Kontact Mobile is developing very fast at the moment! Now we are happy to have reached the next beta-version that we really would like you to give us feedback on.
I would like to take the opportunity to say thank you to all of you that volunteered in our last diary survey. Your feedback was very valuable - keep the spirit up!
What do we have at the moment?
- Kontact Mobile is running on Maemo on the N900. Soon there will also be a version for HTC Touch Pro 2.
- It provides email, calendar, ToDos, addresses and notes. You can sync with a Kolab-Server and handle imap resources.
- The application is technically stable (it relies on most parts on the code for the desktop, so it should be save to use it with real data - I do it too).
- Most basic navigational issues from last test have improved a lot and we added lots of functionality to all of the applications (not-yet-implemented functionality is marked red)
- On the downside: The application is still pretty slow, esp. during initialisation. Please be patient. Also there are some configuration dialogues that are still pretty ugly (if you find one, please report it to bugs.kde.org) and last but not least we are still missing mass-actions (e.g. move several mails). We are aware of this and promise to improve this further!
How can you help us?
For discussion and support we have set up two mailing lists. For the more technical issues please join the Kontact Mobile list and for issues concerning the actual use, please join the Kontact Mobile Users list.
Kontact Mobile is developing very fast at the moment! Now we are happy to have reached the next beta-version that we really would like you to give us feedback on.
I would like to take the opportunity to say thank you to all of you that volunteered in our last diary survey. Your feedback was very valuable - keep the spirit up!
What do we have at the moment?
- Kontact Mobile is running on Maemo on the N900. Soon there will also be a version for HTC Touch Pro 2.
- It provides email, calendar, ToDos, addresses and notes. You can sync with a Kolab-Server and handle imap resources.
- The application is technically stable (it relies on most parts on the code for the desktop, so it should be save to use it with real data - I do it too).
- Most basic navigational issues from last test have improved a lot and we added lots of functionality to all of the applications (not-yet-implemented functionality is marked red)
- On the downside: The application is still pretty slow, esp. during initialisation. Please be patient. Also there are some configuration dialogues that are still pretty ugly (if you find one, please report it to bugs.kde.org) and last but not least we are still missing mass-actions (e.g. move several mails). We are aware of this and promise to improve this further!
How can you help us?
For discussion and support we have set up two mailing lists. For the more technical issues please join the Kontact Mobile list and for issues concerning the actual use, please join the Kontact Mobile Users list.
If you own a N900 phone and have tested or want to test Kontact Mobile it would be great if you participate in our current user survey- a diary.
Kontact Mobile has been under heavy development for the last weeks and however it is still at an early stage we encourage everybody to contribute and to become part of the process!
You can find all information concerning the testing in this mail:
http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-mobile-users/2010-August/000027.html
You will do real pioneer work with reporting what you liked and didn’t like as well as your ideas on usability and interaction design. This will help the developer team to create a great user experience for Kontact Mobile in future. Help us to shape this great product!
With the new version - Mialena - of Tine 2.0 out, it is time to take a look back at the feedback you provided to us in the past version.
As you know we ask you - our users on the log-in screen to participate in short surveys. They all have one common goal: to assess your impression of the quality of Tine 2.0. So, how do you like Tine 2.0?
The overall impression of Tine 2.0 is good (about 2.4 on a scale from 1 (excellent) to 7 (needs improvements)). The rating of the individual applications varies with addressbook and calendar leading with approximately the same value as the Tine 2.0 overall impression. The other important applications (Tasks, Email, Admin) follow, getting good to above average ratings while still leaving some room for improvements. Only sales, phone and voipmanager get below average ratings.
So, with Mialena we decided to improve the basic concepts in Tine 2.0 further. Most application now have a proper filter- and favorites concept. We hope this will better your impression of most of the applications. We also decided to move the navigation from the Outlook-like-app-pile to a modern Tab-interface. I am curious how you like this! We also spent some love to calender, email and syncing (my N900 now works fine!) - and of course some more which you should not hesitate to find out!
For a lot improvements we did your free comments inspired us a lot. We believe that we managed to fulfill about 50% of the free suggestions you made in Mialena now. So thanks for that input and keep on going like this. It really hepls us a lot to get even better!
