Cog walk through - Budget

Ready button at the button of the table has no function

Add a new institution: It doesn't give an option to add a new account as users add a new institution.

Cog walk through - Transaction

New file setup Step 3 of 5 - selecting Account

Account Types: Expecting users select multiple types of categories, but it doesn't show how to do it(use Ctrl)

Check boxes - checks instead of cross
There are both check marks and cross in some pages => not consistent

Default color for erroneous transaction and Negative value are the same(both are red)
(0 is red also)

Help needs to be contextualize - take you where you are
Help consistency: Only payees has help button at the button of the frame

Payees takes to content directly, but not Kmymoney configuration

Report: Close buttons close a window instead of tab

Cross icon in the tab is not visible, and it should be in the right side and says "close this tab" in the tool tip (consistency issue)

Project Proposal

Product Description

KMyMoney is a personal finance manager for KDE(a desktop environment mainly for Unix-like systems). It enables users of open source operating systems to keep careful track of their personal finances by providing a broad array of financial features and tools.

Audience Description

KMyMoney strives to be the easiest open source personal finance manager to use, especially for the non-technical user. The audience for this usability test will satisfy the following requirements:

-          Have used Linux

-          Never used (for more than a month) and have not recently(in last 2 months) used any personal finance management software like MS Money, iMint etc.

-          Have an active bank account

-          Be familiar with online banking

o   check online statements of their bank account statements, pay bills through online banking and log in to it at least twice a month.

Areas of Concern

In this usability test we will be focusing on 2 main features: transactions and budget, these are two of the complex and important tasks enabled by this software.

Transactions:

-          Complex banking terminology and tasks like reconciling a transaction might be confusing.

-          Performing a split transaction task into sub categories or between multiple payees could be confusing

-          Entering the edit mode of transactions  could be confusing

-          Approving a scheduled transaction could be confusing

Budget:

-          Task of creating a budget could be unclear

-          “Save budget file” command  is not shown on the screen

-          Changing budget year could be confusing

-          Labels such as “total balance” and “total value” might be confusing

The basic tasks of getting started with KMyMoney like creating a file, setting up accounts, scheduling transactions, entering few transactions etc. will also be tested because the transaction and budget tasks will be based on them. Concerns in this section of task are:

-          Choosing multiple types of categories could be confusing

-          Some of the inconsistent UI elements such as checkboxes could slow down tasks

-          Some of the finance terminology like “transfers” etc. may need to be readily clarified.

kmymoney installation step by step from windows

From Windows --

1. Create a new NTFS partition (8 GB) using diskmgmt.msc (for ex - G:). You may need to shrink your existing partitions for free space. 

2. Download Wubi from here http://wubi-installer.org/latest.php and save it in G: drive.

3. Click on G:\wubi.exe and on setup screen choose Kubuntu as your Desktop environment , in G: drive and 7GB installation size.

4. Wait for wubi to finish installation and then reboot into Kubuntu .

From Kubuntu --

5. Use your login id and password which you gave to wubi to loginto Kubuntu Desktop

6. Connect to your network using wired or wireless internet connection

7. from Kubuntu,  press ALT+F2 and type konsole and press enter
8. from Konsole window, type

> sudo apt-get install kdelibs4-dev build-essential

> sudo apt-get install kmymoney2

> kde_htmldir=/usr/share/doc/kde/HTML ./configure

(if you also want firefox browser)
> sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5

Rebooting...

So Grace joined to work on this as a course project for Usability Testing...
And here are few things I pulled out that are needed to get (re)started for us.

Website of the product
http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/index-home.html


Going through the online manual will help you understand the product functionality:
http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/online-manual/

Here are few notes on other personal finance tools I looked at for landscape analysis:
http://usabilitykmymoney.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html

Wubi and other rituals to install KMyMoney
http://wubi.sourceforge.net/
This allows us to install Ubuntu over windows like an exe. I will get it running on my laptop and get more detailed instructions for you to install it if you need.
Then we need KDE on ubuntu to install KMyMoney... those 2 things too I will do them over weekend and let you know the steps. If you are familiar with Linux then you can go ahead.

Todo before we write the proposal:
- install wubi, kde, KMymoney
- go through help documentation to know the features
- go through KMyMoney user feedback and run the product to help us identify key usability questions