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!

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.