Using
I sat down with my wife last night. I wanted to see how she handled the Scouta “alpha.”
We think that usability is one of the major keys to web services (another important factor is usefulness), and so we want to try and ensure that the service is very straightforward, and as self explanatory as possible. In some respects that’s easy–like ensuring that we have descriptions that help the member–but in others it’s a lot more complex. Making things work seamlessly is an art, one that Apple handles well, and Microsoft doesn’t.
So I learnt some painful, but very useful lessons, last night. We’re going to spend a few days tweaking usability, and then go in for another round of testing.
December 7th, 2006 at 2:46 am
I once had a store manager who was completely clueless about computers. I made him my alpha tester. He could break a program fast. The ones I thought were bullet proof even faster. You should probably keep your wife around for the times you think you finally got it right
December 14th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
I could get my grandmother to sign up for the beta testing…. She thinks flickr is my photosite (refers to it as Simone’s photosite). Still, she does manage to post photo’s herself, comments on photos, comments on my blog, etc etc. She’s Dutch though, and her english is pretty bad… She might be a bit too clueless for what you guys have set up (though I have no idea what that is, so how would I know….!! :p )