Zach Lym: It?s Done

While testing finished nearly 5 months ago the final report is to a stage that I can let it go and move onto the next study.
There was a LOT to learn in addition to a moving goal post. I spent a month fighting with my G4 computer for nearly a month before giving up and getting a new MacBook Pro on credit, annotating and uploading the videos to different video providers, rewriting the final report and moving it to the Mozilla wiki, finally reformatting those annotations in a spreadsheet format, triangulating the data, all the while trying to blog the results, create current and future state maps of the workflow and other things going on with Ubiquity, and learn how to work with a development team.
So it was obviously a learning experience. What?s CRAZY is that (while I haven?t been doing anything 100% original) no one else has really tried to do FOSS usability testing in such an open, remote, and distributed way. Thus the logistics were not worked out. Doing testing when your team is in the same city is one thing, trying to do it across continents is another.
The next step for me is to publish my workflow and expand the usability testing wiki section to encourage low cost usability testing in the FOSS community. If you are handy with Python there are some small scripts for an internal project that needs work. I have also proposed some screen capture software which I hope some smart, entrepreneuring hacker picks up soon.
~
I want to thank Jono and everyone hacking on Ubiquity for being so graceful in their handling of someone not used to working with a development, especially since I am doing this remotely.
I want to apologize to Aza, the study never really got to what he was after- alternate UI?s for Ubiquity. Between his international touring of Asia and the pressure to get something going we never really got in sync- which is a good thing. I think the testing is something we lack.
The biggest thanks go to my mentors who responded to my pleas for someone to give me direction and advice in what I was doing.
Dana Chisnell (author of the Handbook of Usability Testing and plenty of podcasts) gave me the most thoughtful feedback I have ever gotten, it was really incredible of her to spend her time and resources helping me. I really miss having Buddhist monks around and it?s refreshing to be around someone as compassionate as you.
Allen Gunner of Aspiration gave me invaluable advice in getting traction and broadcasting results. He is the rare and dedicated grassroots organizer in the FOSS world who compares with the best NGO people I know in the environmental movement. He knows how to kick ass and look good doing it ; ) I really hope my work will forward his mission to bring Usability to the FOSS world and I can?t wait to work with him in the future.
Andy Edmonds and I found each other almost by accident on IRC. He has been the most responsive person involved, indulging me with emails and chats about the smallest concerns and teaching me how to triangulate data. He is also the most experienced of the three in terms of dealing with large data sets (he used to work on search engines), how theoretical Test Pilot studies might work- assuring me that random statistical analysis can work in place of 100% collection and how best to anonymize data. He also taught me how Mozilla works, and nixed some of my crazier ideas.
You each gave me a different piece of the puzzle, it just took me a while to figure out which order they go in.

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