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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: Usability and open source
From:       Waldo Bastian <bastian () kde ! org>
Date:       2000-01-29 14:34:08
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On Sat, 29 Jan 2000, Magnus Ihse wrote:
> An article at http://sendmail.net/?feed=interviewkuniavsky spurred a
> lot of discussion at Slashdot,
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/28/116240&mode=thread. It
> might be interesting reading for the kde-look people...
>
> /Magnus

I have invited some of the more cluefull /. responders over to this 
list.

The article is definitly interesting, also for developers. To be able 
to improve the usability of KDE it is very important that we get 
feedback from our end-users. KDE is quite usable but has very much room 
for improvement.

I agree with the writer that Open Source might not work as good in this 
area of development as in others. To be able to make a good user 
interface you would like to be able to test various approaches out on 
your end-users and use the results of these tests to improve the 
software. 

In an Open Source project like KDE, this happens by releasing the stuff 
and hoping for bug-reports. The problems with this aproach is that 
end-users are not very eager to send in bug-reports for usability 
issues and that the feedback comes very late in the life-cycle.
Usability issues can have a large impact on the whole design of your 
software so the earlier such things are worked out the better.

At the moment, in KDE, I see two developments which address this issue 
somewhat: 

1) All applications will have an option in the about-menu to send in 
bug-reports, lowering the threshold for end-users to send in bugs. 
2) After KDE2 we will hopefully be able to release more often so that 
the feedback loop between developers and users can work at a faster 
rate.

In addition, a better solution would be to have active usability 
research within KDE. I think the kde-look list can play an important 
role in this as well as KDE's commercial partners.

In this respect I am disappointed that Corel, while boosting about its 
knowledge about UI, does do very little to share its knowledge with the 
rest of KDE.

Cheers,
Waldo

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