We also asked you a couple of other questions about your context of use (mainly business, but also for other private purposes, managing between 1 and 800 users) and the necessity for a handbook (about 40% would like one) or seminars (about 25% would like one). Even though we need to get better in documentation on our wiki and other resources (so you told us!), most of the users are quite satisfied with the documentation and help they can already get.
So, please check out Mialena and continue to participate in our surveys - and in any other way you like. We desperately seeking for designer wanting to contribute to the look and feel (esp. icons need to be done), volunteers working on documentation and in the forum - or how would you like to participate in the Tine 2.0 development?
As a reminder for all who are interested in Usability and Open Source - and are at the LinuxTag tomorrow. We will have a very informal meeting from 9 to 12 am in Hall 7, 1a, Workshop Room “New York 2″.
You are very welcome to just drop in if you like!
We are very happy to work together with KDAB, Intevation and G10Code on a project to make Kontact available on mobile phones. This is great as there is no really good mobile mail client around and as it is important for free software to offer such a crucial part of the mobile software infrastructure…
As always it is our task to make sure that the product in the end will be stunning and usable and as always we need your help to get there!
Now we are looking for people that are intersted in building up a testing and feedback community for this project. This community will be integrated into the further development and will help us by this to make the mobile version of Kontact rock!
It would be helpful if you own a N900, because there will be packages for this device available really soon - but there is no need to have one. We also look for people that will give us feedback on their personal needs and wants concerning the mobile use of a PIM suit.
What can you do next?
I will be around at Linuxtag as well - and will be happy to meet you!
LinuxTag 2010, anybody?
We invite you to take part in an informal meeting to share thoughts, experiences and other information covering the topics Usability and User Experience in the Free Software world. The meeting is organized by Björn from OpenUsability.org and Christoph from the OpenOffice.org User Experience Team.
You should join if you are interested in:
- Integrating User Centered Development into the development of your FOSS project
- Wanting to add your UX expertize to a FOSS project
- Wondering how to take benefits out of community work with real users
- Some usability tips for your FOSS project
- …
We are looking forward to see you at LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany!
Go ahead and find more information on the Informal Meeting Wiki page.
Cheers,
Björn
Thank you all for the great participation in the challenge… As we hoped everyone would have some fun, there still is a serious goal behind it: Defining the new frame for Tine 2.0 and getting you - our users - into the boat. So now we have come up with what we would call the final prototype. Final in terms of: if you do not find anything bothering you and telling us so, we will start to implement it.
More information?
Find the whole challenge here
Find the final prototype here
Please comment in the Tine 2.0 Forum on this and rather not in my blog - so we only have one discussion!
Today I closed the 2nd KMail icon test. This time 1945 people took part. Much less people than the last time, but also the drop-out was much less than last time.
So here are some basic statistics:
- Selected language: English: 1002, German: 476, Spanish: 334, Italian: 76, Polish: 57
- Gender: Male: 99%, Female: 1%
- Average Age: 28,6 years (from 11 to 93)
- Most of the participants are strong KDE users. More than 80% use KDE very frequently. Next is Windows (TM) with more than 25% of frequent users, GNome with about 10% and Mac OS (TM) with about 7%.
- The participants are almost half split in their use of KMail, more than 50% use KMail frequently and about 30% say they never use KMail (the rest in somewhere in between).
In this test we included the icons of two elements of KMail: The icons used in the window and in the message menu of the composer window. These are icons of different size in the standard configuration of KDE, so we presented the icons in the according size and used the KUbuntu translations of the terms associated with them. The overall findings are very good. Most icon-term-relations seem to work out fine. We did not find find any explicitly not working relations, but some still show the potential for improvement.
