OLPC Usability Testing Class Project (Frederick Grose)

[Greg Smith (gregmsmi)]

Hi Frederik,

I'm trying to find the right interface to gather input directly from
teachers and encourage an exchange on requirements definition between
real XO users and developers.

I wrote up a brief explanation and test subject on your wiki page. 

Let me know if you have any questions and if you think its something
your students can help with.

BTW I'm just a volunteer and not officially affiliated with OLPC or
doing this for my employer.

Thanks,

Greg S

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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:24:12 -0400
From: "Frederick Grose" <fgrose at gmail.com>
Subject: OLPC Usability Testing Class Project
To: devel at lists.laptop.org, sugar at lists.laptop.org,
	health at lists.laptop.org
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	<f3383f810803131524t34568fb1xeb784b57abd8b374 at mail.gmail.com>
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This note is a request for the broader community to consider potential
topic areas that might be prime for some usability testing.

(Here is a quick review of usability testing,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing.)

Professor Keith Karn in the Information Technology Department,
http://it.rit.edu/it/, of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in
Rochester, NY will have 4-5 graduate students (from his class of 20)
propose, and over the next 10 weeks, execute a usability testing
consultation around the XO or OLPC project.  The class met for the first
time on Wednesday 12 March 2008, and will meet, as a whole, every
Wednesday 6-9:50 pm EDT through 21 May 2008.  This OLPC project team
will be asked to review the wiki.laptop.org and then contact me as
client representative.
Because of the academic schedule, we need to review and select a testing
topic area in the next 7 days and have a final testing plan prepared by
26 March 2008.

What usability issue is currently most timely and significant to the
project?  Since OLPC is developing a new information and communication
technologies platform, there are many possibilities for significant
target users, subsystems, components, and activities.

Please think about the project design needs, possibilities, and
constraints, and suggest topics or issues here or to our wiki page,
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Rochester%2C_NY#Project_ideas.

We have a few G1G1 XOs in Rochester that we should be able to use for
live testing with local children.  Larger scale tests could be performed
with emulated XOs or hosted Sugar in the RIT Usability Laboratories. The
class will be expected to go through the human subject reviews as
required.

Because so many cultural variables may be important modifiers of
understanding user interactions with the OLPC project, perhaps there may
be some more basic or common psycho-physical aspects of usability we
could address that would be timely and significant for the project. Or,
we might be able to recruit user participants from one of the recently
settled immigrant communities in the Rochester area to delve into the
internationalization and cultural domains.

Some reviewers of OLPC have been critical of the shortage of reported
usability testing results, so far, however, if we appreciate the pace
and resourcing of the development, perhaps this is a chance to address
any gaps or curiosities that you may have.

We would welcome your thoughts (particularly on usability issues in the
near term).

Thanks to everyone for all their efforts!
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