Usability, Experience, and Evaluation Study/Notes/Victoria

From Wikimedia Usability Initiative

Parul's Notes

  • Finds edit tab immediately
  • [NASH] capital U
  • [NASH] lets give people more time to make an edit
  • [NASH] need you to have your computer/chat
  • Next step "I guess I could preview it"
  • Would hit publish - then the sentence I wrote would appear on the main
  • Recognizes NTOC as the subheadings, especially useful for an article that has a lot of information
  • Doesn't see that they are clickable. Clicks - "Wow, that's a lot easier" 11:00 - VIDEO
  • [NASH] "not lets assume there's a page to alex chilton.com"
  • Uses the link button and paste, adds links, doesn't look as expected. Would expect to see the HTML - the href and stuff
  • Would expect a plain hyperlink
  • [NASH] lets do the internal link first
  • noticed the separate section for internal/external link but did not know the difference
  • types in page, sees suggestions, notices page exists. "I didn't know what to expect". it's different from the external link.
  • through exercise, understands the difference between
  • refference, uses section edit link, sees "reflist"
  • 16:48 - do you want a reference or a footnote? does it matter?
  • copies formatting that's above, add an asterisk. COPY AND PASTE
  • [NASH] worried about video quality - lets check it
  • stumped on references
  • checks advanced tab in toolbar. looking for reflist button? not ref button?
  • looks in the text to figure out where existing references are. finds a reference link. does not copy and paste. scrolls up and down to find ref. gets crazy with it - linking to an html page with an internal wiki link. madness. uses preview.
  • i'm lloking at what's been previously entered in mimic format that's been done. so what i'm doing will look the same and work the same 22:50.
  • eventually gets it!
  • i would possibly add a reference if i felt like it was something no one would do. a lot of people are more knowledgeable.
  • if it was a subject that i felt strongly about. 25:23
  • i think references are important. i think being in grad school it's important. it's something that wikipedia gets criticized for.
  • 26:08 - similar to most blog sites - looks like rich text editing/online email. looks familiar to me.
  • looks easy enough to do. takes a little bit of time.
  • i didn't even look at the help section. 27:08
  • i'm seeing putting in the help for references. oh ok - so this is all that.
  • i guess this is where a lot of people would start. i like to figure things out on my own. these are all examples. this would be a good cheat sheet without having to go back and forth in preview. i'd probably do a mixture.
  • i would hit publish
  • reads all of the information. understands minor edit and watch this page.
  • captcha! ack!
  • victoria deals with it well "makes sure i'm a human user".
  • our publish button doesn't work with captcha.
  • [NASH] warn about publish on captcah
  • setting up a user account and having the time or desire.
  • has looked at discussion before. just out of curiosity.
  • i'm seeing lots of long entries. they're discussing how to/what kind of contents should be on the page. some of it looks kind of....not as important as i would think. that seems very involved and not something i'd be interested in at all. apparently there are people that feel strongly about those things. 32:31
  • vandalism. not surprising that people use whatever article to express their political point of view on the page.
  • seemed like a lot of discussion that i didn't have the time to sort through.
  • uses navigation easily read/discussion

Advanced tasks

  • has never really looked at her hometown page
  • uses help menu - under headings. uses NTOC to get to attractions
  • adds sports heading with one '='
  • do we want first level heading in the help?
  • adds sections, makes sure they show up in NTOC
  • in adding table, looks in help. nothing there.
  • [NASH] can probe on other places for help if "cheat sheet" doesn't cut it
  • it's got the code for the table. need to add the information. i feel like 41:01 i am doing something wrong because there should be an easier way to do it.
  • let me see what happens when i highlight header text and put something in. does it. previews. sees what that looks like.
  • i guess i have to manually put in the information.
  • looks like i added an extra row, so i'm going to delete that.
  • i just did something with the format - not quite sure what i did.
  • [NASH] separate table and template task?
  • thinks infobox is as a table. looks. finds infobox.
  • [NASH] refresh.
  • fins template, uses expansion
  • poor performance on long articles
  • need proper mouse over behavior for capsules.
  • 53:23 (YAY)
  • first inclination to click the arrow.
  • [NASH] probe about left navigation
  • uses left navigation with ease
  • i'm looking for something that says create entry.

