Participate: Icons of KDE SC put to the test - KMail, part 1
December 9th, 2009 by Björn BalazsPlease invest 5 minutes of your precious time and participate in our little survey:
(about 5 minutes - English, German, Polish and Spanish available).
As you might know, we work together with KDE, the artists team and Nuno Pinhero in person to improve the quality of the icons used in KDE SC. Therefore we will publish new, short studies every couple of weeks. We want to find out, which icons of KDE SC are easy to understand and which ones don’t yet work so well. For getting a realistic and exact analysis, every icon-test will focus a special application or parts of it.
This is the first test of KDE SC icons. We start with a focus on the icons used in the main view of KMail (yes, you can find all of them in a fresh installation, even though you will probably not be aware of some of them…). Thanks to Adam, Álvaro, Sebastian, Isaac and Feargal this survey is available in english, german, polish and spanish. If you find anything we can improve or if you want to help us to provide the next survey in even more languages, please write me a mail.
We will publish the main findings in our blog. If you are interested in the results in greater detail, please write me a mail.
Tags: icon usability, kde
December 9th, 2009 at 18:55
Wouldn’t it be better to have an option like
“no icons fit”. On some I had to chosse one, just because I had to…
December 9th, 2009 at 19:03
Well - as I tried to point out in the initial text, you do not need to choose an icon, you can just leave the icon blanc and click “next”.
But it does not really matter if you chose a random icon instead of none. This will not influence the results negatively, as we are measuring the time it takes to choose an icon as well as the allocation of icons and terms.
December 9th, 2009 at 19:18
If you measure the time, I’d advise you to take into account that I — and possibly others — got some error messages about a proxy server on your side of the connection (I don’t use a proxy server) which might have delayed my choices.
Thanks anyhow for your efforts!
December 9th, 2009 at 19:21
usability:
(on this page) I came to this page for the link to the test but it took me 10 seconds to find it, it looks like all the other green links and the text is not clear, should be boxed or some thing and say “Take the test” or “Participate…”
(on the test page) The “next” button is abused, in some pages it changes the lower counter (the one from 1 to 5), and when you take the test it changes the test count (the one from 1 to 20).
December 9th, 2009 at 19:25
@Kitamozihr: Thanks for that feedback - we will try to find the problem. But - and that is the good part of it - it will not influence the results, as we radomize the icons and the terms.
December 9th, 2009 at 19:30
I also received some proxy or time-out error on several occasions. I kept pressing the back button to try again but it was only the last of these occasions when I realized it had erased the icon I had previously chosen, so some of my own answers will likely not have been stored.
December 9th, 2009 at 19:47
The test hung half way through on Safari. I could not select any icon at the “New message” question.
Also, the text descriptions could be more explicit. Since the test is about the icons, not the text, there is no reason not to say “navigate forward” or “forward mail” rather than just “forward”, depending on which one of those you meant.
December 9th, 2009 at 19:50
Hello!
So I’m interested in further polls participation. usability tests like that one appear really rarely - the previous one I anticipated was long, long time ago.
One more thing. Sometimes I choose the same 2 icons twice - because the first time I was unsure and at second approach the description also suited (or even better). I think you could show all chosen icons at the end of survey.
December 9th, 2009 at 19:59
Oh, and there should definitely be a “no icon fits” button. This was suggested in the comments to the previous rounds of these tests as well. Having the hidden functionality of allowing the user not to select anything is no substitute.
It is slightly ironic that, while working on usability, you expect people to read what amounts to the fine print in the manual, “the initial text” were it was supposedly mentioned that you do not need to select an icon before pressing “next”. And also that you ignore the feedback you get, I guess. I am a bit tired writing this, so just take my word that I mean no offense
December 9th, 2009 at 20:00
We had a problem with our local nameserver. The problems arose from that. Should be working again.
December 9th, 2009 at 20:15
On the first page, German (my mother-tongue) was preselected. Wouldn’t it be better to select English here by default? (Or do you adjust the default language selection based on the browser identification?)
Apart from that, it’s quite a shame that some design elements on this test webpage are misrendered in a current Konqueror.
December 9th, 2009 at 20:17
@Martin & RRH:
No irony in that…
We do not need people to read the instructions. The test is composed in a way that we do not need a “no icon fits” button. It just makes no difference in the results, if you leave an icon out, choose a random icon or use the same icon for two terms. And as less is more, we decided to leave a button like that out. This is not ignoring feedback, this is thinking about it and acting appropriately
Also: We use terms and icons that you can actually find in the GUI of KMail - either as lables to the icon or as tool-tips (if no labels are around). We do not change anything there. We just use what the user gets when he starts a fresh install of KDE. And as such we do actually test two things at the same time: the quality of the icon and the quality of the term. And here you are right: some term could probably be improved!
December 9th, 2009 at 20:17
I completed the survey. I hope it helps.
