On 1/15/11, Aslak Karsi wrote:
Hello,
We are now back from holidays and ready to continue our project.
To continue our project as planned with usability testing of Inkscape, we would need a goal for our testing. What part of the software should we test, some certain set of tools or some certain part of the UI? Also what is it that we are trying to find out? Because of complexity of Inkscape a clear goal is necessary for this kind of test to be successful.
Alternatively, if there isn't anything that you need to have tested, we are prepared to drop usability testing to take on some other task, as long as it falls under the topic of usability as required by our project. We still have about 170 hours per student to use on this project, so if there's any usability related issues that we might be able to help with, let us know.
Hi Aslak,
We discussed this proposal, but for reasons of terrible procrastination never got back to you. Sorry about that.
The thing about Inkscape is that we know a lot of our problems, but ultimately lack manpower to fix them.
One thing that, IMO, would be good to test is our existing dialogs: if they are clean enough, how placement of widgets could be improved, whether existing widgets are optimal etc.
There are at least two areas of interest we can think of as an alternative project:
1. Live Path Effects dockable dialog has a couple of major issues: range of possible values isn't exactly clear, and the effects parameters tend to loom, as they are simply listed one by one in top-bottom direction.
There is a recent trend to make better widgets that would fix the range visibility issue, as well as provide better experience to tablet users. And example of a partly implemented (http://vimeo.com/16616760) GIMP proposal is here:
http://mmiworks.net/test/small.png
IMO, it's worth having a look at that, also for tools options toolbar.
2. We seem to have different views regarding the existing SVG Filters editor. Right now it implements the SVG specification in a very literal manner. Some people like it a lot (like Ivan, who did most filter presets for Inkscape), and some people find it a terrible solution.
We have two blueprints that suggest two different solutions: one suggests an even simpler UI, and the other one suggests something like node compositing:
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/+spec/non-advanced-filters-ui https://blueprints.launchpad.net/inkscape/+spec/improved-filter-effects-dial...
That makes three different approaches to editing SVG filters, one of them implemented and currently used. You could test the existing implementation and come up with suggestions how to improve it, or come up with a new design proposal.
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org