[consulting] A defense for new users

[Kieran Lal]

On Feb 24, 2006, at 3:15 PM, Robert Castelo wrote:

> Where would be the best place to present your conclusions and have  
> an on-going discussion about Drupal usability?

I have made the arguments in public over the last year, you can  
search for my posts on the dev list and you'll see they are mostly  
about user experience and the results of the work we have been  
doing.  In particular I posted and paid for the survey results to be  
available for several months.  I have presented these finding at the  
last two Drupal Cons.

The surveys are unreliable argument you are making is a common one,  
but usually it comes from the UE people.

I'll just say that if you pick up a book on user experience they will  
tell you to focus on user tasks and goals not features. We conducted  
live experiments and the feedback is to focus on tasks not features.   
We conducted interviews in both English and in Spanish that indicate  
that indicate people have difficulty with tasks not features.  We did  
a broad based survey and got data and that indicates particular tasks  
are challenging, and that particular tasks are very frequently done.   
We talked to multiple separate teams of professionals and they  
indicated we should focus on helping users accomplish tasks.

I have failed to make the argument in the most important place I need  
to.  I need to make the argument on the Drupal home page, which I  
haven't done so far.

I think like everything else in Drupal it's more important how you  
argue than where you argue.  So we will argue with hard work, with  
data, with elegant solutions, with persistence, and by gaining the  
respect of key influencers.  Now with the help of a few people who  
have contacted me off-list I'll make that argument and hopefully we  
will come to a good solution because of it.

Cheers,
Kieran
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