Usability research meeting 2024-07-16¶

Location: NHM
Updated information in the course of the meeting is in color and/or marked with an ✅. Every participant is welcome to add and adapt.

Participants¶

• OpenAtlas: Alexander Watzinger
• NHM: Celestine Posch

General¶

• Ask if notes taking, publishing results and naming them is is ok or if they prefer to remain anonymous ✅
• What is planned to be worked on and which source material is used
  Checking former entries and entering new events, e.g. movement from already prepared notes but also adding information from additional research done while entering.
• How does work begin, e.g. using bookmarks, already logged in, ...
  Selecting physical notes (story board like), starting the browser and selecting from address bar history what was last worked on.

Technical information¶

	Answer	Info
Device	Laptop	with big external monitor and keyboard
Operating system	Windows 11
Browser	Edge
Screen resolution	1920x1080
OpenAtlas version	8.6.0	develop version
UI language	English

Used features¶

	Answer	Info
Redmine	Yes	using it mostly bITEM specific
Manual	No	but seemed to be aware of it, used and appreciated mouse over information in forms
Newsletter	No
Bookmarks	No	wasn't aware of this feature
Notes	No	wasn't aware of this feature

User information¶

• Since when are they using OpenAtlas -> for about 10 month with gradual rising task complexity
• Which project is worked on currently -> bITEM
• What is liked/disliked -> see additional outcome
• Ideas for improvement (e.g. improved dashboard for quicker navigation to their tasks) -> see additional outcome
• What is the workflow when questions or problems arise (manual, Redmine, mail, colleagues, ...) -> talks to Stefan Eichert because of instant availability (same office), he is the project lead and of course an expert in OpenAtlas
• Are there known bugs, if yes what prevented reporting -> No, the user experience was entirely bug-free
• Are they feel included in the development process ->Yes, naturally because of the proximity to Stefan Eichert

Feedback and additional observations¶

• Performance: some views took long to load, especially updating events took a few seconds
  -> may be solved with #2300: Load form tables dynamically
• Translations: for description translations a workaround (special character sequences in description field) was used but seemed unhandy and error prone
  -> could be solved with #1925: Multi language support for data entering
• Description: the description field was noted as too small
  -> an issue was created: #2327
• Table views: it was noted that filter functions would be helpful
  -> an issue for this already exists: #998 (the oldest open one)
• Event views: it was noted that it's difficult to know which (sub) class e.g. an existing event might be
  -> an issue was created: #2328
• Profile: the time module was activated but not needed and there seemed no awareness that it could be turned off to make for a less cluttered user interface
• Move: confusing workflow for adding moving persons/groups
  -> This is an older (unsolved) discussion but I put it on the agenda of the next developer meeting

Concluding remarks¶

• Thanks a lot to Celestine for taking the time and volunteering for our first structured user research interview
• Results were very interesting. There were new ideas for improvement and also confirmation of existing ideas
• Celestine seemed comfortable using and navigating OpenAtlas
• I (Alex) liked the reported bug-free experience, especially considering that Celestine mostly works with a not (yet) released development version