One time GNOME user test
This is a short research exercise which is good for a new contributor. To carry it out, you should be familiar with basic user testing procedures and concepts. You will also need to have a recent version of GNOME installed on a computer that you can use. To complete the task, you should:
- Write a short interview script and set of tasks for the research participant to complete
- Find someone who has never used GNOME before, and recruit them to do a short user testing session with you
- Run through the script with your research participant:
- Get them to:
- use GNOME as if it is their own computer
- use the "talk aloud protocol" to describe what's happening
- run through a set of simple computing tasks (these should be in your interview script)
- Keep notes - what did they find to be easy? What was difficult? Was there anything they couldn't do?
- If possible, record the screen while running the testing session. If you can record audio at the same time, then that's even better.
- Get them to:
- Remember to ask the participant some background questions. Who are they? What do they do? What's their computing experience and background?
Reporting your findings
Once you've completed the testing session, write up you project and share them by creating a new issue in this usability project. This should include:
- A short summary of the user test:
- Details about the research participant
- Details about what distro and GNOME version were used for the test
- Your key findings:
- Try and cover a range of positive and negative findings about GNOME.
- Negative findings should be actionable by GNOME designers and developers, such as by including specifics about design or usability issues.
- You findings should use the correct terminology for different parts of the GNOME user interface (as documented in the GNOME user help and human interface guidelines).
- Text files containing your test script and notes, provided as attachments
Edited by Allan Day