Icon-Term relations working really well
The following icon-term relations seem to work well. You have to consider that users had to pick from only 8 choices this time, so it was much easier to exclude all the less fitting icons to find the one to choose. But the data of none of the following icons showed any evidence for this.
|
Best Icon
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Rating
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Term
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|
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10,0
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Send Later (message menu)
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|
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10,0
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Print (message menu)
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|
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10,0
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Close (message menu)
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|
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10,0
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Attach File (Composer)
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|
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10,0
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Cut (Composer)
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|
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9,8
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Encrypt Message (Composer)
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|
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9,8
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Sign Message (Composer)
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|
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9,0
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Copy (Composer)
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|
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9,0
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New Main Window (message menu)
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|
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9,0
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Paste (Composer)
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|
|
9,0
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Send Later Via (Composer)
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|
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8,6
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Save as Draft (message menu)
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Note that the icons for “cut” and “copy” were quite often mixed up
Icon-Term relations with some room for improvements
For the following term the icons could be improved. There was quite a high missing value for these icons and the icons got associated with some of the other terms. Also the time people took to spot these icons was quite high, which shows that people just chose the best of the not-so-well-fitting icons, not a convincing icon.
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Best Icon
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Rating
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Term
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|
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8,0
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Send Mail (message menu)
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|
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7,8
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Send Mail Via (Composer)
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|
|
7,4
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New Composer (message menu)
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|
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6,8
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Insert File… (message menu)
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It is interesting to see that the stamp does not work out well for “sending mails”.
Some closing notes…
We are still looking for people to help to translate the test into different languages. Also people wanting to help setting up these icon tests are warmly welcome, as my time is very limited and I do not get to publish new tests and the results as often as I would like to… And of course anyone interested in investigating the results in greater depth is warmly welcome. Just drop me a mail…
Please invest 5 minutes of your precious time and participate in our little survey to improve the quality of the oxygen icon-set!
This time we are testing two small sets of 8 icons each used in the composer window of KMail and the “Message”-menu of the composer window. Thanks to Pierluca and Caig, the tests are available in English, German, Polish (improved, thanks to Andrzej!), Spanish and from now on also in Italian! Perhaps you would like to help to make your language available as well? Or want to help to improve your language next time? Well, just write me a mail!
Click to start the test (maximum 5 minutes)
We will publish the main findings in our blog. If you are interested in the results in greater detail, please write me a mail.
Jochen S. asked me to publish the distribution of the age of the participants of the test. I am happy to do so (Thanks to rKward!)…
All participants of the test:
Mean: 27,9 years
Standard deviation: 7,5 years
Frequent users of KMail:
Mean: 29 years
Standard deviation: 7,9 years
Participants not using KMail:
Mean: 27 years
Standard deviation: 7,2 years
It is great to see how many people participated in the first icon test for KMail: 3327 started the test and 2399 finished. This is a drop-out of about 28% across the whole study and fairly good for this kind of study - especially seeing the technical difficulties we had when we started the study.
Here is a first brief summary of the results:
- Selected language: English: 2244, German: 659, Spanish: 313, Polish: 109
- Gender: Male: 98%, Female: 2%
- Average Age: 29 years (from 10 to 88)
It is great to see that we got sufficient participants for reliable results in all languages!
As you might know, our test combines multiple indicators and calculates a single value for each icon-term relationship. The maximum value an icon-term-relation can reach is 10,0. Following I split up the results into 3 groups:
1. Icons working really well
All of the following icon-term-relationships show average values above 8 with no individual value below 7 for any language. We can assume all these icons to work well enough in all tested languages.
| Icon |
Rating |
Term |
 |
10,0 |
Print |
 |
10,0 |
Previous |
 |
10,0 |
Trash |
 |
9,6 |
Open Full Search |
 |
9,2 |
Next |
 |
9,2 |
Open a new tab |
 |
9 |
Reply |
 |
8,8 |
Create To-do |
 |
8,2 |
Change Sort Order |
 |
8,2 |
Select View Appearance (Theme) |
 |
8,2 |
New message |
2. Terms with no working Icons
For the following terms no fitting icons were identified. They definitely need to be redone.
| Best Icon |
Rating |
Term |
 |
4,4 |
Select aggregation mode |
|
4,2 |
Templates |
 |
4,0 |
Sent-mail |
|
3,2 |
Filter by Status |
3. Icons that need some attention
For the following terms the icons show to be the best, but only in comparison to what was presented. They could not convince. The results here need to be further examined and icons should be discussed and - if needed - improved.
| Best Icon |
Rating |
Term |
|
7,8 |
Outbox |
 |
6,8 |
Forward |
 |
6,2 |
Inbox |
 |
6,2 |
Drafts |
|
5,6 |
Check mail |
Note that for Inbox and Check mail the same icon won. There is the same problem with Sent-mail and Outbox. These concepts are obviously not correctly differentiated by the users.