wrap up

  • 1:01:26 "it's a lot easier than i expected
  • i thought there were more steps to take to edit
  • i like that there is some tracking of information and the changes, so it would be easy to go back and figure out where something got changed and how to correct that. if something got lost it would be easy to retreive.
  • if i screw something up - it's ok. (makes her feel more comfortable editing?)
  • view history and discussions seem unclear - hard to understand the abbreviations.
  • if there was a subject that i felt i had more knowledge about that i would want to take the time to commit to. need to be a bit of a time commitment.
  • [NASH] are we getting their email addresses?
  • [NASH] call backs?
  • being able to look at previous articles and subject.
  • "Make sure that the language for using it is understandable to non-computer people" "people that do a lot of code updating" 1:05
  • It could be a little intimidating. I have a fair bit of html - i've been doing my own blog for 8 years. I just tweak the code, I don't write much.

Guillaume's and Nimish's Notes

  • Wikipedia = starting point; looks for sources at the bottom
  • never took the time to edit; knew she could edit
  • has explored the tabs (talk, history)
  • has experience with HTML
  • "Not quite the HTML format, but similar"
  • -Doesn't use wikipedia as a definitive source, checks references
  • "Never took the time to figure out (editing)"
  • PREVIEW, YAY
  • Got distracted with the bottom clutter (esp the show preview button on the bottom)
  • NTOC - understood what it is "alot easier" (wasn't first instinct to click)
  • -Insert Link (flashing not prominent enough)
  • WE SO NEED TO RELEASE THE PREVIEW TAB
  • --Ref--
  • tried to find tool, then looked in the text (used link dialog)
  • Uses wikitext as an example like before
  • "Tend not to look at Help for instructions"
  • -Actually reading the publish information, a bit verbose but did go through the whole thing
  • Publish dialog not work with capcha
  • No Help for tables =( "This should be easier"
  • -"Special Link" thinks template is a link, doesn't entice click
  • -Thinks the form button is the button for forms
  • Confused infobox with table (looks sort of like a table and table task close to template task)
  • New page: something ovious I'm not seeing
  • Editing->subject matter expertice
  • Fair amt of HTML experience/blogging
  • expected the HTML code for external link
  • or hyperlink (wysiwyg)
  • chose an article already quite complete, doesn't know what to add
  • when looking for the list of references, thinks it's the external links
  • to add a "reference" (really an external link), would copy/paste the format of an existing line
  • can't find the references
  • found the ref tag in the wikitext
  • uses the syntax to enter a reference manually (!)
  • personal note from g.: why is the "what you type" column in the Help menu in a regular font, and not in a fixed-width font like the wikitext?
  • doesn't have the time, energy or will to dive into the long discussions
  • such discussions are for people who are passionate about this topic
  • when asked to create a new section : does directly to the help menu in edit mode, now that she knows it exists (she discovered it while playing around earlier)
  • chose the 1st level heading (which is h1 i.e. for page titles)
  • then saw the code (with only one equal sign) was different from section levels already in the wikitext
  • so used two equal signs instead
  • personal note from g: I don't think we need the 1st level heading in the help menu; this level is used for page title only
  • if it's confusing to start with a "2nd level", we can use the LaTeX vocabulary (section, subsection, subsubsection)
  • imho the help menu should be more prominent for new users, so it's easier for them to understand it actually exists
  • 1:00:20: is looking for something that says "create entry", "add article" or something like that
  • 1:01:40 "it's a lot easier than I expected"
  • likes: the tracking of the information, so it'll be easy to go back

Naoko's Notes

Howie's Notes