Run at least three sessions to test the usability of drupal's customization and configuration admin user-interfaces.
To do this you will need 3 or more volunteers who will evaluate drupal. It is important that everyone understands that Drupal is being tested, not the evaluator (your volunteers). The evaluator can not pass or fail.
Ask each of the volunteers to do some basic configuring and customizing on a newly installed Drupal site. Give them a scenario that will inspire them to do it realistically. e.g. "Your soccer club needs a web site with about pages and news articles or a blog".
You might like to give them more detailed instructions and/or specific tasks. See the UMN formal usability testing plan for ideas on how to do this. Your tasks and instructions need not be as detailed or complex, but they should give the evaluator a clear goal and help inspire creative things like colors, setting the site name and slogan.
To familiarize yourself with the tasks and usability tests, it is useful to do you're own test and report, before running the tests with evaluators. This will help you gain confidence with finding issues and taking notes on them. The evaluator must be able to do all the tasks through drupal's UI and not need to write any code or change files.
While observing new users, take note of:
- what the evaluator wants to do first
- where the evaluator gets lost or confused
- what the user expected
- where the evaluator spends their time in the first 30 minutes of the session
- where the evaluator spends their time in the first few seconds of each new UI / page
- when and where they search for help
- where they search for help
Perhaps the most valuable information from a usability test is knowing what the user expected. This makes it easier to discover usability bugs and suggest solutions. You should spend some time immediately after each test (while it's still fresh in the evaluator's mind) debriefing the evaluator to find out their answers to the above questions. You might find that you misinterpreted their behavior. Some evaluators find this difficult and begin to feel like they are being tested. If this is the case, don't pressure them to give you better feedback but help them to relax, remind them no answer is right or wrong and ask simpler questions about how they felt emotionally about the tasks they found difficult. If the evaluator can't give you good feedback then don't persist. You still have notes from watching their behavior, right?
Write a report that summarizes your findings. We're looking for a level of
detail and format similar to Factory Joe's Usability report on drupal 6 beta 1. See also the reports from GHOP tasks #8 and #7.
There are two completed GHOP tasks that are usability tests like this one; #7 (d.o), and #8 (d.o). Those tasks focussed on drupal installation. This task focuses on site configuration and customization.
Before planning your usability tests read about how to do usability testing:
- http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000183.php
- http://openusability.org/
- http://keycontent.org/tiki-index.php?page=Usability+Tools
- http://factoryjoe.pbwiki.com/FeedbackForDrupal6
Deliverables: This task is complete when the report has been submitted to by the student, and reviewed and approved by the mentor or other appropriate drupal community member. The report should be made available in a widely available format like plain text, html or PDF.
You can include screenshots for bonus points. These could be annotated using flickr's annotate tool. (Tag them with drupalui if using flickr.)
Bevan is the owner / mentor of this task.
Comments
Comment #1
Bevan CreditAttribution: Bevan commentedLinks to related issues/tickets:
http://drupal.org/node/209372
http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...
Comment #2
Bevan CreditAttribution: Bevan commentedThis task has been claimed by r...@ronsnexus.com.
Hi student!
What should we call you? 'r...@ronsnexus.com' doesn't give us much, although ronsnexus leads me to believe your name is Ron Williams?
Please contact me so we can swap IM usernames etc for better communication and mentorship.
Also, please do the tests with Drupal 6, not 5. I forgot to mention that in the task description sorry.
Cheers,
Bevan/
Comment #3
Ron Williams CreditAttribution: Ron Williams commentedI am the task claimant.
Comment #4
aclight CreditAttribution: aclight commented@Ron Williams: Just in case you don't already know, all tasks must be finished, reviewed, and marked closed by midnight pacific time on Monday Feb. 4. That means you only have about 2 days to finish this task. If you plan to finish please make sure to get your work posted ASAP so we have time to review it.
Comment #5
Ron Williams CreditAttribution: Ron Williams commentedI will not be completing this for submission as a GHOP task, I will however continue working on the projects as time allows. Semester changed for me earlier this week and with all the finals the week before, I simply haven't had time to complete the task.
Comment #6
Bevan CreditAttribution: Bevan commentedTo clarify; After discussing this with Ron by IM. Ron plans to finish this task, but not as part of GHOP.
Comment #7
catchsubscribing.
Comment #8
Bevan CreditAttribution: Bevan commentedI guess this can be considered drop
Comment #9
cwgordon7 CreditAttribution: cwgordon7 commentedAdded to the site.
Comment #10
Anonymous (not verified) CreditAttribution: Anonymous commentedComment #11
Tor Arne Thune CreditAttribution: Tor Arne Thune commentedMoving to 8.x, as that's where future changes to UX will happen.
Comment #14
dpiThere is nothing to do here