The Great Ubuntu Girlfriend Test
I saw this article mentioned on Digg. A techie guy decided to set his semi-tech-savvy girlfriend loose on Ubuntu’s new 8.04 release. What ensued was fascinating. Read the guy’s account here.
I should mention that although he’s not a user experience professional, he does a darn good job of defining the right tasks. The twelve tasks he set out for his s.o:
- Tell me what the capital of Bosnia is.
- Watch a video on YouTube.
- Download a Spice Girls Album. [Note: I hope this was ironic...]
- Draw me a little picture and save it in three formats.
- Burn an album from my music collection.
- Change the speed of the mouse.
- Change the theme of the computer.
- Find a picture on the Intenet and set it as the desktop background.
- Change screen resolution.
- Photoshop a picture of her face onto my body. [Note: He's using "photoshop" as a generic verb...]
- Log onto MSN. [Note: As in the IM client MSN Messenger]
- Install Skype.
These are very appropriate core tasks for someone who’s transitioning to a new computer. I couldn’t pick a better set of tasks if I were the Ubuntu user experience team.
Judging from his descriptions of her behavior, he seemed to take the right approach to facilitation - i.e., he let his participant/girlfriend struggle, didn’t interfere or teach the interface, etc. Hard to be sure though.
So how did Ubuntu’s newest do? The girlfriend succeeded on seven of the twelve tasks. From the article:
Linux won’t truly be ready for the desktop until someone computer illiterate can sit down at a the computer and with little effort do what they want to do. Erin’s intelligent, quick to learn and is reasonably well-acquainted with modern technology. If she had as much trouble as she did, what chance to the elderly or at least the middle-aged stand?
Definitely an interesting read. Be sure to check out my posts about my Linux experiences if you’re interested in more Linux ‘n user experience discussions.
The Great Ubuntu Girlfriend Test - Content Consumer
May 10th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Great stuff, this is exactly my problem with ubuntu and Linux in general. Most enthusiasts are quick to preach open source and shun Microsoft (and Apple) but if novice users cannot perform simple tasks, it is of little use to them. Indeed, i would consider myself computer savvy, and have set up ubuntu on a box, but for the hassle i had it wasn’t worth it. Fine to play with as a technical curiosity and a novelty, but i had to go back to windows.