Well, i think first a bit to the background of upcoming Usability Tests.
I met Ellen Reitmayr at the GIMP 2.0 Release Party in Berlin and she is
involved in some Usability studies for the KDE Project (with the whole
company relevantive AG). After some discussions about the KDE Usability
tests, we agreed, that some Usability tests for the GIMP would be nice
for having feedback to the developers from some usability experts.
I met Ellen again and we put some tasks for people who are new to
the GIMP and poeple who consider to change from photoshp to the GIMP.
Ellen wrote the draft that you'll find below. It's considered as a
basis for comments and suggestions to improve the usability of the GIMP
interface. It should not test the functionality itself and issues
already known as bugs. The test should be as effective as possible with
the 4 users and the mostly common tasks.
The first test consists of 4 persons and deals only the 'all-day-use'
with the Gimp (what is the handling of the application like, how good
can one achieve a task etc.). Later, we want to conduct a more extensive
test that will also consider the users' understanding of the common
concepts, such as layers, paths etc. - and how the new user could be
helped to learn these basic concepts (that would be nice to know for the
gimp-help-2 module to get the manual as effective as possible for
helping the user).
The GIMP is the SuSE package of the GIMP 2.0 with the german language
enabled.
Tasks for the first test (all-day-usage; all of the are common tasks for
all people, except the one where the indicated group is mentioned):
1. Create a rectangular selection and subtract the edge of the created
selection.
a) Were the necessary modes found?
b) Does the user select the modi in the right sequence to achieve the
goal. ('Replace a current selection', then use 'Subtract from the
current selection')
c) Does the user know, that the starting point of the subtract selection
has to be placed outside of the current selection and not inside the
selection itself.
2. Create a selection with fixed width and height and a fixed aspect
ratio.
a) Does the user find the right input field.
b) Does the user understand 'Fixed Aspect Ratio' or the german label:
'festes Seitenverhaeltnis'.
3. Selection by color, fill an area with a pattern and cancel the
selection.
a) Does the user find the right tool in the toolbox or in the menu?
b) Does the user know how to fill the area with the patterns?
c) How to cancel a currently activated selection?
4. Measure how long a distance between some image objects is.
a) Does the user find the right tool in the toolbox or in the menu?
b) Does the user find the value directly?
c) Where does the user look for the value? At the statusbar or at the
info window?
5. Clone an image object with the clone tool.
a) Does the user find the right tool in the toolbox or in the menu?
b) Does the user understand how to indicate the starting point for the
clone tool?
c) Does the user choose the right brush from the brush browser?
6. Transform image objects.
The photoshop user should create a layer and shear it with a value for
XX pixels.
The new user should only shear the whole image.
a) Does the user find the right tool in the toolbox or in the menu?
b) Is the user able to use the grid for shearing?
7. Use the color picker to get the color info with sample merged
enabled.
a) Does the user find the right tool in the toolbox or in the menu?
b) Does the user know why the color which is shown in the image window
is not the same which the color picker gets from the layer?
c) Does he know how to find the checkbox to enable the 'Sample Merged'
function?
8. Using the undo history.
a) Does the user find the journal directly?
b) Does the user understand, how to undo single steps?
9. Add an image grid and change the distance of the grid points.
a) Does the user find the image grid function?
b) Does the user find the image grid preferences in the preferences
dialog?
c) Does the user find the correct option for changing grid preferences?
10. This task is only for photoshop professionals. They should use the
path tool to create a cloud and stroke it with some patterns.
a) Does the user find the path tool?
b) Does he know how to use the path tool?
c) Does he know how to stroke the created path with a pattern?
11. Try to dock some tabs into the docks.
a) Does the user understand that only tabs can be moved betweend docks
and not the docks itself.
b) Does the user find the active area, where he can drop the tab to the
dock.
Thats all of them. In hope it would be useful,
Greetings
--
Roman Joost
www: http://www.romanofski.de
email: roman@xxxxxxxxxx
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