[drupal-docs] Administration user experience research survey

[Kieran Lal]

Our interviews with a broad range of Drupal users lead us in this  
direction for the survey.

If there are discrepancies between what's considered easy and what's  
considered difficult that's because that's what the interviews  
revealed.   To offset missing major tasks we give several options to  
receive this input.  First,we have a number of 'other' fields on most  
questions which have a list of tasks.  Second, we have a specific  
question at the end of the survey for tasks that may have been  
overlooked.

The purpose of this research is move the user experience improvements  
forward in new directions.  It is meant to focus the debate by  
selecting the top 10 Administration user experience issues to focus  
on.  It is also meant to give users a voice in a debate that it often  
dominated by the personal opinions of programmers.   These techniques  
are widely used and accepted by user experience professionals to  
overcome institutional bias.

The normal route for this kind of audience research would be to spend  
a lot of time carefully selecting a handful of the 'right' users and  
then prioritizing based on those interviews.   Our community  
cherishes participation in the process and greatly respects data.    
By having a broad survey we allow for participation, and provide data  
which can help to focus debate.  The Drupal Documentation survey had  
over 200 responses.  If we did not have preset answers we would have  
been too subject to bias in the analysis of free form responses.   
Also, from a practical standpoint the analysis never would have been  
completed due to time constraints.  The documentation survey   
combined with the categorization exercise helped us understand two  
important issues.  First, the handbook could be successfully re- 
organized into 5 separate task oriented handbooks.  Second, the most  
in demand documentation was module documentation.   We were able to  
take focused action on both and greatly improve the documentation  
based on quick responses from pre-categorized responses.

The time selections were based on the most common responses from the  
interviews.  If the interviewees had used terms like seldom and never  
then we could have gone in that direction. Instead they said a few  
minutes at a time, about an hour at a time, several times a day.  So  
we kept the language that interviewees seemed comfortable with.

Thanks for the questions.  I'll be sure to highlight the most common  
other feedback in our results.

Cheers,
Kieran


On Oct 16, 2005, at 1:54 PM, Richard Archer wrote:

> 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.
> -- 
> [ drupal-docs | http://lists.drupal.org/listinfo/drupal-docs ]
>
>