[382] in Athena User Interface
Re: Fwd: Re: Beta, system, and usability testing, p.s.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Susan B. Jones)
Thu Aug 24 16:53:19 2000
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Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 16:52:48 -0400
To: "andrew m. boardman" <AMB@mit.edu>, jlittell@mit.edu
From: "Susan B. Jones" <sbjones@MIT.EDU>
Cc: beland@mit.edu, aui@mit.edu, kcahill@mit.edu
>
>>If you want us to test in September, perhaps the tasks could be limited to
>>navigating the AUI menus to find, open, and close various applications,
>>using only those parts of an application that are related to gnome.
>
>Initial usability testing should happen *well* before November; so long
>as we stick to the task list at hand (and drop a couple of file
>management tasks), I think aui is stable enough to test now and should do
>fine for this. (Any disagreement on this?)
>
>How much lead time do you need to set up formal live testing? What would
>you need from the development side of things, other than stable software
>and a developer on hand for the actual testing?
Stable software is the first best thing. I've done somemore playing with
the AUI and actually take back what I said about there being nothing much
to test at this point. Even though you are waiting for Nautilus for file
managing, I think we could take a run at the filemanager that's there now.
My problem so far has been mostly stability. The only platform I ahve been
able to get it running on were the Dells running Linux. When I try it on
the Sun Ultra 5 in my area it hangs on start up of gnome.
Okay, so how long to set up a testing situation? We could probaly be ready
in a week or so. It would be nice to grab some new freshman to be testers
before they take the minicourses, but that would mean starting on Monday.
That's too soon. Anyway, the next couple of weeks is a good time to find
testers.
We have just gotten back the use of our usability testing room which will
allow greater numbers of observers (as in Bealands plan), but Muhammed
Sharari and I will have to put the lab back together. You'll have to give
us at least a week to do that.
I think we should test on a Dell running Linux/Athena. It seems to be the
most stable setup, I can find and is definitley the zippiest. I just tried
it on Muhammed's Sun and it felt like mud. I tried to open Netscape and by
the time it showed up, I had opened at least two instances. Do you want to
have testers test for speed of use as well as ease of use at this point?
Or do you want to wait for a later test?
So, given all that, let's plan to test the week of September 11. Let's get
five testers, preferably new students who have not yet gone to the
minicourses. If, as in Beland's plan, we want the developers to be among
the observers, we should probably schedule all the tests in one day. Say
two in the morning and three in the afternoon with a break for lunch.
Can we get together again before that to go over Beland's test? I would at
some point like to "beta" test it.
Beland, one thing to try to do is to purge as much Athena language as
possible from the test and just talk 'mer'can.
Andrew, have you lost your gang at this point or do you still have a team?
Susan
