[drupal-devel] A collection of usability problems

[Kieran Lal]

If you pick up any book on usability it tells you first off how to  
navigate around opinion based design.  I generally stay out of these  
usability debates because that's all they are.

We have a working solution in the Drupal community to endless debate.

I think all you have to do is look at what happened on the  
documentation team.  We spent months and hundreds and hundreds of  
emails debating what should be done.  In the end, we did three  
research exercises and then made some decisions.
1) We conducted in person interviews.
2) We did a broad based survey.
3) We conducted a usability exercise.

With research, the debate ended.
This lead to the creation of http://drupal.org/handbook/modules and  
the re-organization of the handbook here: http://drupal.org/handbooks

So if you are serious about improving usability, then please help  
with research.

Here are the questions for newbie Drupal administrators:
Drupal administration
1)How would you describe yourself as a Drupal administrator? Which  
version of Drupal
do you run? What additional modules/themes do you use?
2) How often do you use Drupal administration? How long do you  
administer your site?
3) Can you access your Drupal administration menus?(warm up question)
4) What are the most common tasks you do with your site as an  
administrator? What
other tasks do you do less frequently?(Write both answers down as a  
list in order)
5) Which of the common tasks you mentioned earlier are easy to do?  
Why are they easy?
(Get into detail)
6) Which tasks are hard? Why are those tasks hard?(Go into detail)
7) How about other important tasks you have not mentioned?
8) What is the one thing that would make your job as a Drupal  
administrator easier?
Review your interpretations.

Cheers,
Kieran