Translation UX/Design feedback 2

Test Observations

Test with user #30 on 23 Aug 2012

Languages: German, English, French, Tetum, Spanish and Latin. Provides translations for German and Tetum.
Location: Germany

Sign-up prototype:

01:40 - The user selects French as the proposed language.
- The user tries to indicate his expertise level for the language and add more languages but that was not supported by the prototype.
02:24 - When the user access to the second step, he identifies the example translation as being a captcha.
03:00 - To complete step 2, the user selects a suggestion by clicking on "use this suggestion" link.
04:23 - The user understands that the account is already created at step 2, but not activated until a translation is provided.
05:30 - The user is able to complete the test scenario without problems and identifies the different interaction elements.
- Some of the elements are familiar to the user because of previous use of the existing translation platform (the experience of a new user may differ).

Translate workflow test:

08:05 - The user thinks it is a good idea to put the suggestions on the side and uses it in the first message.
08:49 - The user notices that by saving, you access the next translation and likes that it avoids him to repeteadly open and closing messages all the time.
09:27 - The user notices the "Request revision" action but cannot figure out its purpose (later when needed, he will).
10:00 - The user skips the 3rd message since here is no suggestion.
10:07 - The user understands the "outdated" concept and thinks that "it is a really good idea that you can simply click 'confirm translation' if you want to".
10:47 - The user thinks that 'fuzzy' can be a bit confusing to new users, but the user thinks it may be useful to have a fuzzy flag for advanced translators.
11:25 - The user discovers the expand action with joy.
11:38 - The user marks a message as 'requires revision'. The feature is described as " a flag put on a message to say: It's not up to date but I personally can't update it. I think it is a really good feature to have"
12:18 - For the last message, the user realizes he is reviewing a message that was marked for revision and confirms the translation is ok.
12:42 - The user is shown the translation limit dialog and interprets it as a "kind of protection against spam".
13:55 - The user was asked to look for more information about the skipped message, and he was able to find the comments about the message.
- The user thinks it may not be much useful to just see comments from other translatos that cannot translate the message. But he guesses that developers are also supposed to reply to these comments.
16:02 - The user is asked to access the cross-language translation link and he finds it useful since he usually provide translations in two languages: "I think this is a really good feature because when a message is not translated in both of the languages I edit the URL and write the right message code".

Search prototype:

18:42 - The user performs the search and distinguishes the "original" and "translated" messages from the overview.
19:41 - The user access to all translations from the overview.
19:57 - The user intention would be to click on translate and start correcting all the typos (not possible in the prototype), so it becomes not clear for the user which is the purpose of this test.
04:25 - The user finds strange to have information about other languages in translation messages when he is looking for a specific language.

Universal language selector:

27:09 - The user was asked to use the ULS to change between some of the languages the user knows. The user is familiar with the selector and is able to find German quickly by browsing.
- 2 seconds to go to the "Europe" region since the selector is open + 2 seconds to locate "Deustch" since the Europe list is displayed.
27:38 - The user notices the undo tooltip as an easy way to go back to English.
28:07 The user looks for the Tetum language. Tries first to browse and then to search, but he found the language in the list just when starting to search. For this case, the user found strange the scope of the search was not for the specific region.

General comments:

30:00 - The first impression when the log-in interface was shown he perceived it as a complete overhaul. the user is not sure if this is necessary considering the current FirstSteps page "works quite good". Nevertheless, the user commented that including an initial translation and the translation limit will help people to get started more easily.
31:35 - The user wanders if each message may be open in a new tab which is how he works now.
36:30 - The user comments that he is used to the Monobook skin and finds that "the look of the workflow its a bit modern, but the concept of the new workflow is a good one".

Test with user #32 on 27 Aug 2012

Translate workflow

01:07 - User initially do not recognize the string to translate but identifies the string to translate right after.

02:49 - Although there was no problem in locating them, the user indicates that suggestions may be slightly more noticeable.

03:29 - The user thinks it would be interesting to see an example with more strings to translate.

03:59 - The user does not save the translation by mistake, but since the translation is marked as "unsaved" he realizes and is able to recover.

04:30 - The user becomes surprised to going to next when saving the translation.

10:04 - The user expects the prototype to support typing.

12:12 - The user plays with the "flag feature" and finds it "quite good".

15:05 - To get context info, the user considers the description as the main source and then the source code as the second. When the user is shown the integrated comments, the user finds them good to have.

18:07 - When asked about the intended purpose of the "requires revision" feature, the flag makes the user think of the feature as abuse reporting.

20:25 - The user finds interesting that "requires revision" allows asking other people to proofread a translation because "when you translate you aren't sure about yourself".

21:38 - The user comments that normally does not translate a sequence of messages but individual ones. But he likes the labels (translated, outdated, to review) better than the current use of colors.

23:00 - The user finds line height too tall.

