Subject for usability testing

[Thorsten Zachmann]

On Saturday, January 22, 2011 16:02:31 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> Hi all,
> as those of you who have been on #calligra today probably already know, a
> group of students offered to do a usability test as a university project
> for us.
> 
> The usbility tests would be conducted in March and the students promised to
> have some results ready for our developer sprint in April.
> 
> They have asked us to provide a subject for them to test. They would like
> to know the subject by Wednesday so they can start planning.
> 
> My suggestion would be to choose the startup screen as a subject. We all
> agree that it desperately needs improvement and JStaniek already offered
> some very interesting ideas on that.
> I think it would be very helpful to test those ideas before fully
> implementing them to see if they work with users and possibly improve them
> even further.
> 
> Of course other suggestions are welcome as well.
> So what do you think?

One think that comes to my mind would also be the tools and how to use them. 
Maybe not the text tool as it is quite work in progress at the moment but 
maybe the patter/gradient tool. I know we also think about reworking them but 
there a good usability review might help with that.
Maybe it would also be good to test the basic interactions of manipulating 
shapes with the default tool, thinks like resizing, rotation e.g.

Thorsten