User Experience

We need help doing user experience testing! This means users testing our software, observing what does and doesn't work for them, and recording that.

If you're here to help (HOORAY!) go to the testing instance set up by Caleb Davis: http://omgmg.dyndns.org:6543/ [EDIT: This link has been down since 2011 something, take a look at the Live instances instead]

Sign up for an account*, add some pictures** and play around. Take some notes and then either set up an account on this wiki and add your thoughts to this page or email them to press@mediagoblin.org. Please include your operating system and what browser you're using.

* Your email validation link may be in your spam folder!
** NOTHING ON THIS INSTANCE IS PERMANENT. This is for user experience testing only... your pics will be wiped!

You'll be able to give us the best feedback if you don't look at anyone else's notes before you start. Thanks for helping us with usability!! We really appreciate it!

User notes go in this section

From Jenny on Google Chrome 13.0.782.220 in Mac OSX 10.6.8

• login ok, uploading file ok.
• can enter profile description but it doesn't seem to show up anywhere?
• no crash after attemping to upload a non-image and then uploading a real image (jpg)
• uploaded a sideways image and there is no way to rotate it.

From Jenny on Safari 5.1 in Mac OSX 10.6.8

• login ok, uploading ok
• same problem with profile description - it's filled in but doesn't appear in the profile.
• everything seems to work ok.

From Deb using Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx (Netbook remix version on an Aspire One) with Firefox version 3.6.18 for Ubuntu on 9.8.2011

• could still use a little note explaining how tags work
• submission is easy
• seems odd that I can't add a picture of myself to my profile on a picture site
• will people be able to search by pic tags? or search for users?
• will people be able to group pics into albums?
• maybe we could have something that is more obviously a dashboard than clicking on the username

From Jenny on Google Chrome 14.0.835.124 beta-m in Windows XP Professional

• Log in ok, comments ok, deleting files works now.
• Profile info only shows up if the website is filled in.
• Adding a .bmp crashes chrome.
• Other image types seem to work - tif, gif, png, jpg.
• Adding other non-images give a message that it is not an image (txt, pdf, mdi).
• The <- -> buttons say 'Temporary button holder' beneath them.
• The .tif image doesn't display when browsing individual photos, just in the overall view.

From Jenny on IE7 in Windows XP Professional

• Log in ok, comments ok, editing and deleting ok, uploading ok.
• Display - the profile website runs into the photos. The photos line up exactly with no space between them. Everything is top-justified rather than centered.
• The tif image doesn't display on the page for that image (where you can comment on it) - it does display on all other pages though.
• The save changes button is cut off so you only see the letters 'SAVE CHA'.
• The "Profile Edited" or "Posted Comment" comment dialog box displays over the username and logout buttons, as does the <- -> arrows. These also say 'Temporary button holder' which seems wrong.

Running on Dreamhost.com

Set up your python virtualenv

1. Download the latest virtualenv: http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/v/virtualenv/XXX
2. Download the latest python: http://python.org/ftp/python/XXX/Python-XXX.tar.bz2
3. Unpack both
4. Compile and install python locally:

     ./configure --prefix=$HOME/local
     make
     make install

This will install python (I used 2.7.3) into /home/spaetz/local/... (e.g. .../bin/python)

1. Install the virtualenv:

      ~/local/bin/python ~/virtualenv-1.8/virtualenv.py  $HOME/local/virtenv

You will now have: ~/local/virtenv/bin/python

1. In ~/.bash_profile add:

      PATH=~/local/virtenv/bin:~/local/bin:${PATH}

so that your local python will be preferred. Log out, log in again and test
"python" to see which version will be invoked. It should be the new python.
Check "which easy_install" to see if the one in local/virtenv would be executed

You have now a local python installation that you can use, and easy_install will work with your local installation.

Install mediagoblin as a site package

1. Check out mediagoblin from git to e.g. ~/mediagoblin
2. Install MediaGoblin and all dependencies for MediaGoblin with easy_install.

 - In the mediagoblin directory issue:
      python setup.py

 - You will also need to: easy_install lxml
 - Python-image was trickier to install:
     easy_install --find-links http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/ Imaging

  test by leaving the mediagoblin directory and see if you can import it:
      python<ENTER>import mediagoblin<CTRL-D>
  looking for errors.

Set up an WSGI environment on Dreamhost

1. Enable the mod_passenger setting for ruby/python in the domains web panel
2. cd into the domain directory (e.g. ~/media.sspaeth.de for me)
3. Copy mediagoblin.ini and paste.ini from the ~/mediagoblin directory here
4. Create passenger_wsgi.py in your domain directory (e.g. ~/media.sspaeth.de for me):

   import sys, os
   INTERP = "/home/<username>/local/virtenv/bin/python"
   #INTERP is present twice so that the new python interpreter knows the actual executable path
   if sys.executable != INTERP: os.execl(INTERP, INTERP, *sys.argv)

   from paste.deploy import loadapp
   application = loadapp('config:/home/mediagoblin/media.sspaeth.de/paste.ini')

   #If in case of errors, all you get are mysterious error 500, you can set debug=true in paste.ini to see stack traces
   # Otherwise, add this:
   #from paste.exceptions.errormiddleware import ErrorMiddleware
   #application = ErrorMiddleware(application, debug=True)

1. Set up the database by issueing: gmg dbupdate
2. (optional but recommended) Serve the static files directly from the webserver.

  In paste.ini in this section: [composite:routing] comment out the static files:
  #/mgoblin_static/ = mediagoblin_static
  #/theme_static/ = theme_static

  and symlink the mediagobin/mediagoblin/static directoy to public/mgoblin_static
          and mediagoblin/mediagoblin/themes to public/theme_static

  so it is displayed directly. This step might be different depending
  on your web server configuration. There is no reason that static
  files need to go through all the python indirection when they can be
  served directly by nginx/apache/...

  In case you want to delete your git checkout after the installation (you don't need it, since you installed the mediagoblin package to ~/local/virtenv/lib/python2.7/mediagoblin...
  you should do the symlinking from there.

Past notes

Are here, http://wiki.mediagoblin.org/User_Experience_Past_Notes

General thoughts on running a user experience test

Could someone with experience with this fill in info here? ;)

I (Jan-Christoph Borchardt) write a thesis at the moment on Coordinating low-cost usability testing in independent free & open source software projects
There are many small tips and recipes on how to do your own testing. Especially look into the Methods part.
Please let me know if you have any other experiences with testing, I intend on regularly updating that document and release the full version freely licensed once it’s done as well as some kind of a quick start guide.