From kde-usability Sat Jun 29 18:36:09 2002 From: Irwin K Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 18:36:09 +0000 To: kde-usability Subject: Re: Why I don't stay involved X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-usability&m=102537576907278 On Friday 28 June 2002 04:03 pm, Robert Watkins wrote: > I would like this thread to continue so that we > can try to find a plan that is both feasible and > meaningful that evolves this group into a > sophisticated discussion of solid Usability > techniques and how they are used in developing > KDE. *snip* Lately there's been a move toward "less talk, more action". You are corr= ect=20 in saying that this list consists of a lot of dialog reworking and playin= g=20 with widgets, but I think that these are good objectives for the KDE=20 Usability Project. I see that you are more of a "theoriest" who wants to see more formalized= =20 design techniques and usability patterns applied to dialogs, rather than = this=20 somewhat ad-hoc method that we use, where we post a form and ask for=20 feedback. I would like to defend the project by saying that we as a group have made= some=20 leaps and bounds in the analysis of user interfaces, and the design leadi= ng=20 to application. We're still not on the same turf as Microsoft, Corel, or= Sun=20 Microsystems usability testers and workers, but considering our lack of=20 resources and our completely volunteer structure, we've come far beyond w= hat=20 usability was in KDE 1, or even KDE 2. We do have a bunch of theorists in this group who like to study the "root= s" of=20 usability, and to see what they can do to help us design better dialogs. = I=20 am one of them and I would certainly like to see more discussion about ho= w we=20 can "design better software at the grassroots level", but just because we= =20 currently don't execute our designs that way doesn't mean that the projec= t is=20 a total "failure". I think we're following a natural progression to reaching a more=20 design-oriented, usability-focused group. Right now, the majority of us = are=20 simply not usability scholars. The majority of us probably don't have co= pies=20 of IEEE Transactions of Computing delivered to our house so we can resear= ch=20 articles on usability. However, we're getting there. It's easy for us t= o=20 say, "KDE's not usable". Our step up is to look at a dialog and say, "Th= is=20 is bad". We're starting to get beyond that by saying, "This is bad, but=20 here's how we can make it better." We're now getting to a stage where, "= This=20 is bad, but here's how we can make it better, and this is why." So before long, we'll hit the new stage where we simply skip the "This is= bad"=20 step and go right to "This is a usable interface." The web page is starting to acquire some evoluntionary steps: the Wiki sy= stem,=20 if organized well, allows people to add notes about KDE usability and=20 assemble to-do lists. Articles and research about usability can be poste= d. =20 The mailing list is our "public forum" of usability: where we discuss our= =20 problems and the proposed solutions. A mailing list doesn't quite lend=20 itself to very formal, research-oriented discussions (we could hold a KDE= =20 Usability Conference... any takers? :-> ) but considering our resources, = the=20 amount of volunteer time we have, and the skills of our volunteers (only = a=20 handful can actually implement these changes, which is a rather nice=20 bottleneck in our development cycle), I think we're making good steps=20 forward, not backward. --=20 -- Arcana (Irwin) _______________________________________________ kde-usability mailing list kde-usability@mail.kde.org http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability