[Building Sakai] Sakai OAE Usability Testing Package 1

[Clay Fenlason]

Nico and I are working on getting some Amazon instances up for
usability testing, including pre-populated data IIUC, and I hope we'll
get that out to you soon.

A key part of the goal in my mind is to support evidence-based design
decisions, as opposed to merely trying to compromise between several
institutional opinions. To that end I think it would be more important
to start by finding a common set of tests we can all run. For similar
reasons, I'm leery of formulations like "the usability of things that
are important to Berkeley." I don't want to read too much into that
phrase, but if we accept it uncritically we could find ourselves
sliding back into a process of negotiating opinions and a
'contrib/core' mentality that wouldn't help us achieve overall
coherence. It would at least be premature, as all our design issues
are fairly general at this stage.

Do we have the beginning of a group of people who could work to evolve
and refine the test suite?

~Clay

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 3:39 PM, Allison Bloodworth
<abloodworth at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Hi Anne-Sophie,
> Thanks much for all the incredible work you've put into this! We are looking
> forward to starting testing soon.
>
> Rachel & I are going over the protocol in detail now and it would be very
> helpful to actually run through it on a test server. However, we don't want
> to start Berkeley's countdown clock on having our server for 3 weeks quite
> yet--is there a server that is set up now that we could use to run through
> the test?
> In our current context (as we have no courses in Sakai OAE) it would
> actually make more sense to test this on a group, e.g. a "Calculus Research
> Project group." This would likely also allow us to obtain information about
> how users in groups function. Do you think it would be problematic to make
> that change?
> Additionally, there are a few other things we'd like to add to the test to
> investigate the usability of other things that are important to us at
> Berkeley (e.g. categories, profile). We are hoping information from some
> additional tasks we add would still be helpful to the managed project?
> Thanks again!
> Allison
> On Aug 18, 2011, at 5:59 AM, Clay Fenlason wrote:
>
> I'm very happy to see this, Anne-Sophie, thank you. I know it's early
> days, and there will be any number of ways people will want to improve
> this practice as time goes on, but just setting the precedent seems to
> me a significant step, and not only for the released product. We don't
> have many UX professionals on staff (I think most Sakai institutions
> are in the same boat), and if the Sakai community helps us learn how
> to do this sort of work well it will be yet another advantage for our
> participation.
>
> ~Clay
>
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 4:28 PM, Anne-Sophie De Baets
> <asd38 at caret.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> The Sakai OAE project team strongly believes that regular
>
> usability testing of our product across various institutions is
>
> essential in identifying problems, missing areas and improving
>
> overall usability. It is also a great way for the institutions to
>
> provide feedback and start exposing some of their staff and
>
> students to Sakai OAE.
>
> Therefore, Usability Test packages will be sent out from time
>
> to time, aiming to investigate specific areas of Sakai OAE. These
>
> packages will contain everything necessary for each institution
>
> to conduct the usability test themselves. These materials include
>
> a manual with tips and hints for people that have never conducted
>
> usability testing, the actual usability test guide and all other materials
>
> necessary. Each institution willing to participate will also receive
>
> its own (temporary) OAE URL that can be used for testing. All user
>
> accounts, data and materials necessary to run the usability test
>
> will be available on this.
>
> I'm proud to announce that the first Sakai OAE Usability
>
> Testing package is now available at [1]. Its goal is to
>
> investigate various management activities around content
>
> and courses/groups.
>
> We would like to encourage all institutions to participate in this.
>
> Please don't hesitate to get in touch with us if you would have
>
> any feedback or follow-up questions.
>
> [1] https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/3AK/Usability+Testing
>
>
> Have fun,
>
> Anne-Sophie De Baets
>
>
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> Allison Bloodworth
> Senior User Experience Designer
> Educational Technology Services
> University of California, Berkeley
> abloodworth at berkeley.edu
> 510-289-6627
>
>
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