25:00 - The user finds the link for translating in a different language is not much useful. The user found it less useful since he do not speaks Italian (as used in the example) but found it a good way to get more translations.

36:53 - The user finds the translation limit message a bit frustrating but considers it "a good compromise".

Sign-up prototype

28:01 - The user finds the header too tall since it hides the rest of the content.
28:53 - Finds it good to ask first for language and then for account data.
29:20 - The user identifies step 2 as asking for translator rights at creation. Finds it good for activating purposes, but for general purpose it is preferred to allow the user to select what to translate.
33:50 - The user considers that the sentence to translate should be more prominent.
35:04 - The user considers that the progress bar for progression makes more sense to be displayed from left to right.

Search prototype

41:45 - The user is able to access translation-only results.
43:12 - It is not clear for the user the difference in purpose of "translate" and "details".
44:10 - The user is not able to identify at first the project a message it belongs to.
44:48 - Although the user did not noticed filters until he needed them. Once found, the user identifies filter categories, sub-categories and how to select them.

ULS

48:20 - User changes language to English using search but seems a bit confused by having the language repeated for different regions.
48:50 - The user finds it " a good idea" the tooltip to go back.
49:20 - Likes autocompletion capabilities.
49:40 - Expresses the preference for using flags as the icon for language change.
51:15 - The user considers autocompletion to have "some minnor bugs" when the suggestion is unexpected.
51:43 - The user founds disturbing to have no-localized region codes (na, eu, me, etc.).
52:30 - Since he has been using search, the user does not consider the map to be that useful.

Test with user #20 on 27 Aug 2012

Technical issues: The user microphone was not working and several connectivity problems occurred.

Translation workflow

01:40 - The user spend some time analyzing the UI for the first message but moves forward fluently from this point.

04:13 - User comments:
- About the workflow: The new workflow seems quite comprehensive to me. I think the organisation of the screens and boxes is quite logic. I think it is meant to keep the attention of the tranlslator to the fact that the suggested translation does not really fit.
- About the translation limit message: This can be interpretated positive if the transaltor does not feel comfortable with the tool.

While users that are a little bit better in using computers might feel frustrated if this message arrives after just a few translations

Search prototype

12:25 - The user access translations using the table header.
12:27 - Comments about search: Although I had some difficulties to find the correct message I think this new function will be useful especially as there is for the moment just the special page "search" that helps a little bit to fix such errors.

ULS

16:40 - The user starts browsing but ends up using search for the following tries.
Comments about ULS: I think that at first the titles of the groups like EU, .... is not that clear an explanation for this might be useful.

Test with user #34 on 31 Aug 2012

00:20 - The user selects another language but is a bit confused by the fact that "French" replaces "Nederlands".
03:60 - The user understands the way it works ("So I understand what to do") but seems not to perceive the second step as part of the registration ("I didn't understand that I have to make a translation to create an account").
43:29 - The user tries the alternative version of the sign-up prototype. The user feels that the alternative version looks "more friendly [...] because I see it is a preliminary requirement to go to the site". Since the alternative version shos part of the background it was easier to keep the context for the user.

Translation workflow

07:37 - The user selects the "Edit" link and is able to understand the layout of the translation dialog and the different aids provided.
10:26 - The user finds it "a good thing that parameters are described".
11:33 - The user skips the complex message.
12:16 - The diff was not clear to the user until he tried the "hide diff" link.
16:00 - The user comments that in case of doubt he skips to next. Considering also as an option to ask for help.
17:00 - The user finds the "need revision" feature and thinks the purpose of the feature is "for others to check after me if the translation is good or bad".
18:20 The user thinks that the expand icon is not very useful "because my screen is enough large and it is good to have the context always visible".
21:15 - The user understands the purpose of the translation limit dialog but feels that it is lacking a more precise time estimation than "soon".

Search

25:26 - The user tried to log-in first and comments that he would write the full message he was looking for.
27:24 - The user finds the language filter and commnets that he would prefer the language to be automatically detected.
29:12 - the user uses filters correctly but due a issue on the prototype, one filter is lost. Finally the user is able to activate both filters.

Universal Language Selector

36:37 - The user changes to English by clicking on the language list (Worldwide group).
37:13 - The user goes back to French by clicking on the "Common" language region.
37:39 - The user uses search to find Greek and uses the tooltip to determin which is the language name (tooltip not visible in the recording).
38:50 - The user searches for "mahori" and finds it useful the searchflexibility.
38:00 - The user thinks that having full names in regions would help instead of the current placeholders ("EU","AS", etc.)
40:43 - The user notices that previous languages are added to common languages ("so it is cool").

Test with user #31 on 3 Sept 2012

Sign-up

00:48 - The user initially tries to sign-up using the "create account" link.
01:40 - The user appreciates the tone of the validation step ("It is nice to have a thank you").
02:54 - The user perceives the validation step as a captcha since he did not expected to translate right after creating the account. He founds this step "playful".

