I want to clue in everyone on a project I'll be working on to add to the user experience research that's been building in this group. I decided not so long ago to focus on user research for an independent study (I'm working towards an MS in interaction design & information architecture at the University of Baltimore, where we did the second Drupal usability study - http://groups.drupal.org/node/12447) this Fall semester. For this project I will pick up (or move back) from the usability study last Spring and take a closer look at the strategies and workflow of web developers when building and maintaining a website using a CMS. I'll conduct approximately 25 - 30 60min+ unstructured interviews and hope to get a report out to everyone by early January. People can take from it whatever they like, and I'll make the data available (assuming permission from participants). At this point a lot of work is going into testing and refining the Drupal admin interface, but I think researching how people work (with less emphasis on the tool itself) is important for finding creative new directions for the interface & provide insights towards all of Drupal's user experience goals.
If anyone has any thoughts on how to share qualitative data with the Drupal community please speak up. I don't plan on writing personas, but this research can be used to help refine some of the current personas.
Also, be warned: if you are a member of this usability group, I will not consider you as a participant. But if you know any talkative web developers currently working on projects who don't belong to the usability group, please pass their contact info on to me off list (recruiting is the hardest part!).
Comments
Do you want drupal people,
Do you want drupal people, non Drupal people, both, someone trying to grasp drupal?
I have a couple of posible participants for ya
I know a couple of WorkHabit devs who're very talkative, smart, and yet not at all involved in the day-to-day betterment of Drupal core. Wanna talk to them?
______________________________
Senpai ~ Want a better WorkHabit? ~
Joel Farris | my 'certified to rock' score
Transparatech
http://transparatech.com
619.717.2805
thanks!
Really I'm looking to focus people away from the tool and talk about the work itself - so they can be Drupal or not Drupal, or be new to Drupal, as long as they are engaged in creating websites using a CMS for work or for fun.
If you recommend someone, I will send them a friendly email letting them know how I found out about them, what I'm doing, and a couple questions to make sure they fit my criteria. If it works out, I'll work with their schedule to find a good interview time.
Research recruiting block deployed on front page of Drupal.org
I've deployed the recruiting block on the front page of Drupal.org
http://drupal.org/node/323752
Kieran
Drupal community adventure guide, Acquia Inc.
Drupal events, Drupal.org redesign
Thanks for spending your
Thanks for spending your independent study on us!
Is there anything those of us with usability backgrounds can do to help out on this? I don't think we'd be good participants for this one.
That's a good question - I'm
That's a good question -
I'm curious what format(s) are most helpful for the analysis of the data. One thing I could do is one-half of an Indi Young Mental Model diagram - and the other half could be filled out online or at a usability sprint. Besides that, are there any other ways people would like to see the data, besides a written report? I would like the data to be as usable for everyone as possible in this group.