From: max@hitl.washington.edu (Max Minkoff) Subject: rn survey - Please help!! Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1991 00:25:37 GMT Organization: HIT-men [MODERATOR'S NOTE: How timely. Now, be honest...! :-) -- Bob Jacobson] ##################################################################### # # # Usability Survey for Readnews # # or # # HELP!! # # # # Brought to you by: # # # # Ari, Max, and Tak # # Three graduate students with a paper due much too soon! # # (Due: Friday, November 15, 1991) # # # ##################################################################### Hi there! We are graduate students doing a survey for a user interface course at the University of Washington. So of course we picked everyone's favorite user interface, our friend, rn. Please, please, please take just a minute to answer our short survey. Of course this is due _very_ soon, so please respond ASAP - right now if you can. Your help will be greatly appreciated. PLEASE NOTE: This survey is specifically geared toward UNIX rn users. Anybody using any other newsreading software - thanks anyway. hit 'n' now To respond to this survey, type shift-r to reply directly to us. Then fill in the little boxes and send it back. Don't feel like you have to answer every question, and don't worry at all about formatting - we'll figure it out! Ready? Demographics: [ ] How old are you? [ ] What is your gender? What is your current level of education? [ ] High School [ ] Graduate student [ ] Undergrad student [ ] Graduate degree [ ] Undergrad degree For comfortability rating, please use the following scale: 0 - never use it 2 - somewhat comfortable 4 - very comfortable 1 - not comfortable 3 - comfortable 5 - expert Computer use: How comfortable are you with: [ ] computers in general [ ] UNIX [ ] rn in general What Operating Systems are you at least somewhat comfortable with? [ ] Unix [ ] DOS [ ] Mac [ ] VM/CMS [ ] MVS/TSO [ ] VMS [ ] Other News reading history: How did you learn rn? [ ] man rn [ ] from a friend [ ] class/workshop [ ] help screens How long did it take you to learn rn? (enter numbers in the boxes) [ ] hours [ ] months [ ] days [ ] years [ ] weeks Roughly how long have you been reading news? [ ] hours [ ] months [ ] days [ ] years [ ] weeks [ ] Have you ever used other news-reading software? [ ] Have you ever been on a mailing list? [ ] Have you ever received a digest? [ ] Roughly how many newsgroups do you read? [ ] Roughly how much time per week do you spend reading news? (in hours) For comfortability rating, please use the following scale: 0 - never use it 2 - somewhat comfortable 4 - very comfortable 1 - not comfortable 3 - comfortable 5 - expert rn function use: How comfortable are you with: [ ] subscribing and unsubscribing to groups [ ] browsing new groups [ ] moving around between groups [ ] moving around between articles [ ] moving around within an article [ ] viewing a subject list for a newsgroup [ ] following a thread (using a function of rn) [ ] saving articles in a file [ ] catching up on articles in a group [ ] Searching on subjects [ ] searching within articles [ ] Posting articles [ ] Following up articles [ ] replying to a poster [ ] using a .signature file [ ] moving groups around in your list [ ] creating a kill file [ ] editing your .newsrc [ ] setting default options for rn [ ] using rn macros Problems: What general problems do you have with rn? What do you hate about rn? Features: What do you like about rn? Results: Do you want to get a copy of our results? Thanks very much for your help, Ari Hollander ari@hitl.washington.edu Max Minkoff max@hitl.washington.edu -- ---------------------------------- ----<-@ ---------------------------------- Max Minkoff Did it matter? Does it now? max@hitl.washington.edu Stephen would answer if Human Interface Technology Lab - Seattle, WA he only knew how...