Daemon Tools Draft

Isaac's picture

The layout for both instructions is a 7” wide page that can be continuously scrolled down. The purpose for this is to allow the user to have the instructions open while still having part of the screen to work with. The images and text were located on opposite sides of page throughout to give a consistent and predictable pattern.

For the novice instructions, I took some time in the beginning to add some general background information about disk emulators and their purpose. This was done to ease the user in and make them feel more comfortable with what they were doing. I also tried to really explain the steps to make sure there were no ambiguities, with the assumption that the user has a basic knowledge of how to use computers.
The expert instructions were a little shorter and more to the point. For an expert it is less of a learning process and more of a doing process. I wanted the instructions to familiarize the user with the setup, along with reveal some helpful hints and shortcuts not present in the novice set.

The usability test is a combined survey and document markup. I attached the test as a PDF and a word document. Feel free to type responses into the word document and post it as a comment or simple number your responses as a comment to the blog. I would really encourage you to also make comments directly on the instructions sets, this will help get your point across and help me improve the instructions. I wrote directions in the usability test about how to proceed with the testing. If you have any questions please let me know.

Thanks for your help.

I will do the usability

JFlitt's picture

1. Which set of instructions did you use and why?
Expert – I often use Daemon tools and feel very comfortable with it.

2. While using the instructions, how comfortable and confident did you feel in what you were doing?

Most of my feedback is here and referred to in later questions:

a. I’m not sure if this should be covered in these instructions or not, but with my Daemon tools install the DT Panel didn’t come up automatically, I had to right click the tray-icon and enable it.

b. Another thing that bothered me right off the bat is in your instruction set on Creating Image - Step 2, you say click the disk imaging icon, does this mean “Right” or “Left” click?

c. The Disc imaging icon doesn’t seem to come up until the disc is inserted, and the instructions make it seem like you should click this icon before the disk is inserted. **** I realized that the version of Daemon tools is what was causing this, you may want to mention at the top of your instruction set (not just here in usability instructions) what exact version of Daemon Tools these instructions are for ****

d. Creating Step 4 (5 on novice), you might want to at least mention the 2 check boxes that are available to the user, I found myself asking… what are these for?

e. Mounting step 3, you may want to point to this eject symbol in your image, I was a bit confused because on my screen it actually looks orange. * I do see that you said it is to the right of the question mark, but I was searching for this symbol before I completed reading the next sentence.

f. Setting up hotkeys Step 1, Its difficult to see where this preferences icon is that you are referring to, from your screenshot it looks like you are saying to click on the ? Icon.

3. Was the instructions layout easy to follow and understand? If not, what was difficult? Please feel free to leave comments directly on the instructions.

The layout is very clean and I like the use of white space. I did notice that some of your image Figure footers have borders and some don’t.

4. Where did you get confused or feel the need for more information? Where did you feel there was too much information?

Please check my evaluation above for places where I was confused. I don’t feel there were any areas with too much info.

5. Where the instructions easy follow and understand without re-reading?

I did have to reread as I stated in my observations up at the top of this comment.

6. Where the images clear, easy to understand, and compliment the material?

The images are decently clear but could use some arrows in places where you reference clicking of some buttons, as I mentioned above.

7. How comfortable would you be using Daemon Tools or a similar disk emulator in the future?

I feel I can adequately make an image and mount an image for use.

8. Please leave any additional comments you feel that would improve these instructions.

Overall this instruction set seems easy to use, there are some consistency issues with the borders on the labels for figures and some of the screenshots need arrows, but otherwise it is nice and clean. I like the color usage and the constant scrolling format.

Thanks!

JFlitt

Usability Testing

I'll do usability testing on these instructions over break

Patrick Griffin
pgriffin@purdue.edu

Thanks

Isaac's picture

Thanks guys. Be critical, I promise you won't hurt my feelings.

Finished Usability testing

1. I used the both the novice instruction and expert instruction set because , I have had some experience using disk emulators, although not deamon tools specifically.

2. While using the beginner instructions I felt very confident in what I was doing. I had no trouble at all doing what the instruction told me to do and found it very easy to complete both making a disk image, and mounting a disk image. While using the expert instructions I was able to complete every process successfully on the first try.

3. The layout on both instructions was very easy to follow and understand. Your steps were short enough that the user could remember the whole step easily. Also all the graphics were clearly labeled and it was easy to tell which step the corresponded too

4. I think that you did a very good job for the most part on including enough information so the user could accomplish the tasks at hand, but not so much information that they were overloaded with unnecessary details. I think you could include a little more information in the section about hot keys though. For instance when I was making a hot key, at least in the version I had downloaded, when I set hotkeys such as A, or Z, the actual hotkey is ctrl+alt+A or ctrl+alt+Z. That is something that may trip up some users who don't realize A cannot be a hotkey by itself.

5. I thought the instructions were very easy to follow and execute. I could accomplish each step usually just by reading it once, then glancing at a screen shot if there was one that corresponded to that step. The steps were all short and concise enough that I was able to remember them clearly while I was doing them. That eliminated the need to go back and re-read the instructions multiple times.

6. The images were clear, and easy to understand. However in the expert instruction set you mention a red eject button in figure 3 next to the question mark. Finding that was the only place I got hung up on with your images. It didn't take me along time to find it, however it didn't pop out as obvious and easy to find for me.

7. In the future I believe I would be very comfortable using a disk emulator in order to copy disk images or if I needed to mount my own image files.

8. This isn't really about how you can improve your instructions, but I liked that you had a section at the start of the beginner instructions that explained what disk emulation was and the basics of how it works. Once you explain to a novice user that manipulating a mounted image works the same way as a real disk(which they are presumably familiar with), it takes a lot of the apprehension out making and mounting a disk image. I also thought it was a good choice not to include this extra background information with the expert instruction set.

Patrick Griffin
pgriffin@purdue.edu