Some cultural notes
With these studies we also want to learn about cultural differences and their impact on the quality of icons. So here are some interesting facts found in the results - perhaps some native speakers can help to understand why…
Reply
While this icon was well understood in most languages Spanish (’Responder’) and Polish (’Odpowiedź’) speakers had much bigger troubles with this icon.
Forward
Only German speakers (’Weiterleiten’) understood this icon really well - all other had much bigger difficulties.
Drafts
Only Spanish speakers (’borrador’) understood this icon really well.
Create To-do
Spanish speakers (’Crear tarea pendiente’) had much more problems with this icon.
Should anyone need the results in greater detail, please let me know. Under certain circumstances, I can make it possible to directly access the results. I planned to start the next test before christmas, but I won’t manage to do so. But we will definitely have Italian available then, and perhaps also Norwegian… Wishing all of you a happy christmas!
We always try our new paths in user participation in the development of Tine 2.0. Inspired by the great ideas Thasmo had in our forum, we decided that we want to try to integrate our users even more into the process of re-designing the Tine 2.0 applications-frame. So we ask you to provide and discuss ideas with us and the other users. Please have a look at our
Tine 2.0 community mock-up challenge.
Have fun!
It is really great to see how many of you already took part in our KMail-Icon-Test. A lot of questions arrived my by mail or in my blog, so I thought I would just explain a little about testing icons…
We do this testing, because icons are useful and beautiful - they save place and people can recognize them faster than they can read text. Practically icons work via a visual-metaphor. If that metaphor, however, is not understood by the user, the icon does not work out. One can easily realize, that it will be much easier to find a visual metaphor for “save” than for “save as” or even more complex or abstract computer actions.
With the tests we mainly want to answer two questions:
- We only have limited resources. Now we want to work on some new icons - but which icons should we work on?
- We want KDE SC to be usefull for everyone in the world. So, do our icons and our terms work for everyone in the world?
The icon test finds indicators for answering these questions, by asking you - the user - to allocate icons and terms. We can measure how well icons and terms match. And we can also do this individually for any language the study runs in (so we get the world answer). Technically we have found a lot of indicators for the quality of icons, that focus on explicit or ambiguous allocations of icons, missing icons and time spent to actually decide for an icon. All these indicators help us to answer the above questions.
So this is a method mainly for evaluation and no not for finding inspiration. But still, this is not absolutely true. Some people complained about not offering a “no icon fits”-button. There are two things to say about this:
- The evaluative result is the same - whether we offer the “no icon fits”-button or not - and whether people read instruction to skip a term or not. To assure this we us a multiple indicators approach.
- The inspirational result is worse when we offer an explicit “no icon fits”-button, because we do not get the idea about approaches to the visualisation of that term. Typically you do not get a random result if a term has no well corresponding icon. You do get some icons that drop out and you can try to understand why. So you might just find ideas about how to construct the metaphor for that missing icon.
So we will continue to explain that a term can be skipped, but we will not offer a “no icon fits”-button.
There have also been some complains about the terms, missing context and the sense of life. Well, it’s not always sunshine. Testing typically means not being “real”. In other words: Testing always has some restrictions. With the icon test we focus on the association between the icon and a corresponding term. If the term is rubbish, the icon has no chance. As terms for our KDE SC icon tests we use the labels next to the icons or tool-tips of the icons (if no label is around) you can find in the application. We tell the participants that they can find these icons in the context of a certain application - this time KMail.
And, as I mentioned above, we can compare the results of different groups. May it be the spanish speaking people with the Windows(TM)-only users. Thus we can thoroughly investigate the relationship between icon and term. And we think the indicators we get are much better than no indicators, and we are well aware of the existing restrictions. You can find a sample result of an icon-test here.
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