Re: [Usability] user levels, etc.

[David Moles <david moles vykor com>]

On Tue, 2001-11-13 at 04:43, John Kodis wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 11:31:25AM +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> 
> > User testing does not equate to "one person or any small team dictating", it
> > means giving Real Users tasks to achieve with an interface, and analysing
> > where they stuff up (which is, in the end, an interface issue).
> 
> One problem I've noticed with this type of user testing is that the
> test subjects are generally users who are inexperienced or unfamiliar
> with what is being tested.  This tends to lead to interfaces that
> offer few choices, and that tend to be similar to whatever Microsoft
> does.  

The problem is that users who are experienced and familiar with what
is being tested can't give you much useful feedback. I already know
how to do all sorts of weird stuff with the GNOME panel, because I
already put in the hard time trying to figure it out two or three years
ago. You'll never find out by using me as a test subject that the panel
is confusing and hard to use. (But judging from the number of people in
my office who've come over repeatedly saying, "hey, David, I screwed
up that gnome thing again, can you fix it for me?", it's hard to use.
I should add that some of these people have since switched to KDE, 
though I'm not sure why.)

Actually, I think Microsoft offers way too many choices. :) (And way
too many different places to make those choices.)

> While there's some validity to testing for this type of
> audience, it's unlikely to yield the type of interface that would be
> best for me, or best for people like me who are willing to spend a few
> minutes learning the ins and outs of a different interface.

But I'm not sure you can *design* for people like you (or me) who are
willing to learn the ins and outs. We'll learn the ins and outs,
whatever they happen to be. So long as there turns out to be a way to
tweak all the things we want to tweak, we'll end up being happy. Given
that, we might as well design the default behavior of the interface to
be good for people who *don't* want to take the time.

Microsoft is actually pretty bad in this regard. I mean, there are a
lot of ins and outs to configuring the Win95/98/NT4/2K interface, weird
preferences scattered around places you don't expect, that kind of
thing. The thing is, most users don't bother to learn them anyway, and
just use the default behavior, and settle for a sort of constant low-
grade unpleasantness subconsciously tarnishing their workday. :) We can
do better than that.