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User experience test

Test performed by gillux on the 08/02/2020.

Device: modern laptop with touchpad
OS: Windows 10
Browser: Chrome
Instructions: I did not give any precise instructions, to let M. discover Tatoeba.

I already quickly showed M. to Tatoeba in the past.

M. looks at the Random sentence block but she cannot understand any of the sentences. She thinks is a pity that that sentence comes at the top since she is Japanese and the website is set in Japanese. It’s not interesting for her. She feels like "what is that actually for?" ("結局何これ"）
M. is disappointed that the content mixes Japanese and English. She feels like while the first introduction green block is in Japanese, the rest is basically English (mixed with Japanese).
M. clicks on the Browse by language link from the top menu. "Let’s have a look" (ちょっと見てみよう)

M. reads the sentences and smiles at a funny one.
"But these are only Japanese." M. sees the drop downs on the right and sets "Show translations in" to "All languages".

M. notices that there are two very similar sentences 日誌をつける。and 日記をつける。 added by the same member, likely consecutively. "Can’t I see such sentences grouped together?"
M. enters a keyword in the top bar and sets to=Japanese.

After looking at the results, M. understands that the search engine doesn’t understand grammar because it shows the verb つける but also 見つける which is a totally different word. "It makes it difficult to search."
"If I only want the verb つける, I need to search differently, like をつける"

(pointing out the number of results getting lower) "This way I can narrow down the results."
M. looks at the sentences
M. looks at the additional search filters on the right. She changes "Show translations in:" to "None".
M. looks at the other filters. "There are many ways to search."
M. goes through all the filters.
M. thinks that a filter like "by username" doesn’t need to be on the top because it’s probably only used by very active members (I had mentioned to her that our community include such members) while first-time users would certainly don’t understand it and be confused.
"What does "unapproved" (非承認) mean? That it hasn’t been checked? (チェックされてない）. It’s probably that."
M. clicks on the "Belongs to list" drop down. It’s very large and very long "What the hell is that? That’s very strange." (謎のものが出てきてる)
M. eventually clicks the submit button.

M. explains that she wasn’t able to visually compare the sentences, so she I disabled the translations. She suggests having that feature as a per-sentence collapse/expand button instead. The translation would be hidden by default if I’m only searching for Japanese sentences.

Tatoeba doesn’t match the user needs:
Usability problems:
- Even though M. used the top menu "Add translations" link as guest and saw a login page, once registered, she didn’t click that link to translate sentences. Instead, she used the "browse sentences" link to browse Chinese sentences and complained that you have to manually check if it’s already translated.
Feeling problems:
Onboarding problems: