UI module owner

[Benton, Kevin]

> > Will try to collect opinions of
> > our developers on this. (Idea! Need to add a usability survey link
to
> > useful-links! :)
> 
> Of course, this survey will not necessarily shed light on the views of
> all of Bugzilla's focal personas. I guess it depends what sort of
people
> you have working for you.
> 
> If you are going to do a survey, please try and separate out the views
> of coders, managers and QA people into separate pots.
> 
> >> - Does anyone actually do complicated searches, or are 100% of
Bugzilla
> >>   searches merely searches on Subject?
> >> - If we don't have a page with all the controls on somewhere, how
are
> >>   people going to be able to do those complicated searches?
> > I have to do a lot of reports and even more, I can't do some
searches,
> so I had to hack a page for some special ones (not usable for others
and
> definitely lacks security).
> > But, basic search is too minimalistic, while advanced is
over-bloated
> > for freshmens.
> 
> Why is basic search "too minimalistic"? And for whom? I assume you
don't
> mean "because it doesn't have enough widgets"; so do you mean "because
> it doesn't find what you want some of the time"?
> 
> If so, an alternative solution would be to consider looking at ways to
> improve the quality of the search results returned by the basic
search.
> That would benefit everyone.

I'm looking at
http://landfill.bugzilla.org/bugzilla-2.22-branch/query.cgi from a
selection criteria perspective.  I see that the user can select one (and
only one) status, one and only one Product, and Words.  It's unclear
where Words are looked for (short_desc only?  longdescs table and
short_desc? ...?).  I don't see a way to select a component, or a way to
adequately specify criteria for "My Unseen Bugs" (bugs that are assigned
to me in a new status) here or "My Stale Bugs" (bugs that I haven't
updated in the past n days based on user prefs or system params).
Thinking like a new user for a moment, I may not know enough to use the
Advanced Search page properly, but I want to know what I need to address
right now.  Without having to know too much about Bugzilla, what I need
to address are new and stale bugs.  This page doesn't help me find that
information.

> >>> It's getting intuitive when you getting more and more familiar
with
> >>> Bugzilla process, but is a complete mess for a newbie.
> >> So we ask:
> >>
> >> - Is that page supposed to be used by newbies?
> > No. But they do often need somewhat advanced, but not over-helming
> > pages.
> 
> What evidence do you have that people who have graduated from the
simple
> search form (and therefore already have some familiarity with
Bugzilla)
> still find the complicated one hard to understand?

See my example above - in order to find bugs that are "new to me", the
user can't get that currently from the "Find a Specific Bug" page.  We
also don't give the user a way to limit the specific bug searches to
bugs that the user is assigned to, is the QA contact on, is a CC on, or
is a commenter on.

> > Another user role is "Customer The Great" often under-qualified to
> > fill-out all controls, not patient and not willing to learn this
"ugly
> > pages". But their reports are gold for us.
> 
> Why are you pointing your customers at the advanced search page? What
do
> you expect them to accomplish there?

See above :)

> > Yes, It is already customizable, but this increase the cost of
> > ownership.
> 
> So Bugzilla needs to ship with versions of the search page to meet
every
> possible need from every company which uses it?

Not at all, but it seems fair that we should consider what the general
user needs in order to accomplish day-to-day tasks without needing to go
through a steep learning curve.

> >>> IMO the best idea is to have a wizard-like search and bug entry
pages,
> >>> with ability to switch back to current pages when "the wizard"
will
> >>> start abuse you.
> >> What, like the guided bug entry page we already have? :-)
> > Which one? bugzilla.mozilla.org? Kind of... But in distrib. (I could
> > miss recent 1-2 month changes at tip)
> 
> We do distribute it, and have for years. It's create-guided.html.tmpl.

How does a new user get to that page?  How does an experienced user get
to the non-guided page?  I haven't seen that at http://.../enter_bug.cgi
page.

> >> - Which of our personas cares about sexiness/coolness?
> >>
> >> (If the answer is "none", it doesn't mean we can't make it look
more
> >> sexy. It just means that it's not a high priority.)
> > Yeah, It isn't high priority task. But Bugzilla as a product suffer
from
> > that.
> > Just try to imagine it a commercial product with just price cut down
to
> > zero.
> 
> But Bugzilla is not a proprietary product with a price of zero. If it
> was, most of us wouldn't be working on it.
> 
> Let's turn the question on its head: is one of the goals of the
Bugzilla
> project to get as many companies and organisations using it as
possible?
> 
> As this is a value judgement, personal opinions are allowed :-) I
> personally don't think that should be a particularly high priority
goal.
> Clearly, it's not good to have only a few places using it - but we are
> well past that stage.

Axosoft.com has an AdSense ad on Google if you search for just
"Bugzilla" that says...

Think Bugzilla is Free?
Think again. Save time & money
on an easy-to-use bug tracker
www.Axosoft.com

My company felt that it was worth their while to hire more than one
person to manage and develop Bugzilla for use within AMD.  Whether or
not it cost AMD to get Bugzilla initially, it certainly does cost to
maintain.  Proprietary or not, one clear goal of mine is to contribute
Bugzilla code where it makes sense to do so.  If I don't do that, I'm
wasting my time and AMD's money.

Is Bugzilla proprietary?  IMHO - only slightly.  Is Bugzilla free?  Free
to download - yes.  Free to get working and use - no, just like all the
rest of the open source software.  Someone has to have the expertise to
get it working and keep it working.

> >>> Yet another idea is to have several default (pre-shipped?) skins
> >>> selectable by USER in his profile:
> >> This clearly has a maintenance cost, so we ask:
> >>
> >> - Which persona needs this feature, and why?
> > Every company it uses. Because of TCO and general attractiveness (Is
> > there such a word in English? :).
> 
> Re-skinning an application (in the usual sense of the word "skin" -
i.e.
> changing colours and logos) has no effect on TCO.

It does if it's a requirement that company-supported tools have a
certain look...  It took real time to make the modifications necessary
to make Bugzilla look like it needed to for AMD use.  Granted, it wasn't
a lot of time, but it is part of TCO.  The better the examples, the
easier it is to reduce that part of TCO.  Is it worth creating a few
more skins to get that net result?  I don't know.

Gerv - thanks for leading this discussion.  :)

---
Kevin Benton
Perl/Bugzilla Developer/Administrator, Perforce SCM Administrator
AMD - ECSD Software Validation and Tools
 
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