Project

Our Client

Gallery is an open source project with the goal to develop and support photo sharing web application services.

The Gallery project develops open source software licensed under the GPL, and is maintained and developed by a community of users and developers. The development is a distributed effort, with collaboration from around the globe. It is the most widely used system of its kind. The Gallery project originated with Gallery I, the first generation of their web based photo management system, and subsequently Gallery II, the latest version and Gallery Remote, the java client application for Gallery systems. The suite as a whole is an online photo album organizer which offers an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into websites - for both small, personal use as well as for larger communities and professional use.

Jakob Hilden is our client contact for the Gallery Project.  Gallery’s core developers come from a diverse set of teams that all work together, including, Gallery 2.x, Gallery 1.x, Gallery Support, Gallery Remote, Affiliates, and Gallery Website.

The Problem

Gallery is undergoing large scale changes as much of its code is being rewritten. The developers want the software to be simpler and easier to use, easier to customize and tailor to the needs of their user base. The developers want to understand who their users are and what they need. However, this has proven problematic because of the nature of open source projects - extensive user testing is a difficult task when the software is simply put out there and largely left untracked, usability goes unobserved for the bulk of the community. 

Gallery forums, IRC channels and mail-lists provide some space where Gallery users gather and communicate. However, these conversations are limited to either a small group of experts who answer questions or novices who lack experience with the system. The problem is: “reaching the users who stand in the middle ground i.e. experienced individuals who are using Gallery on their sites, but who are not intensely involved with Gallery project development community.”

Because the Gallery project team wants to refurbish the system in a way that caters to the common cases for customizing and organizing photo pools, strategies for reaching these “middle ground” individuals for feedback is important to the project. The primary goal therefore is to conduct user research to guide the prototype design for “average” users. Secondly, the core developers have also determined that the system is too complex in some areas, resulting in problems related to usability. Their goal is to create a refurbished system that is easier to use and optimized to expand their user community. Currently, too much is maintained by the core developer community - complex modules, old functionality and convoluted features need to be shaved down and reworked into a simplified interface.

Vision of Solution

To improve the usability of Gallery and better satisfy the user needs, our team decided to focus on one of two intertwined fields. We will conduct a set of user research methodologies including user testing and survey(s) among existing and potential users to maximize the understanding of Gallery’s user needs. The research result will be documented for future prioritize optimization of Gallery product.

Based on real user needs, we will also come up with a fresh interface design, which is expected to assist exploring the website, reduce the complexity in real use and provide enjoyable user experience. Our solution will be developed along the lines of the following scheme,

  • First identify our project’s user group in order to study the ways they use Gallery.  The core developers have identified two basic user types - administrators of personal family-oriented sites and blog sites that use Gallery2 as their photo engine.
  • Find a means to observe and acquire feedback from these users.
  • Isolate specific features or modules that characterize the common uses of the system.
  • Identify problems related to these aspects of the system and address them strategically in our development of a prototype.

Next Steps

  1. Comb the resources in the Gallery community - analyze irc logs, e-mail logs, forum questions and answers to isolate common problems users are having.  Analysis should be guided by questions such as, ‘what aspects of the system have the most common problems associated with them?’ and ‘what aspects of the system are most commonly characterized by developers as needing to be reworked?’  This data should be compiled for an affinity diagram which will help to scope the project.
  2. Find strategies for reaching ‘middle ground’ users.  To start, search for sites that use Gallery but are not directly affiliated with the project and inquire about feedback from the site administrators.  Other options might include calls for participation on Facebook or among photography students at the university.
  3. Begin identifying users to observe interacting with the Gallery environment - these individuals might be new to the Gallery system, but should be computer savvy and already involved in collecting and organizing photos for use on the web.