What's your point and what are you trying to suggest exactly? On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 10:31 +0000, [email protected] wrote: > There's lots of talk of recording input, technical bug-tracking > solutions, and other technical solutions to the apparent usability > problem, but can I say I think we are putting the horse miles before > the cart here? > > I owned and ran an internet cafe for a few years and basically spent > most of every day helping users of all ages, abilities and backgrounds > get online, sign up with email, scan things, write documents, all the > basic stuff. This was early-mid 2000's so people were still > unfamiliar with the internet as a rule. It taught me to think like a > user, rather than as a geek, and gave me an understanding of UI design > since after showing the 100th person how to do something it made me > acutely aware of where people (and software) went wrong. Dumb things > I previously had nothing but disdain for such like wizards made my > life so much easier. > > There is no point trying to do user focus testing when there has been > little to no attention to usability paid so far. User testing is to > confirm that your ideas work (or don't work) and to identify problems, > while the current system seems largely to me to have grown out of > necessity and lacks any cohesive ideas in the first place - it's more > of a developer plaything than a user-centric designed system. > > Plus the users comments are largely worthless anyhow. Seeing where > they are going wrong is the important bit, but it is a bit redundant > if most good usability experts can spot it without them and come up > with good solutions in the process. Ideally on a lot of projects what > is required is going back to the start, considering each feature and > asking 'is this the best that can be done here'. Only once you > yourself are happy with it should the users be set upon it. > > I think there is an affinity for trying to find a technical solution > (in the form of trackers, testing and stats) to what is essentially a > human problem with (unfortunatley) no correct answers. > > _______________________________________________ > Usability mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
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