Development/Howto/Improve Usability
From Mandriva
How to increase the appeal to Mandriva Linux by improving usability
Contents |
The goal of this page is to gather all the guidelines and ideas to improve the usability of Mandriva Linux.
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Ideas to improve Usability
Please provide links to entries in Bugzilla, whenever applicable.
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Installation
- Does installation really have to start every time you have left installation DVD in (after installing some RPMs)?
- Many people are used to mindlessly click "Next" button to install a program. Maybe installation should stick to simple rules like:
- Nothing should be destroyed or made inaccessible while just clicking "Next" buttons.
- User should end up with working GUI installation if they are just clicking "Next" buttons.
- Options should be descriptive, and descriptions exact, so that even people with less experience can understand them without reading descriptions.
- Resizing (not deleting!) Windows partition should be default. There should be progress bar while resizing partition.
- Installation should use language people can understand. Some people don't know what things like "root" and "ppp" or "eth" are. Respect that! Don't make it scarier than it needs to be.
- If you can configure DSL connection during Windows installation in two steps, why can't you do the same during Mandriva installation? Why do users have to select from limited selection of DSL providers? Are so many steps really necessary?
- Put up firewall on interface that is actually used to connect to internet. Don't guess it!
- Errors should be exact. I.e. when you add user it asks you to use letters (what it doesn't tell you is that this are "English letters" and anything with "accents" can't be used).
- ...
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Control Center
- All MCC wizards should report errors (e.g. when there are problems installing RPMs) back to the user, not just assume that everything was successful.
- ..
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Desktop (look & feel, arrangement, main menu...)
- Drag and drop supported everywhere
- Always launch the best tool depending on the environment you are using BY DEFAULT (IRC = Konversation in KDE and Xchat in Gnome ; Web browsing = Konqueror in KDE and Firefox in Gnome...)
- Allow user to configure which tool he wants to perform which task
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Integration
- TBD
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Usability Heuristics
- TBD
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Usability References (links)
- TBD
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Case studies (usability testing)
Newbie usability tests :
- Install mandriva
- Surf the web
- Burn a cd
- Play a DVD
- Play a mp3 file
- Open a Word file
Medium skilled user usability tests :
- Plug 1 Windows, 1 Mac Os X, 2 Mandriva stations, 1 printer in a network and verify you can access shared folders, shared printer without any configuration from one of the Mandriva station (zeroconf should work as expected)
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Test 1
- TBD
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Test 2
- TBD
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Progress from Mandriva Linux 2005LE (10.2) to Mandriva Linux 2006
- Usability page started
