Re: [Usability] Looking for some data on who we usability practitioners are - please contribute

[Kirk Bridger <kbridger shaw ca>]

Hi all,

So far we have 12 responses - I'd like to ask again that if you're even 
slightly interested please take the 5 minutes or so it takes to fill out 
the survey.  People have told me that it actually is a little cathartic, 
as you get to vent about the terrible software situation we live with 
today ...

I am uncertain is these two emails are getting through to the KDE mail 
list - could someone from the list confirm if it is or if it is not, so 
I can follow up if needed?

Thanks,

Kirk

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GCFPJ9L




Kirk Bridger wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm looking to gather some non-identifiable data (i.e. aggregate data) 
> on who we usability practitioners are.  The purpose is to help me 
> develop some personas for use in a little side project that has come 
> about on the Gnome usability mailing list [1] - an attempt to create a 
> usability testing software suite.
>
> To that end I have created a short survey [2] on SurveyMonkey to help 
> begin gathering data for use in creating the personas.  The intention 
> is to not create personas modeled on specific people, but rather to 
> collect data from a lot of people, identify commonalities, traits, 
> needs, etc.  These trends then get massaged into personas with the 
> intention being that we can stop designing the software for a user 
> that wants to do everything in every possible way (the "elastic user" 
> problem).  Instead we can focus on meeting the needs of the 
> persona(s), and thus meet the needs of the people the persona(s) 
> represent.
>
> Anyhow, I'd love to see as many usability practitioners as possible 
> provide some data.  Even if you're just someone interested in the 
> topic - this suite may need to have a novice user persona, and thus we 
> need your input too!
>
> If you know of any other places we can locate usability practitioners 
> (ideally with a FLOSS leaning) then please forward this along, or send 
> me the info and I can do so.
>
> If you have any questions or concerns about this exercise, how the 
> data will be used, or just want to discuss the use of personas, please 
> don't hesitate to contact me.
>
> Thanks for your time and help!
>
> Kirk
>
> P.S. To re-iterate - the link is: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GCFPJ9L
>
> P.P.S. I'm going to dent this link to 
> http://twitter.com/hbons/open-source-design and send a message to the 
> Ayatana contact [3] to try to get that group involved too.
>
>
> Resources:
> [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2009-December/msg00016.html
> [2] http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GCFPJ9L
> [3] https://launchpad.net/~ayatana/+contactuser
> Good place to begin thinking about personas: 
> http://www.cooper.com/journal/personas/
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