[drupal-docs] Administration user experience research survey

[Richard Archer]

At 4:28 PM -0700 14/10/05, Kieran Lal wrote:

>5. What are some common Drupal administration tasks that you do?
>-Administer content on the site such as comments, edit pages.
>-Administer users such as reset passwords, change user permissions.
>-Administer a new site by installing new modules, set permissions,
>configure users
>-Administer the style, layout, or presentation of the site.
>-Administer new modules or features to learn what is possible
>Other[Text field]
>
>6. What are some infrequent Drupal administration tasks that you do?
>-Configure modules
>-Administer comments
>-Moderate content
>-Administer the theme
>-Review site statistics
>-Administer users
>-Administer content types
>Other[Text field]

By offering a limited set of responses to the above questions,
aren't you directing the results to the answers you want?

For example, if you didn't want "administering menus" to be
a common admin task, you would just leave it off the list.
As you've done in question 5 above.

Wouldn't it be better to use the same list as for Question 7 for
above two questions. And merge questions 5 and 6 into a single
question with response options:
"How frequently do you do the following admin tasks:"
- Almost always
- Often
- Sometimes
- Seldom
- Never


>7. "When I administrate my Drupal site, I find it is difficult to"
>(tasks that had been considered easy)
>-Review the site activity in the watchdog
>-View a list of users
>-Publish content such as news
>-Configure roles and their permissions
>-Enable and disable modules
>-Install drupal modules
>-Administer module permissions
>-Administer module settings
>-Administer menus
>-Experiment with new modules
>(tasks that had been considered hard)
>-Updating site to a new version of Drupal
>-Installing modules
>-Comparing files???
>-Administering categories with the taxonomy module
>-Administering multiple comments
>-Ordering and organizing content
>-Experimenting and learning new features and modules
>-Finding pages that are deeply linked
>-Administering the structure of content
>-Unix commands such as setting permissions and moving files
>-Testing your site
>-Setting access permissions for organizations business roles
>-Administering the structure of a site
>-Administering the theme
>-Administering weights and organizing parent relationships(Menu/Book)
>-Understanding Drupal terminology and synonyms
>-Administering themes with a programming mindset
>-Inconsistency in themes
>-Getting to administration pages due to slow loading times

While this list is more comprehensive, it's still limited.

For example (and this is just one example, I'm sure there are dozens),
a task that *should* be easy is perhaps the hardest thing I've yet
encountered with Drupal... placing an image with a caption on the page.

And instead of a yes/no answer, how about:
How easy or difficult do you find the following admin tasks:
- very easy
- easy
- neutral
- hard
- very hard

 ...Richard.