[683] in Athena User Interface
icon usability test results still has an issue.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Mon Feb 26 18:04:17 2001
Message-ID: <suai3ilz00010NCXUD@mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 23:04:14 +0000 ()
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: sbjones@MIT.EDU
CC: aui@MIT.EDU
Susan:
I was looking at the first run of icon testing at:
http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/aui/icons/auicons.html
Back in 5 January 2001, Greg Hudson reviewed the page and raised the
following issues:
* The process gave highly distinguished status to the first
icon presented to the users for each task. In the case of
the terminal icon, that was xterm-red-X.
* The page does not say precisely how the "Results" section
was generated for icons other than the first one presented.
* Did testers 1, 2, 3, and 5 really report that they
understood what the xterm-red-x icon meant but not the
xterm-gray-x icon? This result seems totally implausible.
I also have trouble believing that four out of six testers
would really be able to decipher the "XTerm Perspective"
icon without outside knowledge that it was an xterm
launcher; it could as easily be a word processor or text
editor.
I have the faint recollection of some hallway chat with you that these
questions would be cleared up in a subsequent revision
of this page. But I'm still confused by what's there.
As we go into our second run of icon reviews, and our more complete
dissemination of the usability testing, could this page be reviewed and
clarified a bit with regards to the issues raised by ghudson?
-wdc
