We are looking for usability testers

I hope the testing's more extensive than that :confused:

Lack of proper, representative feedback plagues the software industry. From the CIO's or CTO's who sagely advises Microsoft on what features the next version of Windows ought to have but who only personally ever use their blackberry's to send each other pointless mails, or the technology "pundit" with his blog or podcast who's never had a single day of practical experience or the technology analyst mirroring whatever the OEM/ISV put in their marketing literature, it's all detached from what the overwhelming number of users experience.

I'd rather hoped Garmin might read these forums and then ignore most of it :D That they'd recognize the self-selecting nature of the contributors and how unrepresentative they are. AFAIK Garmin sell somewhere over 15 million units a year and this forum represents a few dozen active users at best, limiting that set to those with access, time and inclination makes the feedback useless in any meaningful way.

It's not that there isn's some good stuff on this forum and some thoughtful contributions it's just you've got to think how tiny the audience is in context.

but that's just my 0.000000000000001% of the user base opinion :D

Virtual Testing

I would be happy to participate as a tester, but I live now in Sweden. Why not set up some network-based virtual sessions, such as Webinars that allow the testers to share and use files, et al, to achieve your objectives? The added bonus is a much wider tester audience that will include global, and not just Tempe AZ variables. For myself, the single biggest problem I have experienced to date with Garmin is its complete lack of support for anything other than the English alphabet, no spaces or special characters, except on Friday the 13th if and only if it is raining. I do understand the complexity of such support, but at least Garmin would come out better prepared to include such vital exclusions in its user instructions. THAT needs major work!

Virtual Testing No.2

As a follow-up to my and an earlier post, how many sales is Garmin missing because of bad reviews of its products? While the earlier respondent may be right that the Garmin Forums represent only a fraction of the users, what about those who buy, try and then abandon because (a) it's not intuitive, (b) the user instructions are poor at best, and (c) the on-line support yields nothing related to the problem(s) they are encountering?

Before I bought my Oregon 400t, I sent some very specific questions on usage and capabilities to Garmin Sales, and was told "yes", these work. In practice, however, it's been far less than that. Were it not for the Forum, I would have demanded my money back from Garmin long ago.

So, how about some legitimate, real-world, real user testing?

Just a quick check before this post showed 20 users in the mac forum and 30 in the windows forum. The views counts seems to be unique views in that I don't see counts incrementing after my first view and the view count is very impressive.

I think the Mac development team has done an outstanding job considering the task. I have converted 6 or 7 years old maps I bought clearly marked Windows only.

MapSource is a powerful legacy application with a large user base that has invested many hours learning to use the application. Most would rebel if Mapsource under went the UI changes required to make the application intuitive to the ipod generation. In an email defending the Apple Apps Store, Steve Jobs said "The times they are a changin', and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is."
http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/05/15/jobs.explains.views.in.heated.mail.exchange/

Someone at garmin had the brilliance to continue Mapsource (maintenance only probable) for the user base and develop a modern application for both Mac and PC users. Just think what the could have done if not trying to support legacy GPS devices.

I'd rather hoped Garmin might read these forums and then ignore most of it :D That they'd recognize the self-selecting nature of the contributors and how unrepresentative they are. AFAIK Garmin sell somewhere over 15 million units a year and this forum represents a few dozen active users at best, limiting that set to those with access, time and inclination makes the feedback useless in any meaningful way.

It's not that there isn's some good stuff on this forum and some thoughtful contributions it's just you've got to think how tiny the audience is in context.

but that's just my 0.000000000000001% of the user base opinion :D

Turns out it is difficult to get a representative sample for 10's of millions of users. While we understand the small sample size represented by contributors to these forums, we do take the feedback seriously and it does shape our current and future products.

Turns out it is difficult to get a representative sample for 10's of millions of users. While we understand the small sample size represented by contributors to these forums, we do take the feedback seriously and it does shape our current and future products.

I'm not sure you do understand then, it's not the small sample size you should be concerned about using the forums as a set. What you should be concerned about is that they are not representative of the user base as a whole.

Remember what happened to Homer Simpson's brother :D He did what his sample customer wanted and went bankrupt :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_Brother,_Where_Art_Thou%3F

good news though, he made it all back in a later episode :)

Remember what happened to Homer Simpson's brother :D

You mean creating the most awesome car ever? :)

Clearly if someone asks us to put 48 drink holders in BaseCamp we will ignore that. However, much of the feedback we get here falls within the strategic vision for our applications and we add it to our list of potential additions.

As the poster from Sweden commented, I too would be happy to participate in online interactive types testing....I would love to attend, but being on the other side of the planet as well attending in person would be a bit tricky....unless you are paying expenses :rolleyes: in that case send me the tickets and I'll be over next week :D


Serious note, I do agree with Snowslider though when he says:

it's not the small sample size you should be concerned about using the forums as a set. What you should be concerned about is that they are not representative of the user base as a whole.

But I do not see there is much that can be done about that

The sort of people that are on the forums are generally those who are partially computer/tech savvy and are trying to help themselves and who want to believe that if it can be fixed by them selves then may be they can either request it be fixed...or help in the process.

90 % of technology (PC/MAC/Ipod/GPS CD player/TV or whatever) users, will generally just carry on doing something the 'wrong' way, or put up with the inconvenience of a missing feature, or an obvious bug and just accept it. This sort of stuff just is not important to them. To us more 'techy' folk it could be the most annoying bug in history, to the average user they will just keep plodding on in the same way...as 'that is the way it is made'....nothing I can do about it attitude

Thanks for the replies. We have gotten the testers we needed...locally. No Swedes were flown in for the running of this test :) .