Re: [Usability] Gnome Research - Sociological Surveys

[Celeste Lyn Paul <celeste kde org>]

What is the purpose/goal of this survey? To get general information about 
GNOME users or to find something specific out?

If it is to get general information, there are a few things you should know. 

* Your audience is going to be inherently biased to people who know about the 
community and participate in forums/blogs/mailing lists

* Finding any trends or correlations will require hundreds of responses

* A single survey is not enough to make any assumptions, especially something 
as general as this. After this, you should do a followup study with either 
another targeted survey or interviews.

I really encourage starting small and building on what you learn to expand 
your knowledge base. Otherwise you will spend a lot of time getting very 
little useful data.

General comments about your survey:

There are child privacy laws which prevent you from collecting information 
from children under the age of 13 in the US and many other countries. You 
should not allow them to participate.  There are also general age market 
categories that you should follow, although I don't know if Europe uses the 
same market segments as the US:

18-24 
25-34
35-44
45-54
55+

(with some variations in the later segments)

"What is the highest level of education you have earned?" With multiselection

Job status doesn't matter as much as what their occupation is (e.g. 
Administrative Assistant vs. Software Engineer.

"What is your native language"

"What is your OS language"

"How fast is your Internet connection?"
Not sure, Slow/Dial-up, Fast/DSL or better

"Would you like to have a search for menuitems..."
^ Bad question

"Do you feel lost when you..."
^ Bad question

Other commenters have given feedback about the other questions as well.

On Friday 17 April 2009 05:05:46 pm Florian Ludwig wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-04-17 at 23:11 +0300, Anton Kerezov wrote:
> > Here's the first draft:
> > http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cFE1dHJkUkhFakVoNlZJVEFKN
> >XRJZFE6MA..
> >
> > What is your job status?
>
> Does the term "employed" include "self-employed"? (I dont know) But
> anyway... does it matter if the user is employed?
>
> > How much time are you online using an instant messanger?
>
> Missing "per day". After pondering a bit about what do you information
> you actually get from answers to this I think the relation of this
> number is missing - a person using the computer 4hrs/day and logging in
> 5min/day just to check "if a person X is only" is a pretty different
> usage pattern from a person using the computer 1hr/day and being logged
> in the whole time. So maybe ask:
>
> How much of the time your computer is turned on is an instant messanger
> running?
>
> > How often do you check your emails? * Relative Number of times per day
> >
> > How many emails do you write per day?
>
> Maybe make the all "per week" instead of "per day" since there are a lot
> of people who dont check their mails every day, more like once per week.
>
> > Do you have a blog?
>
> Whats the different between "No" and "No I don't intend to use one." ?
>
> > What computers do you own?
>
> I would
>  - refer to device, not computer
>  - replace "own" with "use" (or "own and use")
>  - add "smart phone"
>
> > Do you feel you are doing repetarive actions when you are using the
>
> menus in Gnome 2.x *
> What is "repetarive"? Something you repeat very often? (never heard this
> before)
>
> > Would you like to have a search for menuitems for each program in the
>
> menubar?
> Maybe "have a search for menutims integrated in each program" would be
> more clear.
> I would add "dont know" option here.
>
> > What *are* workspace*s*?
>
> or
>
> > What is *a* workspace?
> >
> >
> > How do you switch between the windows?
>
> There is some function builtin metacity, where you hover the window with
> the mouse and it becomes active, maybe add this option - i dont have any
> idea if this is used widely. Maybe replace "a compiz plugin" with
> "other" as there are a lot of other way with non gnome tools.
>
> > Do you find what are you searching for in the filesystem tree?
>
> Do you refer with "filesystem tree" to the linux/unix filesystem
> hierarchy (/usr /var etc) or the filesystem in general? Filesystem as in
> "navigating though files and folders with nautilus"?
>
> > I would welcome any further question proposals as well as  a way to
> > handle the Contry/language questions.
>
> Ask for the ISO two letter country code and explain its that what their
> local webpages end with. Example: example.DE example.ES example.co.UK
>
> > I can't possibly type all them, right? Also would need help with the
> > education level because I'm not very familiar with the English terms.
>
> suggestions:
> [ ] master degree
> [ ] PhD
> [ ] apprenticeship
> Note:
> Comparing education on an international scale is a science on its own.
> I'm not a native speaker so its more a guess :)
>
> ---
>
> You should write a bit about what you think you want to do with the
> results. The questions' topics are really mixed up.
>
> But it all depends on the question what your research exactly targets to
> answer.
>
> You wrote a little introduction on scribd.com but from that I cant
> really get what your intention is (but making gnome better).
>
>
> greetings,
> Florian
>
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-- 
Celeste Lyn Paul
KDE Usability Project
usability.kde.org