[Foundation-l] A qualitative study on usability with n=1 |Re: Usability Study Results (Sneak Preview)

Hello, the results Parul and the team shared with us touched some frustrating memories of mine. I often found it difficult to explain to Wikipedians how hard it is to edit, and that we should consider to modify some of the MediaWiki. A couple of years ago I had a usability test of my own, when the Antwerp Esperanto group invited to its 100 years anniversary. In the programme there was also a Wikipedia lesson organized by Chuck and Yves from Esperanto Wikipedia. We instructed people, often elderly people, on a personal basis how to edit - or at least, we tried to. I was working in fact with one person only; her name sound familiar to me and it turned out that she was the daughter of a higly respected Belgian Esperantist, deceased maybe ten years before. He was a teacher and founder of a school in Africa, and she told me that he certainly would have been enthusiast about Wikipedia. Friends suggested to her to write a Wikipedia article about him, which she as a relative found a bad idea (a healthy point of view not every newbie has). Actually I did not teach very much to her. She was very interested in everyting, but found it difficult to understand how to edit and what this wiki syntax means. (She had a very nice laptop, but only since a couple of weeks.) In more than an hour I concentrated on showing her what Wikipedia is and how she can use it more efficiently, rather than editing by herself. At the end, I instigated her to try the functions again, like the search. I asked her to enter the name of her father, maybe one of his books is cited or he is mentioned in an article about Belgian Esperanto movement. She did so, and with surprise the search engine led us to a well written article about him, even with photograh. When I tell this story to male persons, and ask them what the lady did then spontaneously, they say: she saves the page, she corrects it by making an edit, she looks at the version history... Only women know instinctively what she actually did: she cried. Someone had found her father so important that he had written an article, and this now is in an encyclopedia online. Don't call me sly, but I wished there was a Belgian chapter so I could have used the moment to make her a member. :-) So this is what can happen to you when you teach Wikipedia or make usability tests. Ziko 2009/5/8 geni <geniice(a)gmail.com>om>: -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde