Gentoo-Evolution

From Grokdoc

==Usability studies== (what this page is about)

Windows skilled user, never used linux

I've let a friend that has some computer experience, can use Windows and install/uninstall programs on it, try to setup and read my mail. I recently installed Gentoo on the computer with Gnome for the desktop environment and installed Evolution as my mail reader. I never told my freind what the mail program was called and didn't explain how you started a program.

My freind looked around for a bit and guessed that "the little foot", as he called it, was similar to the start-button in windows. He looked around for a bit, gueesing that it might be under Internet but he couldn't find it. Knowing that I had installed an email-client he continued to look for it in the other menus. After a while he saw the icon for Evolution that had a small letter on it but the popup confused him, it said "Evolution groupware suite". Anyway since he didn't find anything else that might have been an email-client, he decided to try it out.

Well he found the email-client but it took him some time and it is possible that he would have come to the conclution that there wasn't any client if I hadn't told that I had one installed. Mayby Evolution should be placed in the Internet folder and the popup should mention something about email. Small adjustments but useful for the beginner or anybody that doesn't realy care what OS their computer is running as long as they can read their email and surf the web.

When the program started he saw that the menu on the left had an option that read Inbox. Now he was certain that he had found the right program. Since he had some prior experience with Windows he directly started looking through the menus and soon found settings. In the settings window "Mail Accounts" was set as the first option, this is good I might add. My friend clicked on add a Wizard helped him setting up the mail account. The only thing that confused him was that there wasn't any field where he could fill in his password so he went backwards and forwards to find the missing field. After a while he figured that the password mayby was entered elsewere in the program so he completed the mail wizard.

Still looking for the password field he browsed through the other settings looking a bit frustrated as he couldn't find it. After a while he gave up and closed the settings window. He now clicked on the "Send/Receive" button and as the password window apeard a sudden "Ahhhhh"-sensation spread through the room. My friend entered the password and the program started to download the mail. Then it was just like home for him, he clicked on the mail he wanted, and read them in the preview-window.

Well on the whole it was quite painless to get my not-so-very-experienced friend to setup my mail account and read the mail. The only real problem was the missing password field and I suggest that it should be mentioned in the wizard that the password will be enterd when you check the mail for the first time.

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Complete novice, never used a computer

I set up a machine for my mother. Just the basics all she wants is email and the web, she is/was a complete novice that had never used a computer before.

As above my mother had trouble finding the email client, whereas she found the webbrowser almost instantly. This had everything to do with the fact that Evolution and the description meant nothing to her, and the menu item web browser for epiphany said it all. I think the epiphany way is the HIG way. Maybe the Evolution folks should come up with a clearer name before it´s included with gnome as a standard.

Another thing she had trouble getting used to is that if you send a message it´s in the outbox and not actually sent yet. Why did she have to hit send/recieve when she already sent the message? Maybe a popup warning here would be nice, with a checkbox to not show the warning again.

==Other data== (to be eventually moved elsewhere)

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