[Zope-PTK] PTK and Usability

[Tres Seaver]

On Sun, 18 Feb 2001, Johan Carlsson wrote:

> 
> > Johan Carlsson wrote:
> > 
> > > Have there been any usability tests made on the PTK GUI
> > > design and scenarios?
> > 
> > We've done no formal usability testing;  much of the design
> > stems from our experience building and managing sites such as
> > www.zope.org, and from consulting engagements which have used
> > the framework.
> 
> It might be a good idea to invest in a usability test, and it
> doesn't have to be very expensive.  I have shown PTK to a
> college with some experience in Zope content management (not
> much at all) and she was very confused. And I also am confused
> by the way PTK works sometime, but on the other hand, I'm a
> experiences Zope Management User.
> 
> A setup with 5-15 novice users, let them use the PTK and what
> there doing without interfering or helping, might give you
> valuable information for changing some UI and scenarios.

I expect to be getting such feedback from our admin and sales
folks, who will be "eating our dogfood" over the next few weeks.
:)

> It would also be possible to do a heuristic evaluation with
> help from HCI-professionals.
>  
> > Because the "skin" of the portal is entirely customizable
> > (and soon the content objects, too -- please see
> > http://cmf.zope.org/rqmts/proposals/skinning_content), you
> > are free to experiment with other UI designs.  If you develop
> > a superior alternative, please package it up and make it
> > available to the community on the "dogbowl" site
> > (http://cmf.zope.org).
> 
> I will probably make a generic PTK design (that I've named
> "Form 1A") that I could release to the community.  I only have
> to learn how to make skins ;-)

The original proposal is online at:

  http://cmf.zope.org/rqmts/proposals/skins_tool

Andrew Sawyers has a section on skin customization in his
"migration how-to":

  http://cmf.zope.org/Members/andrew/how-tos/PTK2CMF

> Another thing that would be useful is a web designer starters
> kit for PTK.  That is documentation and templates for common
> web design tools.  I am looking at making a Dreamweaver
> Template/Library starters kit for my own needs. It's hard to do
> web design on PTK because it so factorized to UI-snippets (DW
> Library might solve that).

We have an existing effort underway to tackle the "DTML snippet"
problem for Zope in general:

  http://www.zope.org//Wikis/DevSite/Projects/ZPT

In particular, ZPT makes pages back into "wholes", editable
using GoLive, Dreamweaver, etc. (GoLive has better WebDAV
support, and is working with the current test version;  DW may
take longer, as they have only broken WebDAV support, and won't
commit to fixing it).

Tres.
-- 
===============================================================
Tres Seaver                                tseaver@digicool.com
Digital Creations     "Zope Dealers"       http://www.zope.org