TWikiCognition

What if we kept a running diary of how we use Twiki, screen by screen, and why or to what purpose we selected each function or command? What's going on behind your eyes when Twiki is in front of them?

1. Twiki and the Browser (Typing directly into the address line, no use of frames or DHTML)
2. Twiki and the OS (Managing Multiple Windows, External Utilities and Tools i.e. MSWord, Text Editor, HTML Editor, Spell Checker, Grapic Editor)
3. Twiki and Reading
4. Twiki and Searching
5. Twiki and Topic Creation
6. Twiki and Content Creation (and copyrights)
7. Twiki and Content Editing
8. Twiki and Topic Organization
9. Twiki and Communication/Discussion (Interpersonal, Inter-device)
10. Twiki and Cooperation
11. Twiki and Workflow
12. Twiki and Conventions (and their side-effects)
13. Twiki and User Willingness/Ability to Learn Something New
14. Twiki and Human Perception and Asthetics
15. Twiki and Human Memory
16. Twiki and Human Error (Spell Checking, Undo)
17. Twiki and Self-Assumed Roles:

• Helpful Roles: Publisher, Editor, Author, Refactoring Agent, Technical Support, Graphic Designer, Restorer of Lost Content, System Administrator, Template Editor
• Unhelpful Roles: Author of Extranious or Unorganized Content, Critic, Flammer, Un-refactoring Agent, Author who's Unable to Follow GoodStyle, Beginner

-- SocinianClarke - 02 Oct 2001

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Great list! It's an excellent list for a set of guerrilla TWikiUsabilityTesting, for one. It's exactly what MasterRefactor is aiming to isolate as well, except backwards, discovering the specific areas through direct experience.

First, by manually reading through all the 750 Codev topics, a number of basic things have to be done:

• GROUP: roughly group them by subject - interlink from each to all others
• DISSECT: deal with topics that branch into two or more separate topics
• GRADE: deal with differences due to age (ex: an idea or problem is still relevant, but the original program examples are no longer relevant in the current TWiki version)

And then, there's all of the first-hand comments and ideas from the topics themselves. And the actual editing down - refactoring - not started yet, but will no doubt involve other things, like contacting original authors for additional info and clarification; creating new summary topics, renaming and deleting issues.

Since there's no test team, going through all of that in one extended pass by one person ought to highlight many of the items in your list, from the practical end.

Wiki's are just so open-ended, there's no end of testing because the applications (and addons) can go on forever. For TWiki specifically, because it already has so many extras that could keep on developing until it's Beyone Wiki, it's a good idea to define a core set of TWiki features - draw a line at a certain point - and then concentrate on optimizing stuff. At least, that's a part of the MasterRefactor experiment.

-- MikeMannix - 31 Oct 2001

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I'm responding to the first paragraph, and ignoring the rest for the moment because it's too abstract for me to wrap my thoughts around. Meanwhile, my first Twiki-Use Dairy entry is:

• When editing pages with forms I continually find myself slapping the "Change" form button instead of "Preview Changes".
• There should be an explicit Logout/Login page. People expect this behaviour since most of the other sites on the net operate this way. Explicit login/out would not be mandatory, just there as a convenience.

-- MattWilkie - 24 Oct 2001

Accidentally hitting the [Change] button instead of [Preview] happens all the time to me. Even when details like this are easy to fix by the installer, there should be a way to track these points, independent of bugs, and feature ideas. Yeah, this is part of UsabilityIdeas, and related topics like this...

-- MikeMannix - 29 Oct 2001

I agree about the [Change] button - I often almost hit this, and it's quite distracting. It would be much better if there was a plain link that led to a form to let you change the form.

-- RichardDonkin - 30 Oct 2001

I concur.

-- MartinCleaver - 30 Oct 2001

I added a new topic, UsabilityIdeas, for brief notes like the Change button thing.

-- MikeMannix - 03 Nov 2001