One of the findings of the Drupal usability testing at UMN in February was that users like, use and like to use contextual help. Many of the participants explicitly said that they would have liked more of it during their evaluations and in debriefing.
Online retailers BWMsnow and SKATEgear require the professional services of a Drupal vendor or developer to take over the maintenance and future development their websites.
BWMsnow is NZ's largest online retailer of snowboard gear and has been operating for more than 4 years internationally, focussing more heavily on the NZ market in recent years. BWMsnow was NZ's only online retailer of snowboard gear until recently. BWMsnow is a NZ limited company which continues to grows significantly every selling season (March to June).
Last week the Witness Hub was updated with new enhancements and features -- most obviously, the Hub Map is now also on the home page!
Here is a video demonstration:
Usability testing (hereafter "UT") is getting a lot of attention in Drupal -- and rightly so IMHO. If we aim to have "100%" test coverage on Drupal's code and functionality for Drupal 7, it stands to reason we also need test "coverage" on Drupal's usability. If not, it's far too easy for bad interfaces to be developed that pass all the functional and unit tests, but fail miserably in the real world!
Jimmy Berry (aka boombatower) of GHOP fame plans to take the initial (but giant) steps in this direction in the Google Summer of code 2008.
Still not sure why usability testing is important? See what a linux hobbyist found in an informal usability test on Ubuntu.
Usability testing (hereafter "UT") is getting a lot of attention in Drupal -- and rightly so IMHO.