Re: [Usability] Some interesting user feedback

[Kjartan Maraas <kmaraas broadpark no>]

fre, 14.11.2003 kl. 20.01 skrev Bryan W Clark:
> On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 13:28, Dan Winship wrote:
> > "I just ate your data. Please be my friend."
> 
> Yes, this isn't the right time to try to be friends, but I think 
> "I just ate you data.  Because I screwed up, take more time out of your
> day with a bug report... You do know what a bug report is, right?"
> 
> > After an application crashes is not a good time to be asking the user to
> > help us. We want to emphasize how filing a bug report will help *them*.
> 
> Yes, I think you're right that this is the best method to try to get
> them to help out with a bug report.
> 
> >         The application "$APPNAME" has crashed.
> >         
> >         If you would like to send a bug report to the developers of this
> >         application, click "Send Bug Report" below to open the Bug
> >         Reporting Assistant, which will generate a detailed crash report
> >         and help you send it to the right place.
> 
> I like this, my only reservation is against the use of the word "Bug",
> which I think is an understandable idea to all users.  
> 
> Not that I would want to copy this, perhaps embrace and extend...
> http://www.windows-help.net/windows98/img/ie-error-tool.gif
> 
> I like how they simply say:  
> 	"There was an error, they are sorry"
> 	"Please tell us about it"
> 
> Then 2 options: ( with ability to restart app )
> 	"Don't send report / Send report"
> 
I've been "using" this a lot lately since my Windows XP machine at work
has been acting up a lot. (Blaming it on the beta version of the Novell
client I was set up with :)

I think this is much better for the user than what we have today where
the user is told to fill in a lot of details that most users don't know
about or care enough to fill in correctly anyway. If we had some
automatic duplicate tracking action we'd be able to match automatically
submitted reports against manually entered ones with good descriptions
anyway, or at the least be able to contact the individual for more
information if nobody else had reported that bug.

> > (OK, that doesn't really emphasize how it will help them, but isn't it
> > kind of obvious?) The bit at the end tries to address the original "but
> > I don't know how to send a bug report" issue. The "help you send it" is
> > to avoid implying that clicking the button will make it automatically
> > violate your privacy / corporate security policy.
> 
> Yes, this is a problem with the other error dialog; this is were we can
> extend it to be better.
> 
> > Another thing that could be cool would be a "check for a new version"
> > button (with associated explanatory text) that would run red-carpet /
> > apt-get / rhn / whatever for you to see if there was a new version of
> > the package. (libgnomeui would just have stubs, which the various
> > packagers could then plug their systems into.)
> 
> definitely cool!  Could be a future addition to really enhance this.
> 
Didn't we recently find out that MS had patented something like this?

> > Oh, and the current crash dialog includes the PID of the crashed
> > application, which is useful for developers (so you can go to a terminal
> > and attach gdb to the right process easily). Keeping that information
> > somewhere would be nice, even if it was somewhere less prominent, like
> > the titlebar, or in a "Details" pane a la gconf errors.
> 
> This is a great idea, and some low hanging fruit we could do right away.
> 
I think at the most we should ask the user to describe what he/she was
doing right before the crash. Asking them for details about
product/component etc is just confusing and leads to extra work for the
bugsquad anyway :-)

Maybe a bug-buddy "light" version/mode which behaves more like the MS
error reporting tool would be nice?

Cheers
Kjartan