user observation research for GNOME shell

[Mairin Duffy <duffy redhat com>]

Hi folks,

I did a ~1.5 hour observational study of my office manager's
usage of the GNOME desktop, to understand how she worked
with different windows and their stacking order on the
desktop and how she interacted with the desktop itself. I
drew some diagrams and tried to take detailed notes:

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/UserObservationData/Jessy19Jan2009

This sort of study is actually quite easy to conduct, so if
you are not a programmer and would like to help out with the
GNOME shell project (like myself :)), grabbing a friend and
taking notes on their desktop usage for an hour or so is a
relatively easy way to do it.

I think that different people navigate around the desktop in
different ways, and if we can watch a good cross-section of
users we might see some patterns/trends in the way they
approach the desktop that might lend some good insight into
the GNOME Shell design.

Anyhow, I started a page where folks can start posting their
own studies:

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/UserObservationData

And I linked to it from the main GnomeShell wiki page.

Also, if aday from gimpnet is reading this, drop me an
email! I'm very interested to talk to you about running some
more studies like this, but I haven't seen you on IRC since
and I don't have your email address. :(

~m