OpenSource Usability Labs

A new message from another persona just arrived us and we don´t want to hide it from you:

Hello,

my name is Paul Wulf, I´m a project manager at Tine Publications Ltd. I don´t have much time to introduce myself but the people working on our new collaboration application already interviewed me about my job and what we really need here for our everyday work. I can´t really wait until the first release is finished to start enjoying the smart and promising looking interface of Tine 2.0.

Yours faithfully,
Paul Wulf

Paul Wulf and his sales manager colleague James McBlack are the last two secondary personas we use to discuss in the Tine-Wiki and concentrate on in the user centered development of Tine 2.0.

We would like to forward you this message from our first secondary persona - Susan:

Hi, my name is Susan Clever,

I am a secretary working at Tine Publications Ltd. in Brighton. My work is related to teams like the one in which John Smith is doing his job. I coordinate team meetings, write mails, answer calls and take notes for others and connect customers to the right people at Tine Publications. Therefore I strongly depend on the continous and careful use of our groupware solution.

I hope with Tine 2.0 we will get an efficient and satysfying product to fullfill our needs. If you have any questions concerning my tasks and need some feedback, feel free to ask.

All the best,
Susan

More information about Susan and her job can be found in the Tine 2.0-Wiki. There are two more secondary personas we will present soon.

Photo © Konstantin Gastmann / Pixelio

I’m new to the usability team of Tine 2.0 and I like to introduce you to our primary persona, which we will use to discuss features and usability issues.

Hi there,

my name is John Smith and I’m one of the photographers at Tine Puclications, Ltd. I just got an email telling me that we’ll be using Tine 2.0 in our company. I can’t say I’m overly glad with this decision, because I just started to work efficiently with Outlook Express — but well, Tine 2.0 looks promising and I will take this as a challenge.

I hope all of your programmers will bear in mind what I need to do with this application. I’m sure, that by telling you a bit about me, you can greatly improve this software. I hope I won’t need to worry about coordinating my appointments that much and have more time to take wonderful pictures.

All the best,

John

Read more about John and let us know what you think of our approach!

Photo © Sascha Sambale / Pixelio

Last week we held an interesting workshop about the goals and usability standards for Tine 2.0. Lars and Nelius visited us in the Apliki Office in Berlin and we had intensive discussions about who Tine 2.0 will be for and what tasks we want support with Tine 2.0.

Basically we started the user-requirements analysis with this workshop. While we will present detailed results later on (as we are still working on them), we managed to define a central starting point of this process - the vision of Tine 2.0:

Tine 2.0 redefines collaboration by activating synergies through high acceptance in your whole organisation. We achieve this by providing an easy to use interface and enjoyable user experience on the basis of a stable, secure and scalable infrastructure.

We would be very happy to get feedback on this vision. Do you think it is valuable? Would you like to use a product that meets this vision? Would you like to stress other aspects?