KDE Usability - First Steps

If KDE is to be recognized has the best free desktop environment, the KDE community must learn to integrate usability testing in its development process. Basic usability testing is not difficult, it isn't expensive and the results are invaluable. This test conducted in early July 2002 with four participants outlines of some of KDE 3.0's shortcomings including inconsistencies in KFileDialog and the difficulties of working with Konqueror's embedded viewers.

Goals

The goal for this test was twofold. One: to acquire experience conducting usability tests on systems not designed by me, and two: to begin sorting out KDE's bigger usability problems using actual test data.

Until recently, my experience was limited to testing my own material on the web. Testing KDE, a large-scale international project, was a new step for me. Since this is not the subject of this article, I can jump right to the conclusion here and tell you that testing websites and testing desktop environments is not that different and that, in both cases, a little testing goes a long way to identify problematic areas. And since neither point is particularly new I will not dwell on this any longer. On to the KDE stuff...

KDE has been around for a while and has received a lot of attention from the free software crowd. In the past few months we have begun to see commercial initiatives centering their efforts on bringing GNU/Linux out to the general public, some fairly reasonable, others downright moronic. In these projects, and I only want to think about the reasonable ones here, KDE is often chosen as the default desktop environment. I understand this to be a positive indication of KDE's current level of usability, stability and overall maturity. But with all this attention, KDE is destined to end up in the hands of users who have little interest in filing bug reports and who will most likely not have the confidence or patience to explore, change, customize or hack their computer environment. Making free desktop software truly usable by all is a new challenge for the free software community of which KDE is just one (fine) example. The first thing that needs to happen is to gather sufficient information to make informed decisions based on actual observations.

Test Description

This first test was meant to be very broad. All I wanted to measure was how new KDE users would go about accomplishing basic tasks such as moving files, checking mail and browsing the web. Some of the assumptions I made about the user's environment included that the user would not have to setup his/her workstation him/herself and that the user would not have to go through KPersonalizer's step by step setup. This is the kind of environment you would find in the corporate sector where newly hired staff just logs in to a workstation already set up by the company's system administrator.

I used KDE 3.0.2 compiled from source with the following packages added: kdemultimedia, kdenetwork, kdepim, and kdeutils. I left KDE the way it was after compilation: default KDE look-and-feel, default mouse focus, default desktop icons, default wallpaper, default panel icons, default everything. The hardware was unremarkable: Pentium II, 256Mb of RAM, 17" LCD monitor; KDE was responsive but not unrealistically fast.

I created five tasks for users to complete:

1. Open a web browser. Go to <URL>. Bookmark this page so that you may visit it later. Download <PDF file> on the page to your home directory. Close the web browser.
2. Create a new directory on the desktop. Call it “myStuff.” home directory, locate a directory named “documents.” Move all the files in “documents” into the newly created “myStuff” directory. Delete the old “documents” directory.
3. Change your current desktop background to use an image as wallpaper. The image file to use for wallpaper is called “myWallpaper.xpm” and is located in your home directory, under “images.” You'll want the image tiled over your desktop.
4. “KMail” is an e-mail client, a program to read and send e-mail messages. Locate KMail, open it, and check your mail. (KMail has already been configured with a test account). You will have received a message from <somebody> containing one attachment. Read the message and save the attachment in your home directory. Reply to the message; simply acknowledge that you received the e-mail. Close KMail.
5. Locate the file you just saved in step four. This file is compressed (“zipped”); uncompress it. One of the newly uncompressed files is called “Readme.txt.” Open it to edit its content. Below “This file was created by <somebody> on <date>” add “This file was modified by <your name> on <today's date>.”