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

Message

Hi, I have started my masters since mid Sept and I have been waiting to post this message. Its been so hectic and it will only increase until the end of the quarter. I will still reply to any comments you make as you go through the work posted till now. And will try to squeeze as much as possible in the middle of quarter too. Will resume work from mid Dec, for the period during my quarter break.

Cancel Search Button

This is the general UI pattern of canceling the search results view.
The general UI patterns to cancel search is to have the X button inside the search box to the right end.

Cog walk through - Accounts

New ... Buttons Missing - Since the icons to create new schedules, accounts, institutions etc may not be very clear/convenient, we should have New ... buttons for each screen "consistently". Here is a picture that shows this -

Type of Accounts Having some information text/label on the screen, about the kind of accounts that exist(credit, loan, debit, checking etc) will help users understand what are the requirements in opening that account. ( See image below)

Opening Balance for a credit card ? Is it a dead field in a Credit Card context ?

Preferred Account New Users may not have an idea of whats a preferred account. Any informational label can help here too.

Help The help button on the New Account wizard, does not take me to the current topic but to the KMyMoney General Help. Context sensitive Help would really help :)




Parent Account - Asset, Liability are type-of-accounts than an account itself, they should not be named as parent accounts . Income and Expense are categories and shouldn't show up in Accounts screen (They should show up in Categories view only). IMHO, Hierarchies in accounts and usage of term "Parent" account is confusing.




















Edit Account Dialog The Disabled 3D control (drop down lists) have unreadable text, it would be nice to have them slightly darker .

Edit Account Limits Tab Absolute limit does convey clear meaning and Credit Limit exists for all type of accounts.


Edit Account Tax Tab Lots of free screen area could be used to explain what is VAT etc. as an informational label.

Features that need to surface out

Online Banking - KBanking Plugin should be better exposed(than mentioning it in the release notes) to user when they are getting started.

Configuration Screen - Encryption option in the configuration screen should be upfront to allow users to create login IDs and Passwords. The Encryption screen is disabled to work with.