Usability Interviews for Atom
November 14, 2018 sguthals
We want to make Atom better, and we need your help. We’ve started conducting usability interviews where we can get direct feedback from humans about how they work and how what we build affects that workflow.
Users Giving Feedback
We’ve been running usability interviews on other client applications such as GitHub Desktop and the editor integration with Visual Studio to get a better understanding of who uses our products, what their goals are, and how they use our tools to accomplish those goals. Our users have been able to walk us through workflows related to pull requests, branching, and solving build errors and folks have been able to give us feedback to influence our designs and products for the better!
Users have been able to give us ideas, concerns, and insight on our client application products (e.g. editor integrations), GitHub.com features (e.g. forking a public repository flow), and even on 3rd party applications (e.g. VS Code). These conversations help us scope what parts of your workflow are most clunky, and explore ways of improving it.
What to Expect
After you sign up for our usability interview we will reach out when the next available study has availability. You will then get a chance to sign up for a time that works best for your schedule. You can expect to receive a confirmation email ~24-hours before the interview is
scheduled.
Our usability interviews are typically done remotely over video conference software and are often between 30-60 minutes (we will let you know ahead of time what amount of time to expect). We will often ask you a couple of questions about your typical work environment, the type of team you work on, and the way you collaborate with your team. This
helps us understand who we are building our software for.
We will then often lead you through a scenario where we might give you a goal, such as “Merge That Pull Request!!” We’ll ask you to walk us through your thought process and what steps you would take to accomplish that goal. This part is a conversation, where we might ask clarifying questions to better understand any blockers you encounter.
Afterwards, we will follow up with an email thanking you and asking if you’d like to participate in any future usability interviews.
How to Get Involved
If you’re interested in giving us feedback to improve Atom, there are three ways you can help.
We’re doing some research to learn where Atom could provide a more helpful experience for people that are just getting started. If you are new to coding, we’d love to hear from you. Sign up for an interview here.
We are also conducting interviews focused on the Git / GitHub Atom integration. Our primary goal is to provide developers with an effective workflow from writing code in their editor to merging their pull request on GitHub.com. Participants of all experience levels are welcome - sign up today.
Usability interviews aren’t the only way we are learning from our users. Atom team is also running a separate initiative to improve our application’s performance. We’re conducting a survey, so we can focus our efforts on the biggest pain points the community is experiencing. You can fill it out here.