Summary of results from akademy user tests >> url bars in file dialogs

[Ellen Reitmayr]

heya,
i finally summarised some of the results from the usability test on url bars 
in file dialogs @ akademy.
/el
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GOAL OF THE TEST:
Evaluate if work on Benjamin's vista-like url bar should be continued or not.

SUMMARY:
Overall Navigation: The vista-like url bar was confusing and inferior compared 
to Gnome's button bar or Mac's column view. In column view, the participants 
did not need any further navigational help: they did not use the location 
drop-down at all. When there were bookmarks in the sidebar (Gnome, Mac), 
people used them.
Views: On the Mac, users preferred the column view to the list view, while 
they switched between icon, and detailed list view in the other dialogs. 
However, the icon view was perceived as superior for image browsing to the 
column view.
Suggestion: Do not continue work on the vista-like url bar. Consider to 
implement a gnome-like button bar. Provide a combination of list and icon, 
possibly also column view. Note that there are different requirements to the 
url bar in icon/list view versus column view which need to be further 
evaluated and considered in the interface. Facilitate the handling of the 
bookmarks system.

METHODS:
We compared three file dialogs: Benjamin's hack, MacOSX, Gnome.
Benjamin's hack had a vista-like url bar: Buttons for the folders, separated 
by clickable triangles that opened a pulldown menu listing the folder 
subfolders. when double clicking into button bar, it became a line edit. On 
the left, there was a gnome-like bookmarks bar.
Mac's column view provides the functionality of a breadcrumb. it is combined 
with a drop-down menu that lists the folders hierarchically (> current 
position on top, below the parent folders).
Each user was confronted with two dialogs.

TASKS:
1) [Presentation of an open file dialog, deep hierarchy] Where are you in the 
folder hierarchy?
2) The day before yesterday you downloaded a file and you can't remember its 
name. Please find it.
3) What other sort parameters are relevant? When/how/how often do you use 
them? In the file dialog or somewhere else?
4) You want to open the backup of an email which is in a hidden folder. 
5) In the folder Images>akademy>2006>dublin there are several images. Please 
choose the one showing a cctv.
6) You got some music from Don Caballeiro. Look for the song "Sure we had 
knives around". (trick was that they had to move between different folders on 
a previous level to look for the file).


RESULTS:
Benjamin's URL bar:
- at first it wasn't discovered that the triangles were clickable
- triangles weren't big enough
- when discovered, users were sometimes confused if triangle to left or right 
of folder would show subfolders. occured repeatedly.
- switch between line edit and buttons was extremely confusing
- left bookmarks bar almost not used.

Gnome URL bar:
- extremely fast back navigation via clicks, buttons used as substitute to up 
button
- for task 6 it was perceived as useful that the history remained in the 
button bar when moving to a higher-level folder (subfolders remained).
- button to open url bar (line edit) was found only by accident
- location bar did not show full location sometimes which was perceived as 
confusing
- used in combination with left bookmarks bar.
 
Mac URL bar / column view:
- keyboard navigation extremely fast for people who prefer keyboard
- columns often too short to read full folder/file titles. users did not find 
the option to increase column width, switch to detail view or use tooltips 
instead.
- the drop-down menu was used rarely to navigate to other locations. 

Detailed List Views:
- were of advantage when users needed to search by date. 
- common sort criteria was date, file type, sometimes size (e.g. in email 
attachment file dialog).

Icon Views:
- were of advantage when browsing images. 
- better than single preview in mac column view.

Mac Column View:
- was of advantage for fast keyboard navigation.
- preview of only one item was less optimal than icon view in image browsing.

Navigation:
- when there were bookmarks in the sidebar (gnome, mac), people used them 
(e.g. "home", "music").
- keyboard navigation in mac's column view was evaluated faster than typing 
the first letters of a folder/file - which no one did in the test (maybe an 
artefact as it wasn't the own file structure).


-- 
Ellen Reitmayr
KDE Usability Project
usability.kde.org