[358] in Athena User Interface
Minutes, 8/9 AUI Usability meeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Sun Aug 13 05:41:08 2000
Message-Id: <200008130941.FAA08340@No-Whammies.mit.edu>
To: jlittell@MIT.EDU, kcahill@MIT.EDU, sbjones@MIT.EDU, aui@MIT.EDU
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 05:41:04 -0400
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
Athena User Interface Project
First Usability Testing Meeting
Wednesday, August 9, 2000
Attending:
Richard Tibbetts (tibbetts)
Heather Anne Harrison (aurora)
Andrew Boardman (amb)
Brad Thompson (yak)
Janet Littell (jlittell)
Bill Cattey (wdc)
Kathy Cahill (kcahill)
Susan Jones (sbjones)
Chris Beland (beland)
Comments on goals and characterization of customers:
- Aesthetics should be lower priority than usability criteria
- The issue of alternative access methods was raised. While mainline
Gnome development may provide us with additional support for
accessibility (better keyboard bindings and support for special
configurations) we should be OK as long as existing access methods
(e.g. dialup service, command-line interface) continue to be
supported
- Use of cameras and playing music were mentioned as common (though
not necessarily educationally-related) user tasks
- Beland was tasked with constructing an alternate characterization
of our customer base (rather than the crude expression of
not-very-meaningful percentages)
He now proposes:
Our primary customers are MIT undergraduate, the vast majority of
our users. However, we are aware that graduate students, faculty,
and staff also use Athena, and that the needs of these groups may
in some cases also be relevant to our core educational goals.
Of foremost importance to the AUI project are the usability needs
of incoming freshmen who have primarily (or exclusively) Windows
and Macintosh experience, or little or no computer experience at
all. We also seek to improve usability for veteran Athena and
other Unix users. All users should benefit from increased
functionality, better aesthetics, and continued support for
existing functionality and customizabilty.
Our primary focus is on the approximately 1000 public cluster
Athena workstations; a secondary audience is an nearly equal number
of machines in departmental clusters, laboratories, offices, and
student residences.
- It was reported that the staff who do use Athena commonly do so for
e-mail and Zephyr
Test Procedure
- N42's integration lab was identified as our testing facility
- Time limit was reduced to 30-45 minutes
- The scope of testing was reduced so that it no longer includes:
- Use or presentation of gmc, the graphical file manager
- Use or presentation of gmenu, the menu editor
- Renaming or deleting files (which might prompt use of gmc)
- Open-ended customizations
- Instead of entering an entire verse of prose, users will be
requested only to fix a typos
- The Zephyr sequence will be completely changed. Heather has
volunteered to send personal messages to the subject during the
test. Also, the questions related to Zephyr will be more sensitive
to users' lack of social context. We will still be testing ability
to send and receive brief personal and group messages.
- The use of parenthetical "(group)" and "(topic)" labels,
accompanying the traditional "class" and "instance" in gZephyr was
judged important.
- WebMoira will be tested, since it is the most modern and supposedly
the most user-friendly mail interface. Though the system is being
developed outside the AUI project, we will be able to provide
useful and scientific feedback, which we anticipate will result in
improvements, if any are needed. (We will probably need to acquire
web certificates for the gtest user in advance to avoid problems
with this test.)
- The survey will be on a 5 point scale, not 7.
- The survey will be shortened. Itemized questions about
user-friendliness, speed, and responsiveness will be consolidated
with open-ended questions. Short tests like the ones we will be
performing are not a good measure of platform stability, so we will
not ask about that.
- The labels for the scale will be made clearer, including replacing
N/A markings with more descriptive text.
Menu System
- The exact terminology and layout of the Gnome menu system was
judged to be an important usability issue. Beland and Susan will
consult with Brad (who was finishing the prototype menu
configuration at the time of the meeting).
- We agreed that there's no need to replicate the Dash menu in Gnome
style for backward compatibility.
- Some remarks were made about the utility of adjusting the default
Netscape bookmarks, homepage and/or taskbar instead of encumbering
the menus with a lot of URLs.
Recruiting
- I/S staff will be tapped for the first stages of testing, excluding
developers and their development-related friends (Heather and Susan
volunteered to recruit some people they know from around MIT who
are enthusiastic about participating this sort of testing)
- SIPB members would be useful as knowledgeable Unix-using test
subjects
- Nothing further was decided with regard to recruitment policy.
Next Steps
- AUI is working on stabilizing an alpha version of the prototype for
testing.
- Beland is revising the testing procedures, taking into the feedback
given at the meeting. He will evaluate the completeness of the
prototype with respect to the new procedure, and set up a time as
soon as possible with Susan Jones to do a live run-through. He
will e-mail everyone with the revised testing documents ASAP.
- It was not decided whether it would be better to do actual testing
ASAP or after new student orientation.
- The new interface should be reviewed by appropriate staff for
support load impact.
- Future usability testing cycles will be necessary.
- Heather will be planning an IAP event that will feature the new
AUI.
Bill performed an interactive interpretive dance which outlined the
long-term future of the AUI project. Hopefully, I have managed to
summarize it properly below.
---
Summer 2000
| Prototype development
| Usability testing and report
| Preliminary go-ahead decision NO -> Abort
| Yes -> Continue...
---
Fall 2000
| Resource assessment for production system
| Concurrently: non-public beta testing
| Concurrently: continued development
| Last call for stakeholder concerns
---
IAP 2001
| Non-public beta testing continues
| Heavy development
| Public preview and announcements
---
Spring 2001
| Public (opt-in) beta availability
| Continued development
| Evaluation of stability
---
Summer 2001
| Presuming stability, Gnome become new Athena default
---
---
Thanks all, for a very productive and enlightening meeting.
Beland
Maker of Minutes
