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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Usability and open source
From:       "Ben Last" <ben () last ! uk ! com>
Date:       2000-01-30 14:49:44
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----- Original Message -----
From: Cristian Tibirna <ctibirna@total.net>
Subject: Re: Usability and open source


> Thanks a lot for your interest in KDE. Your offer to help is very
> interesting and useful.
> There is something that was intended but was never accomplished to a
> satisfactory extent: analyse the HCI of present applications in KDE.
Okay, that's a good start, and yes, I appreciate the importance of using
KDE2 rather than 1.* though I need my desktop to be stable!  I'll look into
doing that.

> Perhaps that, given the large amount of mail the main
> developers have to deal with, you will want to prefix the subjects of your
> reports with "ATTN! HCI ANALYSIS" or something
Heh... surely this would result in the emails being ignored, especially this
close to release? :-)

> This would help us get a stronger idea of the improvements that are needed
> in the HCI department, in addition to the nice how-to's already written by
> the members of the kde-look team.
Yep - I've been reading these.

Okay, since I'm posting, a question - the style guide for KDE is a great
start, but I wonder if there's scope for more work along the lines of a "How
to build a usable application" document.  Alatair Bayley's collection of HCI
work is a great resource, but from my experience working with those deep
into coding, such documents can be seen as interesting but short on
practical advice.  For example, the description of Fitts Law might be
accompanied by the practical consequences of following it, with lots of
examples.  That way, the document's more squarely aimed at the coder with an
interest in building a usable app, but little time to think about usability
in the abstract.

A second question: How radical is the KDE community prepared to be?  To
clarify; KDE looks to me like an excellent attempt to replicate the features
of the Mac and Windows desktops.  Is the KDE developer community interested
in moving KDE *ahead* of those other systems, rather than tracking them?  I
mean in terms of interface, of course; it would be easy to argue that KDE
(and Gnome) are way ahead in terms of configurability already.

What do people think?

ben

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