[mythtv] MythTV Usability Report

[Isaac Richards]

On Monday 09 January 2006 01:24, f-myth-users at media.mit.edu wrote:
>     > (c) In Trac?  In mail?  On a website?  In beetles battling in
>     > bottles?
>
>     Trac's for bugs and patches.  mail or wiki would be preferable, I'd
> think.
>
> Okay.  I'd guess that they should get hosted on Kristjansson's
> website, given his offer (Daniel? are you thinking of a wiki,
> or something you'd have to maintain yourself?).  Presumably
> the workflow would be discussion-on-users-or-dev -> wiki ->
> some developer decides to implement something -> trac -> release?
> (I have to wonder whether a second Trac, or another section of the
> current one, might be easier to organize and require less duplication
> of effort to set up & use.)

There's a wiki at wiki.mythtv.org.  Not live yet, but will be soon.

>     > (d) Based on what release?  Latest-this-minute?  Within the last
>     >     month?  Stable?
>
>     Reasonably recent SVN, or a stable release if one was released
> recently.  I would expect anyone spending time on something like this to at
> least _check_ current SVN to see if the issues they're discussing still
> exist, as well.
>
> Tricky for users wanting to run stable w/o owning extra hardware, but
> maybe doable, especially if "reasonably recent" was well-defined.
>
>     > (e) Would code be -required- when discussing usability?  Would design
>     >     be sufficient?  Would complaining "this confuses x users" be
>     >     sufficient?  Would complaining "this confuses me, and I don't
>     >     know if it confuses others" be sufficient?
>
>     No code required, but it sure helps.  Suggested fixes at a bare
> minimum.  GUI mockups would be good.  A list of complaints by itself is
> useless.
>
> Okay.  (This should probably wind up on Daniel's website as guidelines.)
>
> P.S.  I mentioned in other mail that the user wishlist currently at
> http://www.mythtv.info/moin.cgi/UserWishList looked outdated (some
> mention .16!), and that I could improve it if someone sanity-checked the
> result, but nobody responded, so I'm unsure whether to do this, and if
> so, how.  Just edit the HTML and send it back to -dev?  Open a ticket?
> Hold off and assume it'll get rolled into whatever Daniel has planned?

Errr, it's a wiki.  Anyone can edit it.  Doesn't mean that a developer is 
going to pay attention to it, of course.

However, I wouldn't bother with changing things at mythtv.info at this point, 
as that information has already been transferred over to the new wiki on 
mythtv.org, and any changes will probably be lost.

If you're going to continue posting on these lists, _please_ fix your quoting 
style.  It's extremely difficult to tell what words belong to what poster 
with yours.  In fact, I don't think I can even begin to pay attention to 
someone talk about usability issues when they send email messages that have 
such a glaring usability problem.  =)

Isaac