At 1:38 PM -0500 2005-03-03, Terri Oda wrote:
The biggest one is the seperate-logins-for-all-lists sort of stuff. Many user don't understand (or care) that this reflects our (now seemingly flawed) architecture, and telling them "that's just the way it was designed" is kinda lame when it's clearly not the way it should work.
That's being addressed in mm3. I'm not sure we can fix this problem before then.
I think going through and gathering this data would be *really* helpful and could lead to a much better interface. What would be the best way to gather this information? Should we set up some pages in the wiki and make sure they're well known to users as a place to report this sort of thing?
I think a wiki would be a bad idea. Wikis are complex enough for those of us who are Internet-savvy. Something like bugzilla (or other bug/issue-tracking system) would also be too complex. If you're going to collect data from end-users, you've got to make it simple enough that your two-year old can do it. Scratch that -- an AOL user has to be able to do it, and that's far worse.
Perhaps something with some quick voting-style "this bugs me too" option?
That's much more likely to be able to collect useful information.How can we make it easy for people to report usability concerns?
I fear that the problem is that you need a system with very high usability in order to collect the usability information, but this is a vicious circle.
Myself, I think I'd be inclined to look towards Internet voting sites as the model to follow. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I recall having used some in the past which seemed pretty simple -- nothing but radio buttons and the odd multiple-choice selection.
Whatever is done, I think the underlying concept has to be KISS, and to stick with that.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.