OpenSource Usability Labs

Wow. Today we closed the Icon Test for TV-Browser. And man - this has been a real test for our Beta-Service. The result: Within one week more than 22000 individual tests have been conducted in our 18 experimental conditions, filling our database with 123404 rows of data. OpenOffice Calc gives up on this amount of data (As an interesting insight: MS Excel on the other hand can read that many rows of data, but not save them).

So it will take us some time to actually get valid (in term of significant) results, as this sheer amount of data first has to be handled. But I will uncover not too much when I say: a first look at the data is promising.

I guess we have found a valid way to actually have users judge the usability of icons of an application. The icon test is easy to set up, it is easy (ok, it will be easy once the platform is finished up…) to get the results and it is fast - in the best meaning of agile usability. You need valid feedback on your icons till tomorrow? No problem anymore!

With our icon test we are able to spot the good and the better-find-another icons in an interface, and we can easily decide which of a set of alternative icons for one term is the one users prefer most.

More soon to be seen on www.icon-test.com!

We just started an online-survey together with the guys from TV-Browser. The question we want to answer is twofold:

1. Which Icons the TV-Browser uses are easy to understand, helpful or in just one word: appropriate? Which Icons should TV-Browser use in future releases?
2. Does the method and the online-Tool we have developed for testing the quality of icons work as good, as we hope it does?

If you are curious: The study is online until the 1st of September 2008. You can participate even if you do not know much about the TV-Browser - as long as you use Firefox Webbrowser, because this study is still beta: Study for checking the quality of icons in TV-Browser.

After starting the study first problems became obvious immediately and most of them got solved quite quickly. I have learned, e.g. that a switch can be “half-broken” eating up lots of, but not all data-packages.

Summing it up: the study runs quite well and we are getting tons of answers by the TV-Browser-Users. It is always fun to have this great community involved into new studies.

On LinuxTag 2008 in Berlin the OpenSource Usability Labs were invited by the Tine 2.0 project. So I was at their booth a fair bit of the time, discussing the concepts, screens and ideas we have. The feedback was great - a lot of people encouraged us in our work. The main feedback was: there is no easy-to-use OpenSource groupware-solution for small and medium-sized enterprises around but there is definitely a need for one! So hey-ho - let’s go, Tine!

We demonstrated what we call a technology preview. This preview reveals some of the basic functionality and some of our interaction-concepts. The visitors were impressed by the ease of interaction made possible by newest Web 2.0 technology. But make up your own mind and try out what we have achieved so far.

Additionally we made a web-based icon-understandability test on the booth. So visitors could help us to understand what icons are already well understood - and which icons still need to be improved. This way visitors had the possibility to directly influence the usability of Tine 2.0. We will provide this facility for all of you, who could not attend LinuxTag on the Tine-Website soon. Tools like this are extremely important for achieving the certification as being developed according to ISO 13407.

Next to Tine I promoted the idea of the OpenSource Usability Labs. There were quite a few commercial OpenSource Projects around on LinuxTag. I talked to a lot of people about our ideas of professional OpenSource Usability, our philosophy and our business models - and most of them found the ideas very interesting.

I really enjoyed LinuxTag and already look forward to next year’s edition! Thanks to all the guys making this possible. We should not forget that this event is mainly the result of , oluntary work.

Only one week left to LinuxTag in Berlin (28th to 31st of May)! It is always a great event and I am looking forward to meet all the great people that are engaged in the OpenSource community! And of course I am personally happy that this event has settled in Berlin - and I do not need to travel for it anymore

Unfortunately the OpenSource Usability Labs will - this year - not have there own booth on LinuxTag. But you will find me most of the time at the Tine 2.0 booth. It is located in hall 7.2a booth no. 115.

I am very happy to get feedback on the ideas we can present up to now with Tine 2.0. Feel free to discuss the concepts in User-Interface- and User-Interaction-Design with me. As well I am looking forward to discuss any issues related to usability in OpenSource in general - be it in the scope of the OpenUsability-Initiative or a matter of the OpenSource Usability Labs.

See you on LinuxTag!

Season of Usability is one of my favorite activities of the year. But it has its downsides as well…

This year again I will mentor - together with Bodo from TV-Browser - one of the Season of Usability projects. This is great because we get the chance to spread the word about usability, help some students to gather experience and at the same time improve a great project even further!

But today was decision-day. We had to select which of the applicants we want to consider for the 2nd round of applications. And I really hate to have to say no to qualified and motivated people - but: these are the rules! So at the end of the day we have nine promising students left in the process of application for the TV-Browser. Good luck to all of them in 2nd round and to all the others: Don’t be sad… There will be other great chances for you!

The OpenUsability.org - Season of Usability (SoU) has started their call for participation. Interested students with a background in Usability, Interface Design, Interaction Design or related topics are invited to support non-commercial OpenSource-Projects with their knowledge and skills in user-centric development. The SoU is to the benefit of both:

• The student is mentored by an experienced usability professional and has the chance to practically use, what he has learned in theory.
• The projects benefit from the fresh wind of a new mind and up-to-date methods in user-centric development.

Like last year Björn is again one of the proud mentors for the students. He mentors the SoU project for TV-Browser. Björn has gone quite a long way with this project, starting work back in 2005.

The premises of this project are just great - so do not hesitate and apply for your participation in the SoU!

The last two days I attended a workshop organised by the GI on the integration of usability engineering and software engineering. It was pretty interesting and I got a bundle of new ideas from it.

The focus of the workshop was mainly on the needs of commercial projects and how to support them with usability engineering. I was - of course - trying to add the OpenSource-Flavor to the discussions. But I assume that most of the participants rather thought of me as some strange fellow with crude ideas, adressing problems commercial, ClosedSource projects do not have.

On the other hand: I once more understood that OpenSource - or better: community driven projects have great potential of achieving an outstanding user-experience. We just have to find better ways how to integrate our community into the development of the OpenSource projects. OpenSource has always profited from the community. So far mainly because of technically gifted people contributing to the projects. If we find ways to activate the potential of the much greater number of “ordinary” users for optimizing the user-experience, we can not only produce software that has less bugs, but also software that is more usable.

Usability engineering methods are - at the moment - basically optimised for the needs of commercial software development. On the other hand, certain key-aspects of OpenSource development are ideal for usability engineering. “Release early and often” is just another form of prototyping - a key-element of the user-centered-design (UCD) process. Our communities already provide - sometime disturbingly honest - feedback to us: another key-element of the UCD process. We just do not know yet how to bundle and activate it for the further development.