User Testing in Drupal

Overview The formal user tests at the University of Minnesota and Baltimore have got quite some attention. They also had a common bottom line: Drupal is quite hard to get into for novice users. We want to improve this. But how can we make sure we really tackle the major issues? And how do we find out if improvements are really improvements? A wicked psychological feedback scenario is holding us hostage: you can only see things from your standpoint. It is definitely beyond anyone to step outside himself. But this is not even the hard part. The hard part is here you step outside the "Scratch your own itch" paradigm. It is more about scratching someone elses back. And the more it feels like a nice massage, the more successful Drupal will be. But still: where is the starting point? Repeated testing is the answer. Make sure to find out how the user experiences Drupal for our own attitude cannot be but biased. How is someone who is not accustomed to the workflow and UI able to perform a given task? And how to make user testing fun? I'll try to depict how this can be done utilizing the Usability Testing Suite (UTS). Agenda Tests in U of Minnesota and Baltimore: have there been reliable results? A bit of theory: how is user testing generally carried out in other projects and companies The Usability Testing Suite (UTS): A way to go? A plan how to encourage and organize constant testing Goals Find a way to make user testing an asset to Drupal. Just like code testing has got a key role in Code Quality. The talk will have an ensuing BoF http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/future-user-testing-drupal to discuss the further steps in user testing. If we could come up with a plan that feels feasible, this would be wonderful. Resources Usability Testing Suite http://drupal.org/project/uts In dev state, maintained by boombatower Matthew Paul Thomas about improvint usability in Open Source Projects http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2008/08/01/free-software-usability