[TYPO3-hci] Usability testing in lab?

[Kasper Skårhøj]

Hi Matthew, few comments.

(On your mail about the wiki being "reset" a few weeks; I didn't  
notice and have no idea...)

> My view is this.
>
> 1) Lab testing is a costly but ideal way to expose weaknesses that  
> have not
> already been identified. It is also an ideal place to test  
> extremely subtle
> changes. For example the eye tracking can measure very small and  
> almost sub
> conscious differences.

I would love to see a team doing this and reporting back in actual  
suggestions. THAT is exactly the most powerful results this team  
could ever produce. I'm unsure if the method is right for the money.  
See below:

> 3) A rather famous usability expert suggests most problems are  
> identified in
> the first 3-5 people and anything beyond that is diminishing  
> returns. 80:20
> rule.

I agree. I think at this point we don't need to track the eyes of  
people to find improvements. Lets be a little more relaxed and just  
start to test with some persons, like 3-5. That is surely going to  
bring us a lot of feedback right away.

>
> 4) Why don't we start by generating a wiki record of the usability  
> issues
> current TYPO3 users and developers have already identified and look  
> for
> emerging patterns. bugs.typo3 and the mailing lists already  
> contains some
> items and a further mailing rather like the mascot/logo/bugs  
> promotions to
> help enlist the typo3 usergroup into reviewing and submitting their  
> own
> bugs.

We have that wiki already: The HCI team pages on the wiki.typo3.org.  
We call it "No-brainers" - the issues we can identify without testing.

> 5b) Along the way there needs to be contextural help to get users  
> past the
> current workflow problem. A good example of this is v4.0 has lost the
> inbuilt Page TSconfig references. Why. The resultant online  
> reference takes
> you nowhere near the actual documentation needed.

Must be a bug.

>
> 6) Not entirely TYPO3 core responsibility but core in the minds of  
> users is
> the fact that many popular extensions do not come out of the box  
> ready to
> go. They require far too much configuration just to get the initial  
> set up.
> So TYPO3 core should consider -TYPO3 ready!- approval for  
> extensions that
> plug and play. The learning curve is already high so a new  
> developer using
> TYPO3 will appreciate the informed choice between two possible  
> extensions.

"TYPO3 ready!" extensions - a great idea! It could be a project for  
version 4.2 for instance:
a) Define "best-practices" that leads to the "TYPO3 ready!" approval
b) Define the 10-20 most needed plugin types for a TYPO3 website and  
endorse - or create from scratch - those extensions as a part of the  
distributed system. (Out-of-the-box extensions?)

>
> 7) Extension reviews. These are still poor and much more  
> information should
> be provided on each extension for users not able to dig deep into the
> extension files. Reviews at present are limited to:

Extension reviews should probably be discarded completely as they are  
currently thought. Rather we should have simple rating of extensions.  
Maybe, ratings should be given on categories like "usability",  
"extendability" ,"administration", "code", "security" etc. The main  
point is that people using the extension, rates them. No journalists,  
no teams, nobody assigned to do it; let the users...

> I understand that just talking about the changes takes time and  
> making the
> changes takes even more. However, building a well researched  
> roadmap of the
> improvements that can be made allows any future development  
> decision to
> better 'usability informed'.

I agree


 From all the information we have on the wiki, would you like to help  
working on the roadmap which should basically spell out what the  
priorities for version 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 etc of TYPO3 will be?

- kasper



>
> My views, hope it helps.
> Matthew
>
>
>
>
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- kasper

"Gimme Five!"
-------------------------------
kasper2006 at typo3.com | +45 20 999 115 | skype: kasperskaarhoej |  
gizmo: kasper_typo3