Quote of the day: "Taxonomy is like biology and stuffed deer."
So we've wrapped up the first two days of Drupal 7 usability testing at the University of Baltimore, and we're all really excited about the information we've gotten so far. I've been surprised to learn how stressful it can be sitting in a dark room on the other side of a two way mirror watching a red eye marker bounce around the page as someone tries to solve a particularly challenging task. There are definitely times you just want to cheer them on when they finally get through it.
As with most testing, we've uncovered some positive things:
... and a few negative things:
It's actually quite interesting how much we've uncovered. In fact, after seeing our list of participants, I was a little bit worried we'd have trouble uncovering many issues at all. An interesting aspect of the people we're testing is that as opposed to other test results I've seen, we're testing people who are experienced. In fact, they're really experienced. Of the 4 people we've tested so far, they have a combined 32 years of web development experience. Furthermore 3 of them have previous exposure to Drupal, and on average they've previously had exposure to 4 CMS's. These are not people who's nephew built a site for them which they occasionally post content to, these are people who should be able to use Drupal.
I should wrap this post up, since we'll have 4 test participants coming in tomorrow. But if you'd like to follow our progress by day, tune in to the twitter tag #drupalusability or check out a few of the usability team members who have been sending regular updates about the sprint:
- Addisun 'add1sun' Berry
- Brad 'beeradb' Bowman
- Nathaniel 'catch' Catchpole
- Matthew 'ultimateboy' Tucker
Also, if you're in the Baltimore area and want to hang out with the Usability Team on Monday night, we're getting together at the UB Lab between 4:00-6:00PM on Monday. Look for details here in the groups.drupal.org Maryland group.