unity-design team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Hi Carsten

Carsten Agger wrote on 17/11/10 15:13:
>...
> We're starting up an Ubuntu Group in Aarhus, Denmark, with face-to-face
> meetings every two weeks, and some of the participants would like to
> participate in Ubuntu usability work.

Excellent!

> One of us did a talk about the Unity interface last time, and mentioned
> that people are needed for testing Unity. Our usability-minded people
> would like to have a go at this, and I promised to investigate a bit
> and say something about it at our next meeting (tomorrow). Only I don't
> see any obvious guidelines to become involved, at least not as easy to
> find as those regarding getting started with bug work.

That's true. The only thing about getting involved with design mentioned
on unity.ubuntu.com is "Join the Ayatana mailing list", which obviously
you've already done.

> So, what *do* we do to get started, and is it a correct assumption that
> this work is still needed?

The more user testing of Unity we can get, the better.

Unfortunately Charline Poirier, Canonical's lead researcher, is away
this week. I will remind her to reply to you when she gets back. In the
meantime, I suggest:

1.  Brainstorm some tasks that could be tested in half an hour or so.
    For example, importing a photo from a digital camera and sending it
    to a friend. Or subscribing to a podcast and syncing it to a
    portable music player. Or finding an interesting game to play. Or
    printing a picture.

2.  Follow standard user testing procedure to produce a test script
    based on the task you choose, and post it to this list for others to
    review it. (See for example Rubin & Chisnell, "Handbook of
    usability testing" 2nd edition, chapter 8.)

Or if you want something simpler to try:

Install a Natty daily build
<http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/>, install Unity
<https://launchpad.net/~unity/+archive/ppa>, take a screenshot of it,
and print it out in color. Then take a video camera and do a survey of
people in the street, asking questions like "Imagine you bought a new
computer, and you turned it on, and the screen looked like this ... What
do you think this bit would do?" Or, "If you wanted to find more
programs on here, where would you go?" Avoid asking leading questions,
and record all the answers.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Cheers
- -- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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