-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi everyone
There's been some great activity and enthusiasm on this list over the past few weeks, proposing and discussing designs for various elements of Ubuntu. Let's try something a bit different now: finding potential usability issues in an existing program. The formal name for this UX process is "heuristic evaluation". <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation> <http://usabilitynet.org/tools/expertheuristic.htm> Basically the idea is to put yourself in the mindset of someone using the system, and ask yourself questions like: * Is it obvious what's happening at each point? * Is the system efficient to use? * Is it visually attractive? * Are any errors well-explained and easy to recover from? Jakob Nielsen has a good list of usability heuristics. <http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html> Now, Robert Ancell has asked me for a usability review of the latest version of Sudoku that he's been working on. We thought it might be interesting to see if people in the Ayatana community could evaluate it. If you'd like to have a go, Robert has provided the new gnome-games in a PPA. <https://launchpad.net/~robert-ancell/+archive/gnome-games> In Synaptic, add the PPA ("Settings" > "Repositories" > "Other Software" > "Add..." > "ppa:robert-ancell/gnome-games"), then "Reload", then "Mark All Upgrades", then "Apply" to get the new version. Then launch Sudoku, and start writing down possible issues. Remember, the point is not to think of design improvements, but just to identify possible problems. And you don't need to go into great detail in each one. For example, here's a couple I just found myself: * Sudoku icon shown in Gnome Do doesn't match icon elsewhere (principle: consistency) * "Clear Tracker" button doesn't seem to do anything (principle: visibility of system status) Once you're done, reply here on ayatana@ with your list, and we'll see if we can collect some useful feedback. Have fun! Thanks - -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAkvnM30ACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecpZxQCgjZac3GCixzbioOIc/53DyWs2 wwQAn3YVEus1yVUHSFHGxU7vOxubCf53 =dAPO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
