The huge question that should have been asked of users for this report is: "Which music software would you consider yourself most familiar with?"
We know that the users are 'heavy music consumers', but most users opinions of how things *should* work will be heavily biased towards whatever software they feel most expert in. Based on some of the users comments, it sounded to me like most of these users weren't used to Ubuntu and its paradigms. Those of us who are find Rhythmbox significantly easier to use. Things like "Participants are used to a rating column in their library" tell me that primarily this report is designed not to make Rhythmbox more usable, per se, but to make it better fit users expectations based on previous experience with other software. Furthermore, I hope that Rhythmbox developers don't take comments like "Users need prompts and feedback to successfully download their music from a USB key. " as gospel. I would hate to have Rhythmbox intrusively trying to tell me how to do things all the time. I like the specificity of Rhythmbox's language. Statements like "...a new window gave a choice between importing file or folder. This dialogue box confused participants since, in their minds they were not dealing with files or folder but with songs. " are disingenuous - I would argue that if a computer user doesn't realize the difference between a file and folder, they need some basic education before they should be doing anything with a computer. I realize that Mac people like imagining that they can get away from the concept of a file, and knowing where it is and what to do with it, but such a view oversimplifies. If a user works with nothing but 'songs', do we expect them to keep all of their music in a single directory? If so, how do we conceptualize them importing a large, coherent group of songs? If not, wouldn't it seem intuitive to them to import an entire directory from their collection? I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm just one user of Rhythmbox, and I would hope that no one would take all of these recommendations as authoritative. I prefer Rhythmbox to the myriad other music software packages because of what it is - if you make it more like others, I would like it less. This doesn't mean it can't stand improvement, nor does it mean that some of the recommendations aren't excellent. I just find this report rather damning of Rhythmbox, which is not representative of how I see it. -Eli Ribble On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 16:38 +0200, Charline wrote: > Hello, > > I have just completed usability testing of Rhythmbox. I am planning > to publish the results on CanonicalDesign.com on Tuesday. I would > like you to read the report, if you have time, and send me feedback > or any questions you might have. > > I hope the report will be helpful. > > C. > -- > CHARLINE POIRIER > User Research Programme Lead > Canonical > 27th floor, 21-24 Millbank Tower > London SW1P 4QP UK > > Tel: +44 (0) 20 7630 2491 > Mob: +44 (0) 78 8695 4514 > www.Ubuntu.com <http://www.Ubuntu.com/> > www.Canonical.com <http://www.Canonical.com/> > > > _______________________________________________ > rhythmbox-devel mailing list > rhythmbox-devel@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/rhythmbox-devel _______________________________________________ rhythmbox-devel mailing list rhythmbox-devel@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/rhythmbox-devel
