KMail Recipients

In a short usability test, three users executed typical tasks concerning the composer's recipient fields. Two versions of the recipients area and the Select Recipients dialog were compared. Even if the number of users is not representative, a number of bugs and potential usage problems within both versions were discovered.

With respect to the composer's recipient area, users tended to prefer the new interface. Even if they were faced several problems (merely caused by the prototypical state of the interface) and they were not used to the new behaviour, they stated that they could imagine to become faster and more effective by using it.

With respect to the Select Recipients dialog, users tended to prefer the former dialog as it provided a better management and a better overview over selected contacts. They stated that both dialogs showed several usage problems, but the former one clearly provided a better and more reliable overview. This impression may be reduced by implementing the suggestions given in the following. However, at its current state, it is not advisable to release the new Select Recipients dialog as users were faced severe problems while using it.

Considering the results of the test, the developers improved and significantly facilitated the input behaviour of the new composer dialog with respect to auto completion, as well as adding and removing new address lines.

Furthermore, they changed the behaviour of the Select Recipients dialog to allow for multiple selection. However, up to now the dialog does not yet provide an opportunity to quickly change the address type (e.g. TO to BCC) of already selected participants, or to deselect them.

As another result of the test, address lists can now easily be saved in the composer dialog, either via a button in the composer dialog, or the Tools menu.