crap at the wall and see what sticks' mentality. However, testing only acts as a natural selector in the population of features - it selects features that perform better, but only from those features that are in the prototype that gets tested.

      What if necessary features aren't in the prototype?

      Testing is a poor tool for doing feature selection and coming up with the concept, functional spec, and interaction design for a product.

      Better than testing is doing up fr

      • I totally agree with this. I really want to communicate the information gathered from field research back to everyone involved in the product--especially the developers. That is the real goal of this lab!

        Screen capture or not, doesn't matter. You could just use the video (multiple cameras) and audio to capture the business process of an individual or a focus group setting.

        I really want to see a User-Centered Design approach.

        Barbara Nelson at Pragmatic Marketing (a marketing IT shop that is focus
  • Besides the cost factor, other advantages of portable setups over formal labs include ease of getting test subjects and public relations. Getting test subjects is easier if you go to them vs. having them take time out of their day to come to you. The public relations part has really worked well for us. Suddenly the users, their managers, *and* the people making the buying decisions see that we care enough about them and their business to take the time to go to meet them.

  • Usability Blog (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by webword ( 82711 )
    Big, Fat Shameless Plug: I regularly cover usability issues on my blog. I cover everything and anything related to usability, customer experience, human factors, ergonomics, human-computer interaction (HCI), user experience, interface design, and so on. I don't have any bias (e.g., open source, Microsoft), and I don't have any religion. I just report news on usability, offer comments, and write articles about usability. If you are interestd in the topic, check out my blog.

    WebWord Usability Blog [webword.com]

    Thanks
  • You can actually build a portable usability testing lab pretty cheaply. I've started to do so out of parts I already had laying around. The core of it is a pair of PowerBook laptops (one G3, one G4), each of which has an S-Video port, coupled with a Canopus ADVC-100 firewire video capture box. This lets me record a user's screen in its entirety into iMovie.

    Couple that with an iPod with a voice recorder, an iSight camera to watch the user directly, and a key logger, and you've got a pretty decent usabili
  • Either the author interviewed himself, or he has a formatting problem. If you are listening, there are no breaks or boldface to demark question and answer sections. Disconcerting to read.

    Interesting read though. Here's an idea, how about taking advantage of reusability in open source by producing a software toolkit to enhance user feedback before and afer development?

    Talkback is neat, I am thinking now of a really simple-looking "push-to-talk" button that (if your computer is set up correctly of course

  • Short-term testing alone is harmful (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2004 @09:33AM (#10575139) Homepage
    Creating truly usable software is a difficult task, and it makes sense that we'd want to apply the Power of Science! to the problem. So, we get Usability Testing.

    Generally, the usability tests I've heard of work like this: you get a bunch of people and stick them in a lab (portable or not), and watch everything they do with the program for a while, as they complete a checklist of tasks. It seems to be prefered to get users who have no previous experience with the program, to prevent "bias".

    Well, that's great, but it doesn't really address usability. It addresses short-term pickupability. Now, that's really important, and it _should_ be addressed -- but if it's the *only* thing you're concerned with, you'll miss other important issues relating to long term software use.

    There's a unix-geek saying: "Unix *is* user-friendly -- it's just picky about its friends". Like all such jokes, there's a kernel of truth here. There's a very steep learning curve to the command line tools that are at the heart of the Unix environment, but once you've gotten up it, they *enable* you as a user to more easily do complicated tasks that would be very tedious in a GUI.

    I don't mean that this is about the CLI vs. GUI thing, though -- that's just an example. I'd certainly be frustrated if my web browser were exclusively designed based on the reports of people who use it for a few hours to complete basic tasks. I'm concerned about the line of thinking that removes features which save huge amounts of time every day simply because they might confuse new users.

    I won't name any names, but I will cough subtly in the direction of the GNOME project and at metacity.

    Please, usablilty people, don't just think of first impressions. Think of the long-term relationship. Both have to be good.

  • It's called HCI (Score:2, Informative)

    by Dabel ( 573340 )
    It's Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Every year there is a large ACM conference on this called CHI. There are also hundreds of HCI researchers all around the world at some of the top institutions working on problems like this.

    Georgia Tech [gatech.edu] and Carnegie Mellon [cmu.edu] have two of the bigger masters programs available. Each program pumps out between one to two dozen people a year who should be well equipped to perform usability testing, among other things.

    And you don't need a whole lab. You don't need to v

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