I wonder: 11 people seems like a rather small sample size; does Canonical typically do any testing with larger samples?
I'm surprised that only 5/10 people tried to open another Firefox window by clicking the launcher icon. Personally, I think clicking the launcher icon not opening a new window is silly, but that's because I'm used to Windows 7 and not OSX.
Jakob Nielsen does suggest [1] that only 5 users will get you about 80% of the problems in your software, and 15 will get you damn-near-everything. So 11 is pretty good.
Also, if you do have the resources to do, say, 100 user tests, you actually actively don't want to do them all at the same time or it will be a waste because they will all say the same thing.
If anything, this was overtested. There's a lot of redundancy in those results, just as Nielsen would predict. This is not a scientific experiment to determine the effect of a drug, and you do not always need or even necessarily want a 95% confidence interval, as the costs would exceed the benefits here.
I am a dev (though not on frontend/UI stuff). But that's exactly the point. Many users are for the most part pretty stupid, and that is reality. Unusable software is unusable.
This article made me want to try out the new Ubuntu in a vm. I am looking for a download as I type.
I absolutely HATE the fact that when I click an running application's icon in the taskbar in Windows 7 it only sometimes makes that application active. If the app has multiple windows (sometimes tabs) open, it shows a list for me to choose from. That sucks as it requires more clicks, just show the last used window on click of the taskbar icon,on hover show that list of open windows/tabs. OS X got this right (even though they make all of the windows/tabs for the app come to the front).
YUP! Unity has this right. I opened multiple Firefox windows then opened a home folder. When the homefolder has focus, I single click the firefox icon and it brings all of the ff windows to the front. If ff has focus and I click the icon, i get an expose-like view of all of the ff windows. Windows 7 window management isnt as good. It slows me down A LOT.
I could see myself using this version of Ubuntu. The very first thing that I noticed is that they managed to get rid of the fat-tipped cursor pointer. The os over all looks good and smooth, a lot like a website, I'd just like to see a more dock-like experience with the unity bar (move around, resize etc)
ehhh, I hate the hidden options on the title bar (file, edit, etc) not a big deal, but could be confusing to someone
Comments
I wonder: 11 people seems like a rather small sample size; does Canonical typically do any testing with larger samples?
I'm surprised that only 5/10 people tried to open another Firefox window by clicking the launcher icon. Personally, I think clicking the launcher icon not opening a new window is silly, but that's because I'm used to Windows 7 and not OSX.
Jakob Nielsen does suggest [1] that only 5 users will get you about 80% of the problems in your software, and 15 will get you damn-near-everything. So 11 is pretty good.
[1] http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html
Also, if you do have the resources to do, say, 100 user tests, you actually actively don't want to do them all at the same time or it will be a waste because they will all say the same thing.
If anything, this was overtested. There's a lot of redundancy in those results, just as Nielsen would predict. This is not a scientific experiment to determine the effect of a drug, and you do not always need or even necessarily want a 95% confidence interval, as the costs would exceed the benefits here.
There's a lot of redundancy in those results
Helps so devs can't reply, "Well, that guy was just stupid".
I am a dev (though not on frontend/UI stuff). But that's exactly the point. Many users are for the most part pretty stupid, and that is reality. Unusable software is unusable.
Even if your users are not stupid, designing as if they are is usually beneficial.
This article made me want to try out the new Ubuntu in a vm. I am looking for a download as I type.
I absolutely HATE the fact that when I click an running application's icon in the taskbar in Windows 7 it only sometimes makes that application active. If the app has multiple windows (sometimes tabs) open, it shows a list for me to choose from. That sucks as it requires more clicks, just show the last used window on click of the taskbar icon,on hover show that list of open windows/tabs. OS X got this right (even though they make all of the windows/tabs for the app come to the front).
YUP! Unity has this right. I opened multiple Firefox windows then opened a home folder. When the homefolder has focus, I single click the firefox icon and it brings all of the ff windows to the front. If ff has focus and I click the icon, i get an expose-like view of all of the ff windows. Windows 7 window management isnt as good. It slows me down A LOT.
I could see myself using this version of Ubuntu. The very first thing that I noticed is that they managed to get rid of the fat-tipped cursor pointer. The os over all looks good and smooth, a lot like a website, I'd just like to see a more dock-like experience with the unity bar (move around, resize etc)
ehhh, I hate the hidden options on the title bar (file, edit, etc) not a big deal, but could be confusing to someone
I was more surprised that only one participant seemed to have any previous experience with Ubuntu.