[imp] Usability testing IMP3

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting Henry Blackman <h.blackman@chester.ac.uk>:

> I'm in the process of rolling out IMP 3.1 at Chester College of HE in 
> the UK.  As such we've been performing some usability testing of IMP 
> (using RC 1).  We've come up with a few things  that developers may want
> to address.  I thought I should share them with the group - hope that's
> OK and that it's taken in good humour.

We'll certainly do our best. :)

> The first issue was the most noticed.  In the Compose window of IMP 
> there is an icon - Attachment - which right now scrolls the user down to
> the attachment section of the window.  As default though the window is 
> big enough to show that section and as such doesn't appear to actually 
> do anything.  We found that more than 70% of our users actually 
> complained in the testing scenario that they "couldn't do attachments" 
> or "how do I get attachments to work".  They preferred the way IMP 2 
> worked, with the attachments section above the body of the message.

There were complaints with the old way that when you add a few 
attachments, the body of the message can scroll off the screen. Do you 
think that's still just better, or is there something in between the two 
or a third solution that would be better yet?

> Users were confused with the "Expand Names" feature in the compose 
> window.

Do you have a suggestion on how to make this any less confusing? 
Personally, _I'm_ not giving up the feature, I use it too much. =)

> We received a couple of complaints regarding the font in the message 
> window.

This pretty much has to remain a monospaced font to render ASCII 
art/diagrams correctly...

> Other features that were requested was a "Filter Messages" icon/link on
> the message list window...

That's already there. Or am I misunderstanding?

> Another feature was to bring back a pop-up for new message alert whilst
> in a message view.

That would require reloading the message view automatically, which could 
be a rather disorienting thing to happen while one was reading a 
message... Suggestions?

> The last two features that users requested were distribution lists (100%
> of users requested that one!) and read receipts being sent as well as 
> being requested.  Many of our users are converted Pegasus users and they
> all love those features.

I'll happily look at patches for either of these

Thanks for the feedback!

-chuck

--
Charles Hagenbuch, <chuck@horde.org>
"A dream which helps you to live your reality with dignity
 and justice is a good dream." - Tariq Ramadan