The results of a usability test of Ubuntu 8.04.1 conducted by Bentley University students.

1. Ubuntu Usability Test Report Bentley University: Human Factors in Information Design HF750: Usability Testing & Assessment December 15, 2008 Dan Fitek, Don Goetz, Karen Gosciminski, Sunil Muniraju, Allison Yale

3. Test Methodology

7. Test sessions

8. Target participant

9. Test participants (n = 6)‏ All participants used computers at least once daily to perform common tasks (e.g., emailing, word processing, browsing the internet). None of the participants had experience developing computer software or using Linux-based OS.

11. Directed tasks 1. You decide that the current display setting makes on-screen information hard to see. Decrease the monitor’s display size to the 1024 x 768 setting (time limit: 5 min) . 2. You are trying to get online to check your email and you realize there is no Internet connection. Connect wirelessly to the Internet with the following information (time limit: 10 min) : Network name: campus Password: 11bb22bb33bb44bb55bb66bb77 Encryption: open WEP, 128-bit 3. In your inbox, there is an email from a friend telling you that the most watched video on YouTube.com is great and that you should watch it. Go to YouTube.com to view this video (time limit: 15 min) . Participant will need to install an Adobe Flash plug-in to complete this task. (continued on next slide)‏

12. Directed tasks (continued)‏ 4. You recently took a trip home to visit family for the holidays and you took some pictures. Three of the pictures are on the desktop. Create a new folder called ‘Family’ in an appropriate place to store the pictures. Move them off of the desktop and into this folder (time limit: 5 min) . 5. Earlier, you downloaded a few songs to the Music folder. Play one of these songs (time limit: 10 min). Participant will need to download a codec to complete this task. 6. Your grandmother sent you a batch of homemade cookies for your birthday and since you have terrible handwriting and your grandmother has poor vision, you want to type up a “thank you” letter in 20-point font. Type the following letter and save it onto the hard drive so that you can print it out later (time limit: 7 min). Dear Grandma, Thank you very much for the delicious cookies. I can’t wait to see you next month for dinner! Love, Pat

15. Task Data

16. Task times The graph below shows the average task completion times of participants who performed tasks successfully without test moderator assistance.

17. Ease of use ratings The graph below shows the average ease of use rating participants reported after performing each task (Scale: 1-5, 1 = poor, 5 = excellent).

18. Task completion

19. Findings

33. Participant Feedback

35. Likelihood of supplementing Windows with Ubuntu: Two participants would consider using Ubuntu in addition to their current Windows OS. Other participants were less enthused about Ubuntu in general and/or thought running two OS was unnecessary or overly complicated. Barriers to conversion (continued)‏