On 22/07/10 18:07, Mister Ribble wrote:
It was actually asked. Most participants used iTunes and a few Microsoft Media Player. Most often, though, the comparison participants drew was between RB and iTunes. I will add this to the final version of the report.The huge question that should have been asked of users for this report is: "Which music software would you consider yourself most familiar with?" This is right. We selected participants on the basis of their high level of activity with and interest in music. Participants were 'general public', potentially new Ubuntu users.We know that the users are 'heavy music consumers', but most users opinions of how things *should* work will be heavily biased towards whatever software they feel most expert in. Based on some of the users comments, it sounded to me like most of these users weren't used to Ubuntu and its paradigms. This is a very interesting statement. My assumption is that if users expect to find a feature somewhere, the feature is not there and they can't find it anywhere else, that is not a usable product. Expectations and industry standards are core to the usability of a product - if everyone expects to find a column with ratings in their library, this might be a hint to the fact that this type of presentation of ratings has become an industry standard. Of course, we have a choice here, we can play on the strength of the standard or we can decide we won't. If we refuse to follow people's expectations, we still have to take into account these expectations and give users generous clues to help them discover the features they want to use.Those of us who are find Rhythmbox significantly easier to use. Things like "Participants are used to a rating column in their library" tell me that primarily this report is designed not to make Rhythmbox more usable, per se, but to make it better fit users expectations based on previous experience with other software. I can understand that this might not work for you. However, our participants wanted more guidance and reassurance - especially when they can't achieve their goals. Of course, we can chose to design interactions in many ways, some more elegant than others.Furthermore, I hope that Rhythmbox developers don't take comments like "Users need prompts and feedback to successfully download their music from a USB key. " as gospel. I would hate to have Rhythmbox intrusively trying to tell me how to do things all the time. This is another good point. However, users do not deal with computers when they engage with RB - they deal with music and songs and beautiful things - with magic - that don't equate in their minds with folder and files and computers. It is true that there have some practical goals in mind, for example, to set up RB and listen to music, but they also have what we call in user experience, 'experiential goals'. 'Experiential goals' correspond to how users want to feel as they are doing the practical bits. With RB, they want to feel entertained and happy. They are engaging in enjoyable activities. It is a usability matter how they feel, because how they feel will probably determine if they will adopt the product or not and if they will show the patience to learn and stick with it even if everything is not working perfectly.I like the specificity of Rhythmbox's language. Statements like "...a new window gave a choice between importing file or folder. This dialogue box confused participants since, in their minds they were not dealing with files or folder but with songs. " are disingenuous - I would argue that if a computer user doesn't realize the difference between a file and folder, they need some basic education before they should be doing anything with a computer. I think that the problems users had with RB stemmed from a weak user-interaction design (anticipation of what users are about to do and responding to what they just did). Participants were often lost because they just didn't know what was going on and RB seemed unpredictable. Usability findings don't reflect on the excellence of the RB itself. Having more explicit engagement with users would greatly increase the usability and enjoyment of RB.I realize that Mac people like imagining that they can get away from the concept of a file, and knowing where it is and what to do with it, but such a view oversimplifies. If a user works with nothing but 'songs', do we expect them to keep all of their music in a single directory? If so, how do we conceptualize them importing a large, coherent group of songs? If not, wouldn't it seem intuitive to them to import an entire directory from their collection? I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm just one user of Rhythmbox, and I would hope that no one would take all of these recommendations as authoritative. I prefer Rhythmbox to the myriad other music software packages because of what it is - if you make it more like others, I would like it less. This doesn't mean it can't stand improvement, nor does it mean that some of the recommendations aren't excellent. I just find this report rather damning of Rhythmbox, which is not representative of how I see it. As I mentioned before, there are many ways to respond to these findings: we could adopt standards and/or satisfy users' expectations or, if we opt for uniqueness, we have to realise that users will be lost and the mechanisms of anticipation/feedback becomes even more critical to the success of the application. Thanks for such a thoughtful feedback! C. -Eli Ribble On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 16:38 +0200, Charline wrote:Hello, I have just completed usability testing of Rhythmbox. I am planning to publish the results on CanonicalDesign.com on Tuesday. I would like you to read the report, if you have time, and send me feedback or any questions you might have. I hope the report will be helpful. C. -- CHARLINE POIRIER User Research Programme Lead Canonical 27th floor, 21-24 Millbank Tower London SW1P 4QP UK Tel: +44 (0) 20 7630 2491 Mob: +44 (0) 78 8695 4514 www.Ubuntu.com <http://www.Ubuntu.com/> www.Canonical.com <http://www.Canonical.com/> _______________________________________________ rhythmbox-devel mailing list rhythmbox-devel gnome org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/rhythmbox-devel --
CHARLINE POIRIER User Research Programme Lead Canonical 27th floor, 21-24 Millbank Tower London SW1P 4QP UK Tel: +44 (0) 20 7630 2491 Mob: +44 (0) 78 8695 4514 www.Ubuntu.com <http://www.Ubuntu.com/> www.Canonical.com <http://www.Canonical.com/>
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