Hi Ivan,
Glad you found some time to have a think about this. :-)
On 04/04/2011 11:14 AM, Ivan M. wrote:
I would envision taking the existing steps (with a few tweaks here and
there) and turning them into a step-by-step wizard-like experience
with each step sliding in and out from right to left as it is
completed. So, for 'LibreOffice crashes', there would be a separate
screen for 'when does LibreOffice crash,' 'Operating System,' etc -
maybe with a progress bar to show the user's progress through the
process. I think this kind of simplicity and feedback would be a
user-friendly way of making this 'technical' process accessible (this
would also mean providing help and hints - e.g. how to take a
screenshot). I do have one question though: would the submitted form
actually submit a bug report in Bugzilla, or would it get sent to
someone for moderation/confirmation?
Cool idea! I've quickly had a go at a mockup myself (I happen to have
just written a scrolly thing, so it was pretty simple. :-) ) which is
located here: http://atkinslg.dyndns.org:4080/stuff/wizardmockup.html
There are some stub slides in there showing how it could work well even
when branching (different sets of questions based on problem type, etc).
It already feels very nice, and much simpler. :-)
I think the plan was to have it submit directly to bugzilla, but it may
well be beneficial to have some sort of moderation.
The first step would be to search for similar bugs. IIRC this is (or
was) a mandatory step when submitting a Ubuntu bug on Launchpad, and
it might help us to do the same. I realize that this is a careful
balancing act - making it easy and simple for the end user in order to
increase participation, but also not flooding the QA team with poor
quality time wasting reports. So, step 1 for me would be that -
perhaps in an iframe so that we can offer a link the user can click if
they can't find their bug (so that they can proceed)
Not sure about how to make it mandatory (probably possible to an extent
though). I haven't put the iframe in yet, but that's more because I was
busy playing with the other stuff. :-)
A good number of these steps involve users submitting data, and I
think there should be more disclaimers around that (e.g. please be
sure to remove any private or personally identifiable information). We
should also inform the person about what's going to happen to their
material - will it be available online for others to examine? If so,
there may be potential copyright issues.
Should be fine to include it every time data has to be submitted now, as
it'll still only be one per slide, so not that cluttered.
Concerning 'LibreOffice is hard to use', it may be difficult to
differentiate between a bug report and a feature request - is it a
feature or a bug? We could simply forward these reports (since they
could contain very valuable data) to people who are involved with UX
(i.e., Christoph's mailbox :P) where that decision can be made more
easily. Potential differentiators could include 'LibreOffice doesn't
do what I expect,' 'I find it difficult to use a particular feature,'
and one or two others.
Forwarding should be simple enough, yeah. Though if stuff is moderated,
maybe it wouldn't need to distinguish between bugs and feature requests?
With website feedback, the range of possible problems could involve
display issues, broken links, trouble downloading, typos (if we want
to be pedantic - maybe 'wording' might be a better term since it could
cover cultural/language issues, or instances where something is not
clear) and perhaps (if applicable) user account issues with LibO
websites (for now I can only think of the wiki - sure, we have
Silverstripe logins, but only for people who have a reasonable idea of
what they're doing).
Sure. I think with this and the 'hard to use' category, it'll be a while
until stuff has to be properly nailed-down, so there's no rush. I'll
probably have to chat with some QA people at some point, see what kind
of bugs generally come-up.
I hope this 'brain dump' helps a little - I think this is something
that will steer LibO and its user in the right direction (especially
if we include a link to this from within LibO).
Regards,
Ivan.
Sure! Very helpful. :D And it's always good to have a fresh view on
things. But yeah, I'm very pleased with the wizard idea. :-)
Thanks again,
~ Sam
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