December 9th, 2009 at 20:20
@Stefan Majewsky:
Yes, we use the locale to select the language of the first page.
And you are absolutely right: it is a shame that current konqueror does not render correctly. We will fix that. (thought it was running fine - but it seems that some things always get destroyed during development…)
December 9th, 2009 at 21:40
Thanks for taking the time and effort to do this! I, and I’m sure many others, really appreciate it!!!
December 9th, 2009 at 21:44
I miss a box for icon suggestions. Most of the icons seem to be the existing ones. I am sure one can make some of them better.
December 9th, 2009 at 21:46
@Christoph Bartoschek:
That is the goal of this survey: to identify those icons, that need to be made better! And I guess the KDE artists will be very happy about any suggestions for new icons
December 9th, 2009 at 22:07
I could not answer some of the questions because I did not understand what the question means.
E.g. as far as I remember: German: “Neue E-Mail”. Does this mean, I want to write a new one, or did I recieve a new one?
December 9th, 2009 at 22:08
It should make a difference in the result if people are aware that it’s possible to choose ‘no icon fits’; it would leave valuable feedback that just timing the amount of time spent on each answer does not.
The problem is that the user is not aware of the fact that it’s possible to choose no icon (I was not, and I thought I read the instructions), s/he will try to find the one icon that kinda/sorta/loosely best matches the icon; that is, s/he will not choose a random icon. The effect may very well be that many people choose the same icon, even if that icon is terrible, and the results will be interpreted saying it’s a good icon because many people chose it.
Also, I’m not very with either the text or the icons. What is ‘Next’ supposed to mean? Next message, next folder, next tab, next in a dialogue, or what? Is it the same as ‘Forward’? (Why not?) Obviously a right arrow would be a reasonable candidate for ‘next message’, but weren’t a down and an up arrow offered as well? If ‘Next’ refers to messages, they are shown vertically, not horizontally. (I still belive the right arrow would ‘win’, though.) If ‘Next’ refers to something different than ‘Go to the next message’, a down arrow may be completely inappropriate.
December 9th, 2009 at 22:43
On the language preselection: somehow the page selected German, although my browser is set to Dutch and I set English to be the second language.
I do know German, but I’d prefer by default English if Dutch isn’t available.
December 9th, 2009 at 23:04
I have a suggestion for “In den Mülleimer werfen” (”move to trash”): add to the icon a red arrow pointing into the trash bin. Without it, I rather expect to see the content of the bin upon clicking the icon and not moving something into it.
Thanks for your attention.
December 10th, 2009 at 0:41
One think that could really use some work is the Kontact icon, - it’s so busy and cluttered it looks horrible when on the taskbar. - This is the one with the pen and envelope at weird angles. Sometimes you have to look twice to see if it’s the icon or the open application on the taskbar.
December 10th, 2009 at 5:01
I think since the timing is what you measure then something should be done if test subject has to do suddenly other things.
I also wonder the reliability of it all. It’s online, anonymous and I could be in a bad mood. And really what’s the point of webmail user opinion on something s/he will never probably use anyway? Isn’t universal design utopia?
December 10th, 2009 at 11:06
Hey there!
During the test, I started wondering: we take for granted that “forward” has a right-pointing arrow, while “reply” has a left-pointing one. I assume this orientation is borrowed from the way we write.
Now, however, what would jews, arabs and the like think? Do they get different icons as well? Is something like this even taken account for in the current i18n (or is it l10n?) mechanisms?
Regards,
Rufus
December 10th, 2009 at 15:46
Anybody else notice the discrepancy with the various “new” icons? The “New mail” and “New To-do” icons have a green plus emblem but the “New tab” icon has a star. Consistency, anyone?
December 10th, 2009 at 18:08
Cool, I think such surveys is something which is desperately needed.
For some terms though, it was not quite clear to me, what they meant. As by themself they are lacking the context they usually appear in e.g. icons in the folder tree refer to folders.
Another thought is that it might be a pointless task to find a proper icon for some functions, simply because the functions themself are confusing and unclear. For KMail the aggregation mode and friends would be such candidates. Even reading the term I just think: WTF?!
December 10th, 2009 at 20:04
Thx for the survey but the icons are realy not good. Only trahs and print icons was clear to know what they mean, the other ?? But in the end i dont like the style of icons. I think the only good thing of this survey will be results
Sorry for my English. Wish you the best
December 11th, 2009 at 9:13
Move to Trash-Icon: Should have a red arrow
but for this problem we have such tests
“Forward Message” and “Reply”: The arrows worried me. I´d have 2 arrows pointing to the left. But what´s with the users Rufus mentioned?
“Print” was the only Icon which was VERY clear to me
CU
Ralf
December 15th, 2009 at 20:08
the test needs to improve its bandwidth consumption. it reloads every image (including styles and backgrounds) for every answer… it is a no-no for lower bandwidth connections.
it also makes the test take longer to complete.