T-SHIRT DESIGN SOFTWARE?

Mechanical design software usability

• We recently launched beta of a new mechanical design software package in connection with our http://www.emachineshop.com - the first on-line machine shop. The software is a free download on the site. What parts of the user interface need improvement? Is anything in the software unclear. Are any messages confusing? Are there any bugs? Are there any problems creating a design from conception thru ordering? Can anything be improved? We seek researchers ranging from software experts to novices and those with and without mechanical design knowledge. We will post this question more than once to get the views of different researchers. We seek actual answers to the questions - not information on how to research an answer. This requires working with the software and performing real tasks such as designing one or more of the shapes shown on the main web page.

• Answer:

  Hello swisscheese: Thanks for a the interesting question. I'm always happy to try out new software. A little on my background first, so you know how to take my input... I have 18 years in the software business, mostly non-programming. I have been a QA manager, a business analyst, a Chief Technology/Web Officer, among other roles. My only exposure to engineering was when I worked for an engineering web-portal. I have a degree in Mathematics. My system is Pentium III, Windows 98, 128 MB RAM My Experiences with emachineshop ********************************* * The download from your site went well. However, your download page (http://www.emachineshop.com/download/index.htm) did not tell me I'd be downloading a small program to download the larger program, so I was expecting a 3.4 MB file when I clicked on the download link. Confusing! * When I first launched this program, I got a dialog that said it was going to check out my video card. When I got the circles, diamonds, etc., I was unable to drag a shape using the left mouse button. But, I'm pretty sure my video card is just fine. I decided to continue on to the application. * When I continued, I got a dialog saying I should review some help files before continuing. I clicked on both links and was shown the appropriate files. When I clicked on the OK button, the program "stalled" for a long time and when I switched windows and back again, the workspace in the program did not refresh. Then I got a small dialog with "wglMakeCurrent:2000" in it. And THEN the workspace refreshed to the graph paper. * In fact, every time I subsequently windowed back to the application, it took an long time to refresh the workspace - sometimes a half second, sometime many seconds, sometimes not at all until I drew a rectangle to force it to refresh. * Since using the workspace was working so intermittently for me, I decided to leave that and look at the menus. * Tried File/Open...Confused by the boxed X in the preview pane when no document chosen. Why not blank? As well, in "Files of Type" dropdown you only have one choice. If there's only one choice, that's no choice. Remove dropdown. Clicked "Cancel" button and dialog didn't go away??? * Ditto for File/Save As... on the "Files of Type" and "Cancel". * In fact, none of your close actions on dialogs seem to be working. When I was in File/Print and click on Help then used upper-right close box, the dialog didn't go away until after I had gone to another window and back. This could all be tied up in the previously reported refresh problem. * At this point, I thought I'd try drawing something, so I went to your online demo page. It wasn;t obvious how to select a material, but I found it under Job menu. You should probably make it more explicit. * Selected part material (again with refresh problem). You should probably have the column at the leftmost highlight after selection as opposed to the second column. * Drew a few concentric circles like in picture, then drew one "by mistake" away from common center. Tried to select this bad circle using select tool, but could not select any of them this way. Basically, without a way of selecting mistakes, it was impossible to draw anything worthwhile. At this point, I'd be happy to continue with some more testing. However, I'll need some direction from you first about: * are the bugs that I'm encountering ones you've seen from others? * given what is *not* working for me, what areas should I concentrate on? Keep in mind that thoroughly testing an entire application like this would take a very large amount of time and cost. Thanks! websearcher-ga Search Strategy: None - since this is a testing situation.