Celestia questionnaire--help needed!

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kaycea
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Celestia questionnaire--help needed!

Post #1by kaycea » 06.12.2004, 07:26

Hi,

I am looking for some Celestia developers to fill out a quick questionnaire for me in the next couple of days. I want to see if there are differences between how software developers use Celestia as opposed to people who are not involved with the programming aspect of this product.

This is a school assignment for a software test and QA class--I decided to choose Celestia, on the chance that the findings may be valuable to the community.

Thanks all for the help!

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB223YXAS648R

Evil Dr Ganymede
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Post #2by Evil Dr Ganymede » 06.12.2004, 08:33

I couldn't seem to get the buttons to click in Netscape 7.2. Worked fine in IE though.

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selden
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Post #3by selden » 06.12.2004, 12:38

I had the same problem when using FireFox.

I think the survey would have been compatible with more browsers if it used a simple form with radio buttons rather than complex JavaScript.
Selden

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t00fri
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Re: Celestia questionnaire--help needed!

Post #4by t00fri » 06.12.2004, 23:06

kaycea wrote:Hi,

I am looking for some Celestia developers to fill out a quick questionnaire for me in the next couple of days. I want to see if there are differences between how software developers use Celestia as opposed to people who are not involved with the programming aspect of this product.

This is a school assignment for a software test and QA class--I decided to choose Celestia, on the chance that the findings may be valuable to the community.

Thanks all for the help!

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB223YXAS648R

I really wonder what made you select the particular buttons included in your test and thus what one may /really/ learn from it.

In fact the buttons work with mozilla 1.7.3 under Linux.

kaycea wrote:...
I'm doing this as part of an assignment for a software testing and QA class. There is no money to be earned here, although a decent grade would be nice! The operational profile is simply to guage which features in Celestia is used most commonly by users and to see if different levels of users have more use for certain features than others. The idea is that if the Celestia developers know which functionalities are most important, then they can focus testing activities on these areas.


Honestly, I also did not really understand these explanations. I don't even understand the English of this paragraph, notably the last sentence! (sorry, English is not my native language). But don't worry, sometimes I am a little slow at such things. Perhaps Selden can "translate" this paragraph for me somehow?

You have not explained who (which company) assigned you to do the test? Why Celestia was chosen? Why the people who asked for the test want to know all this?
...
Bye Fridger

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selden
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Post #5by selden » 06.12.2004, 23:23

Fridger,

I seem to recall that Kaycea's native language also is not English. My suspicion is that you'd understand him better if he posted in his native tongue. ;)

My interpretation is that he's trying to do two things. One is to satisfy a class requirement (in introductory statistics, perhaps?) The other is to try to help Celestia developers decide which features should be improved.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure the current set of questions is as helpful as it could be. Knowing why people use one set of features rather than another would help, too.
Selden

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t00fri
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Post #6by t00fri » 06.12.2004, 23:56

Thanks for your help, Selden,

selden wrote:Fridger,

I seem to recall that Kaycea's native language also is not English. My suspicion is that you'd understand him better if he posted in his native tongue. ;)

My interpretation is that he's trying to do two things. One is to satisfy a class requirement (in introductory statistics, perhaps?) The other is to try to help Celestia developers decide which features should be improved.
Oh, you mean the "assignment for software testing" is from school not from some company ...That at least would make some sense...

BUT: Selden look at Bob Hegwood's last post in the corresponding thread in 'users'. Despite your convincing explanations I think my initial suspicion was justified...

Selden wrote:Unfortunately, I'm not sure the current set of questions is as helpful as it could be. Knowing why people use one set of features rather than another would help, too.


OK, here we definitely agree...

Bye Fridger

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selden
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Post #7by selden » 07.12.2004, 00:17

First, I have to apologize to kaycea and the other people posting with usernames that start with a K.

I realized just now that I'm getting several of those people confused with one another. :(

There are just too many of you!!! ;)

So I have no evidence that kayea's native language is anything other than English.

Kaycea, it might help if you were just a little more explicit about exactly what you're trying to accomplish. Perhaps you're abbreviating the description because you don't want to bore us? As you can see, you're confusing us, instead :)

Exactly what is the title of the class?
What institution is giving it?
Exactly what is the assignment?

Quite a few instructors put their syllabus on the Web, along with example exams and the like. Maybe a URL is available?

Of course, if you'd rather not (for whatever reason), that's OK, too.
Selden

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kaycea
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Post #8by kaycea » 08.12.2004, 00:29

In my attempt to be concise, I seem to have only succeeded in causing confusion. Please refer to this webpage if you are interested in the project details. http://engr.smu.edu/~tian/class/7314.04f/proj.html

Selden, I agree that this set of questions is probably not the best to extract the sort of information I am looking for, but it is a start.

t00fri, this assignment is for school, not any particular company. I chose Celestia because I am already somewhere familiar with the software, and thought that the results could be my contribution to the community. And since Celestia is open source, there isn't a risk of "leaking" any company's proprietary information, which would be the case if I did my project on something I do at work.


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