Ubuntu Wiki

Summary

Learn more about current and future Kubuntu users to allow for directed marketing and usability efforts. The idea is to have a stock of users who are willing to participate in different methods of gaining user data over and over again.

From a marketing perspective, the goals of user profiling are

• product placement in the market / shaping the product to fit current markets,
• market research to gain knowledge of current situation,
• identifying target groups.

From a usability point of view, goals are to

• learn more about tasks, goals and habits of different groups of target users,
• get directed feedback from the community,
• establish a user panel (which are users that agree to participate repeatedly in surveys, interviews and usability (remote) tests).

Rationale

Marketing and usability efforts need detailed knowledge about the target user base of a software.

Scope

Apart from the current user base, Kubuntu aims to be a suitable desktop for the following user groups:

• Occasional home users: Email, internet, word processing
• Recreational (fun) users: Email, internet, multimedia, home administration
• Students: Students at home and in university/school
• Academic users:
• Office workers
• Public administrations
• Advanced
• "Geek"

First Step: Survey Framework

[http://www.openusability.org OpenUsability] offers a survey framework that can be used for an initial survey. It needs to be complemented by a database and queries that help to manage the follow-up surveys:

• Database must contain user id, demographics, user group and several usage characteristics, participation in several studies and how often user is willing to participate.
• There needs to be an interface to the survey tool to send invitations based on a query.

Second Step: Initial Survey

Third Step: Follow-up Surveys

BoF agenda and discussion

Sit down together and think about

• what user groups to address in the first run and how to address them
• resources (survey tool, management of user panel)
• what questions to ask in an initial survey

BoF Notes

• Laptop users

* How to address users outside the community?

• Brazilian magazine: Advertisements to participate in survey
• Friends of friends of friends who have specific properties

• Organisation
  • Ask on kde-promo for people with above profiles to fill in OU survey
  • Ask on different other usability related mailinglists
  • Have a look at www.kde-forum.org for target users to fill in the survey
  • Ask in different forums to answer survey and also pass it to non-Linux and non-technical friends (we will pick out the ones thtat fit our profile).
  • Required: A database layout to store data and email addresses

sebas discussed this together with OpenUsability at Linuxtag in Wiesbaden, users to address in next couple of years smart, non-technical users, people unlikely to accept bugs

focus on quality and usability but no aunt tilly

ellen: that was KDE because in KDE it's difficult to facilitate the developers. kubuntu is a smaller team and more steamlined. if kubuntu is same target group as ubuntu that is a broader audience we need to learn more about the users to know who to do testing on, question is who those users are for KDE we want to deliver something that is powerful but smart

not very long term because kde 3 will be fased out when kde 4 comes along

people who user computer several times a week more than 1 hour a day

jonathan's girlfriend who users is couple times a week for hotmail and irc

consistency in the user interface is extremely important

we have a user profile of KDE fans who don't like obscure konqueror menu items being removed

= How to address those people

girlfriend very easy, can ask her

people working in an office like New Claire

New Laptop users: ==================

- Cheap laptops from smaller manufacturers - Eastern Europe - Poor parts of Asia - Developing countries