Feedback from the QA Jam in San Francisco

[Saqman2060]

Glad you had fun happy the people took pride in their work. I do wish there was something better than pastebin. 

Istimsak Abdulbasir
Lubuntu-QA team member

-----Original Message-----
From: "Elizabeth K. Joseph" <lyz at ubuntu.com>
Sent: ‎2/‎10/‎2015 9:44 PM
To: "ubuntu-quality at lists.ubuntu.com" <ubuntu-quality at lists.ubuntu.com>
Subject: Feedback from the QA Jam in San Francisco

Hi everyone,

First off, I want to thank elfy, knome and balloons for their work in
reviewing the QA documentation in the lead up to the Ubuntu Global Jam
that occurred this past weekend. This and other documentation, like
which USB creation tools were working best on each release right now
really helped me prepare for the event I hosted in San Francisco on
Sunday.

Our jam lasted a long 6 hours (thanks to our hosts at Gandi.net for
tolerating us past the scheduled 5!), throughout which we had about 12
people in total coming and going, I had the following feedback:

1. Logging into the tracker was near impossible for new people because
of: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-qa-website/+bug/1416893

Three folks who attended were new to doing any kind of work on Ubuntu,
so they didn't have old Launchpad or Ubuntu SSO accounts, we never did
figure out how to get them logged in. After the event, I learned about
the existing bug I referenced above, but it wasn't soon enough to help
them at the event.

2. The row of "Bugs to look for" is too overwhelming:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-qa-website/+bug/1366581

The format of the event was pretty loose, people came and went, some
were more experienced than others and I just needed to give them the
ISO tracker link and swing by to help as needed, others I walked
through step by step. The consistent feedback I got was that the whole
process is a lot of new stuff, and once you add it mouse-overs for
each bug and opening them to see if they even impact the flavor you're
testing, it makes the process overwhelming for newcomers.

I ended up telling them to write down on paper all the bugs they
found, and then I'd help them file (or confirm with existing) them
with my in-brain knowledge of what bugs were existing bugs in Xubuntu,
and the Xubuntu team would just sort out duplicates later that I
didn't know about (sorry Xubuntu team, I love you! :)).

3. The "URL to the hardware profile" continues to confuse people:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-qa-website/+bug/1017207

I really don't like this field, people never know what it's for and
are worried about putting in the wrong thing.

Even once I explain it's just a spot to put a link to your hardware
specs, I got funny looks when I told folks that they could link to a
manufacturer's description of their hardware. When one contributor
tried to log in to wiki.ubuntu.com to create a page for his hardware
profile, we sat there for 5 minutes (we counted, no exaggeration).
trying to log in before giving up and leaving the field blank because
the wiki wouldn't complete loading for log in. Since the Ubuntu
pastebins expire, this leaves limited options for a place where people
can put their hardware information.

4. Would do again!

Not all feedback was negative! It was a really great event, if I do
say so myself :)

I didn't have any attendees quietly slink away, everyone seemed pretty
engaged, and several told me they were were appreciative of what they
learned and said they'd be interested to coming to such an event
again. For some it was the focus on Xubuntu (a flavor they don't
typically use), for others it was using pre-Beta software for the
first time in a supervised, safe, setting where they could ask
questions, one mentioned that he was really happy that as a "simple
end user" he could participate in helping with a release, and others
really enjoyed just getting a peek under the hood of how we prepare
for releases.

If anyone else wants to do an event like this, I do recommend having a
high ratio of knowledgeable leads to attendees. I was fortunate to
have a couple Ubuntu Members who came along (thanks elky and rww!) and
I could leverage for assistance when things got busy, a ratio of 5
attendees to 1 helper would probably make it so you're not exhausted
at the end like I was. Next time I probably will have to more formally
line up some helpers.

-- 
Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph || Lyz || pleia2

-- 
Ubuntu-quality mailing list
Ubuntu-quality at lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-quality