Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Usability report on Rhythmbox

[Peter <rhythmbox-devel maubp freeserve co uk>]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 11:37 AM, Charline
<charline poirier canonical com> wrote:
> All points taken.  Thanks very much, Peter.
>

Hi Charline,

Since you have been some responsive, I have some more queries. I
hope you don't mind.

First of all, who was this report written for? i.e. Who was the target audience?
I'd guess some group working on the Ubuntu desktop, with the RB developers
as a secondary target.

In several places, I was not 100% sure which bit of the RB interface you
were describing in the text - for example "Participants right clicked on
songs from the USB key" probably means right clicking on the USB entry
within the RB list of sources - as opposed to right clicking on the USB
entry on the desktop or a file browser? Here an annotated screenshot
might help, or a little clarification in the text.

Now for something specific, the report mentioned a mismatch between the
actual visual layout, and the screen shots in the help:

>> One participant looked under help to find a way to quit Rhythmbox.
>> Unfortunately, the screenshots used in the help section do not correspond
>> to the actual application and so the help was not useful.

Would it be easy to include a couple of example images? I am wondering if
this was cosmetic things like the desktop theme, or bigger discrepancies like
the "system tool bar" icon/menu/applet (I forget what it is officially called).
Related to this what version of RB was being used, and what version of Linux
was being used? I would guess (given you are at Canonical) Ubuntu with
Gnome - and I am aware that that Ubuntu have made modification to the
version of RB they ship (specifically the system tool bar applet). Perhaps the
help needs Ubuntu specific updates to match?

I'd like to emphasis the above highlights what I consider to be some important
omissions from the report:

(*) When was the study done,
(*) What version of the OS was used (perhaps stating the desktop theme too if
not the default)
(*) what version of Rhythmbox was used
(*) were optional codecs like mp3 support preinstalled
(*) was the default configuration of the OS and Rhythmbox used (and was
it reset between participants), other than setting up the account with Ubuntu
One which was stated
(*) what language was used (for the OS, instructions, and participants - this
was presumably US English but should be stated).

And some interesting but less critical bits of background information,

(*) Where the 8 participants evaluated individually, or where several
trials running at the same time? If so, was there a dedicated observer
for each participant - otherwise you risk missing things?
(*) Where was the study done (i.e. which City or at least country was the
unspecified Canonical  office),
(*) type of mouse and keyboard (in particular did it have any decicated
multimedia keys like play/pause/prev/next and volume controls)
(*) screen size and resolution (this makes a difference to the layout,
as low resolution screens make it hard to show all the sources or
columns at once)

I'm also curious to know a little more about the participants background
(while of course respecting their privacy), for example general age group,
approx years of computer experience, which computer OS they normally
use, and as discussed already on this thread what music software they
typically use (e.g. iTunes). As has already been discussed on this thread,
this is useful to understand some of the user confusion in terms of what
they are used to.

Regards,

Peter