Translate workflow

04:45 - The user notices the list of translations and the label system.
05:45 - The user fills the first translation but tries to click in the 2nd suggestion (not supported in the prototype).
06:20 - The user wonders if there is a way for indicating that a suggestion is not good.
07:00 - The user tries to type when there are no suggestions and skips when realizes that the prototype does not allow typing.
07:53 - The user understands the background color coding as he translates messages.
09:03 - The user makes use of the "expand" icon.
09:50 - The user tries to skip but finally uses the "mark as revision" feature and perceives it as "a tag".
12:45 - The user founds the "request revision" feature useful since he usually uses the "summary" for similar purposes but there is no button for that.

Search

17:54 - The user is able to apply the filters and finds the mesage quickly. 19:19 - The users does not understands the "Original messages" category. 21:14 - Status filter seems also intuitive to the user.

Universal Language Selector

23:22 - The user finds most of the languages in the "Common" section.
24:20 - The user did not expect to be able to explore by continent but he prefers sarch.
25:05 - The user tries to search by ISO code.
26:46 - The user has problems locating Maori by browsing since it is hiden by the Asia region.
27:06 - The user notices scripts are not mixed, and comments he is not used to that arrangement.
31:15 - The user comments that it may be made easier to find languages that the user is not familiar with. When he discovers the tooltip with the name in the local language, he likes the idea.

Test with user on 2 Sept 2012

This test was done on location. The user was a English and French speaking Canadian female law student. The user had never used any translation platform before.

Sign-up

The user did not know what 'localization' meant.
Said she would not register if she landed on the site randomly. Unclear on how the platform can help her
- The user is now given a description of the twn platform and how crowd sourced translation works
The user is able to fill in the account details without any issues
The native speaker setting is understood
The captcha interface overwhelms the user, she takes time to understand the layout and what the next action is

Translation workflow

The translation interface is again difficult for the user to understand. She is unclear of the process to follow.
She attempts to type a translation and proceeds to the next message
The user continues to remain confused and said she would like some tutorial because she was not sure if what she was doing was correct
- The user is told to carry on and try to understand the interface.
The user cannot understand the variables. She clicks ask for help, and then skips the message
Could not understand 'diff' and what was outdated. She tries to skip, and then does confirm
For the page translation, user tries to skip, then tries to ask for help and is then unsure of what to do.
- User is given instruction to click revision flag. When asked, she did not understand the purpose

Search

The user seems to be familiar with the location of the search box and has no problems finding it
The user sets the correct language and project filter
She is unsure about status filters, tries to interact with it
User browses the results, says there is too much information and is slow to read
She finds the message and clicks edit translation
- User did not notice the search categories. She could understand its purpose when asked

General commnets

Because the user was new to mediawiki and translation, her main pain point was access to help. She said she would prefer to live chat with someone.

Test with user #28 on 3 Sept 2012

Sign-up

00:36 - The user is confused by the current "log-in/create account" when creating the account.
01:54 - Completes the translation step but is not sure whether to click on "Activate account": "Why activate account here. I don't understand".
03:35 - Does not find obvios at the beginning that language selection wast the first thing to do. Expectd username and password to be in the first place.

Translation workflow

08:00- The user statrs translating quickly: using the text area for the first test and suggestions for the second.
08:40 - The user skips the translation lacking suggestion immediaely.
09:40 - The user understands that th English test was edited and tries to edit the outdated translation since finds another transation to be better (current translations was supposed to be ok).
11:44 - The user finds the "requires revision" feature. The user understands the feature as a way to ask anothe translators to check th translation.

14:15 - The user thonks the UI is a lot more detailed but would need to see it in her own language.

Search

17:20 - The user does not find the searchbox. The Sign-up login seems to capture her attention.
18:56 - The user selects immediately the language filter.
21:29 - The user does not realize messages being from different projects until she finds onr rom familiar project.
21:38 - The user tries to click on the project link, to access messages of the project (not supported in the prototype).
23:25 - The user finally realizes how to filter by project, and finds it easy how to edit.
24:19 - The user proposed to show project filter on top of language filters.
25:25 - Search category filter is understood except for multimedia and discussions.

Universal Language Selector

27:40 - The user tries to access preferences for language adjustments.
28:37 - The user found the initial languages clicking on the "Common" languages.
30:07 - The user founds Spanish in the Worldwide group.
The user founds Greek and Maori by browsing. The user was familiar with Greek and was easier to select but looking for Maori took more time (since it is at the bottom of the list).
34:22 - When asked about why she did not used search for locating languages, the user considered that seh was used to "read everything and then I find".

General commnets

35:55 - "The test is ok but I think the current platform is already a very good platfor. So please, donot make too more changes."