[kde-edu]: usability review for KHangMan

[Anne-Marie Mahfouf]

Le 20 Août 2004 13:35, Celeste Paul a écrit :
> Hi all --
>
> This is my first usability review I have written and in hindsight its a bit
> long for such a small application.  I would appreciate any feedback.
>
> The url for the pdf file is http://www.obso1337.org/misc/khangman.pdf
>
> KHangMan is the classic hangman game in the KDE Edutainment package.
>
> Thanks
>
> -- Celeste
waooo, this is EXCELLENT work. Thanks a lot for the time you spend on this 
report, this is awesome.
I am very glad about the suggestions you make as they are well analysed. I 
immediately started some work :-)

---------
Screenshots I made
http://edu.kde.org/khangman/screenshots3.php

Here are my first thoughts and first trials for resolving issues.

- about popup messages: yes, they are intrusive and the Win Game dialog can be 
removed as a setting. You say that those message box (when a letter has 
already been guessed) can be replaced by a warning on the document, I do 
agree. But where in the document? In the statusbar?  (there are 2 message 
boxes: one when a letter is entered that has already been guessed and one 
when the game is finished) 
About the Win/Lose dialog: when it is present, it says: You won/are dead. Do 
you want to play again? Yes button, No button and No quits the game. You say 
this is unexpected. How would I do? Put Yes button and Quit button instead of 
No? Isn't that against KDE guidelines? Any other alternative? 
Suppressing that dialog with a result dialog can be done with a simple OK 
button that will return to the game.
I can work on that and post a screenshot of it.

- shorten the letter lineedit will be done. Please see screenshots to comment 
on that.

- a Guess button besides this lineedit will be added (why didn't I think of 
that ;-)  Please see screenshots to comment on that. Maybe the layout should 
be modified. Note that the background is wrong at the moment. It''l blend 
with the background picture soon.

- The fonts with  Misses, Word: and Letter: should be bigger i.e the same than 
the letters that are written after. I agree, it will be done. Please see 
screenshots to comment on that.

- Background theme and font color: I am not sure what to do but I tried white 
fonts for the Blue Theme. See screenshot 4.

- the Full Screen mode will go (easy to do) as it was for low resolution 
monitors but there's no real point to it, I agree. 

- about the default language: the default language should be the user's one is 
implemented already (version 1.4). This must be tested again to see if it 
works well. In v 1.4, only English and the user language are installed by 
default. All available languages data are in the corresponding i18 module. If 
the user is Slovenian for example and uses KDE in SLovenian, KHangMan should 
open with the slovenian data. English data is also installed and can be 
selected from the Languages menu. Other languages data are available from 
download and immedialte installation via Game -> Get Data in New Language. If 
the user is CHinese for example, as I don't have Chinese data yet, only 
English will be present and other available languages via Get Data In New 
Language.

- the levels are not present in the menubar, all settings present in the 
toolbar should be present as well in the menubar: do all people agree on 
that? If so, this is something we should improve in several others kde-edu 
app. I agree on that. Will a Level menu do it?

Derived point: the Animals level is confusing, you say. This was suggested by 
several children in fact as they are attracted to animals and found it easier 
to have a special set of words for them. I am not sure about what to do here.

the background settings are also in the toolbar but NOT in the menubar (in the 
toolbar there is a combobox with No Background, Blue Theme and Nature Theme).
Can I add this in the Settings menu -> Configure KHangMan -> a new Background 
tab?

Any comments are welcome. I'd like to post a link to the report on the 
KHangMan webpage if this is OK with you.

I am very glad about this work and the discussion it'll trigger, this is 
exactly what usability should be in my opinion. I would like to see this 
report as a template for future studies.

Thanks a lot Paul, you made a high quality report and I'll follow your 
suggestions the best I can to improve KHangMan!
Thanks for any help in the points I asked about,

Anne-Marie