On 2007-11-07 13:02 michael(_dot_)dillon(_at_)bt(_dot_)com said the following:
Please be careful about how you set requirements for things
like Daily Dose, or anything in the tools site, really. The
developers like Pasi are volunteers who are providing a great
service at no cost.
Where did resumes come up?
Very often, people who volunteer to do something, don't really
do it for free, but in order to gain useful experience that they
can put on their resume and use to get better (or more interesting)
jobs in the future. Running a usability test along the lines that
Jakob Nielsen has written about, is the kind of thing that would
look good on a web developer's resume.
I still haven't seen YOU offering to do anything to help.
FWIW, I don't think a big volunteer test would have added any
value for a feature like this.
I agree, and that is why I provided the URL to an article by someone
who has done experiments and discovered that you get most of the
value by doing a SMALL usability test with 5 users, then fix up
all their issues, and repeat again with 5 more users. When you
get to the point of diminishing returns, stop repeating. If you
consider people's time to be a cost regardless of whether money
changes hands, then you get the maximum cost/benefit ratio by doing
this rather than just flinging it out to the community.
The only cost I as a volunteer developer can reasonably consider is
the cost of my own time and the decision of whether to spend it
on IETF tools at all, or not.
It seems you're saying that if I can't find the time to get together
a usability test panel before I tell people at large about the new
or updated tool I've put together, then I shouldn't bother spending
time doing any tools at all.
Do you really mean that?
And even if it did, do we have
a right to require Pasi to do something like that, given that
it would consume a lot of his time, delay the introduction of
the new version to the entire community, etc?
Nope, we would have no right to require that anybody implement
a good idea or follow best practice.
I'd love for you to implement a tool, any tool, for the benefit of
the community. Preferably embodying a good idea, following best
practice, of course.
But given the number of messages to the list suggesting changes
and fixes, I thought it was reasonable to point out that there is
a better way, and it is documented here
<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html>
and it is not expensive to do either in money terms or in terms
of time spent.
Let me disagree with you here, and have a different opinion. The
time spent to get together the test group and run the test would
have been a substantial barrier for me. If you want to offer your
time in setting up something like this for every major change we do
to the volunteer tools, we'll use it.
<snip>
Henrik
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