Re: [USABILITY] Usability test of Debian Installer beta 3
Hi,
> step 2-9: (debian-installer)
> I'm a bit suprised to see the user going through all the help in
> such detail. This suggests that more online help later on would
> be a good thing. We're getting that in the new version of
> partman at least.
>
> It also suggests that we should somehow make more clear that you
> shouldn't need to read all that stuff unless you're curious, or
> something is going wrong, but I am not sure of how to accomplish
> that.
Yesterday I let a a friend who isn't familar with installations test the new
installer. What she found most confusing was, that there was no visible
online-help telling her what the key "tab" does. cursor-keys, "esc" and
"enter" were intuitive (at least for her), but "tab" was not.
Since the network was broken I then had to fix it and she tried the installer
for a second time. This try was much faster and straight-forward, and my test
person confirmed that the installer is easy to use if one knows how,.
So I got the idea of some initial help screen right after the languagechooser:
------------------
Welcome to the debian-installer!
Use the cursor keys, enter, esc and tab to navigate.
Select your action:
Read more about how to use the installer (recommended for new users)
Continue without getting more help.
------------------
Something like this. The second help screen(s) also should tell the user, that
almost every question has sane defaults, but the potentially dangerous
questions have safe defaults, which you have to change, otherwise no
installation will happen.
Another thing she found irritating were the information given when installing
grub. Since she selected "take over the whole disc" when partitioning there
is no need to worry a user about not to be able to boot other operatings
systems and such - simple install the bootloader.
I also think it's completly irrelevant for new users to know whether their
Powermac-System is a oldworld or new world mac and whether they need yaboot
or quik - just make the system boot. But I would like an option when
installing the bootloader offering this information - but this should be
optional, e.g. "install the bootloader and tell me some background infos".
Also the ISA network cards were not detected, we tried a smc-ultra and
a 3c590 - is this code missing or could it be hardware problem ?
Since we unfortunatly used a rather old net-install-cd (2004-03-30) and she
will has to repeat the installation onto a bigger harddisc anyway, I won't
post any more details now but rather then.
But all in all, even though I had to help a bit, the test person had the
feeling that she had successfully done (and understood) a debian installation
and was happy about that, also acknowleding the fact that d-i is work in
progress and has some bugs and todos.
regards,
Holger
> step 10: (debian-installer)
> It should be possible to reword the prompt on the help screens
> to make clearer that enter boots the system. I'll see what I can
> do.
>
> step 11: (rootskel-floppy)
> I think you're too charitable; many new users would not like the
> linux boot text at all. Luckily it's only this in your face on
> an install from floppies; normally it flashes by and the installer
> loads in seconds.
>
> step 13: (languagechooser)
> It's a pity that she did not scroll down and find the fi_FI
> entry. I wonder if adding arrows to the scroll bar, or some
> other indication that there is more below would have helped
> her.
>
> step 17: (countrychooser)
> The fact that hitting enter on a continent returns to the menu
> is something I have always disliked, but I have no particularly
> better idea.
>
> step 18-19: (kbd-chooser)
> It's probably a bug that the keyboard selector did not default
> to Finnish here.
>
> step 20: (load-floppy)
> You're right, that needs to stress that now is the time to
> change the floppy. I'll see about fixing this.
>
> step 21: (anna)
> This mess has been on my list to fix for a while, but it's
> nontrivial. The retreivers need to be extended to have failure
> handling capabilities, instead of this generic handler; the
> failure handler for the floppy should re-prompt for the floppy
> if none was found.
>
> step 22-30: (main-menu)
> I've seen users get into this kind of confusion when something
> goes wrong and the priority is lowered. Short of avoiding ever
> letting things go that badly wrong (which is a noble goal, but
> perhaps unobtainable), it's hard to fix it. Note that none of
> this is shown to users unless something goes wrong.
>
> On your other comments:
>
> - I agree that cdebconf's multiselct box implementation is confusing.
> Luckily we have no multiselct lists in the standard install path
> (unless something goes wrong). I would like to see it easier to use,
> better key assignments or at least a help bar at the bottom.
> (cdebconf)
>
> - Some of your UI ideas are not particularly doable with the current
> simple queston and answer, cdebconf-based interface. Some of them can
> be approached in spirit, if not in actual UI. (cdebconf)
>
> - Your idea for presenting a list of information the installer needs
> (language, country, keyboard) is a good one, and it's similar to an
> earlier proposal I made, which would also include some other
> information prompted for later. Unfortunatly, it will be a lot of work
> to implement this, and I've put off working on my idea until after the
> first release. There is still time to do it, I think, if someone is
> interested. Plan for a good week's work. (main-menu)
>
> - Indeed we don't display the kernel modules screen on normal installs.
> We do display a progress bar that breifly mentions the modules that
> are being loaded; while this will contain terms that users are not
> familiar with, I think the overall thing is clear, they do not have
> to interact with it, and it's essential for debugging when a module
> freezes the machine. (hw-detect)
>
> As to your conclusions, I think that you're jumping to conclusions from
> one test with floppies. Out of our 300+ installation reports (and the
> many more users who have installed without reporting), I think there are
> a few that are from users nearly as novice as your tester, and
> succeeded. However, they all used CDROMs. I look forward to further
> tests.
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