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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Why I don't stay involved
From:       Irwin K <emerald-arcana () rogers ! com>
Date:       2002-06-29 18:36:09
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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 correct 
in saying that this list consists of a lot of dialog reworking and playing 
with widgets, but I think that these are good objectives for the KDE 
Usability Project.

I see that you are more of a "theoriest" who wants to see more formalized 
design techniques and usability patterns applied to dialogs, rather than this 
somewhat ad-hoc method that we use, where we post a form and ask for 
feedback.

I would like to defend the project by saying that we as a group have made some 
leaps and bounds in the analysis of user interfaces, and the design leading 
to application.  We're still not on the same turf as Microsoft, Corel, or Sun 
Microsystems usability testers and workers, but considering our lack of 
resources and our completely volunteer structure, we've come far beyond what 
usability was in KDE 1, or even KDE 2.

We do have a bunch of theorists in this group who like to study the "roots" of 
usability, and to see what they can do to help us design better dialogs.  I 
am one of them and I would certainly like to see more discussion about how we 
can "design better software at the grassroots level", but just because we 
currently don't execute our designs that way doesn't mean that the project is 
a total "failure".

I think we're following a natural progression to reaching a more 
design-oriented, usability-focused group.  Right now, the majority of us are 
simply not usability scholars.  The majority of us probably don't have copies 
of IEEE Transactions of Computing delivered to our house so we can research 
articles on usability.  However, we're getting there.  It's easy for us to 
say, "KDE's not usable".  Our step up is to look at a dialog and say, "This 
is bad".  We're starting to get beyond that by saying, "This is bad, but 
here's how we can make it better."  We're now getting to a stage where, "This 
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" 
step and go right to "This is a usable interface."

The web page is starting to acquire some evoluntionary steps: the Wiki system, 
if organized well, allows people to add notes about KDE usability and 
assemble to-do lists.  Articles and research about usability can be posted.  
The mailing list is our "public forum" of usability: where we discuss our 
problems and the proposed solutions.  A mailing list doesn't quite lend 
itself to very formal, research-oriented discussions (we could hold a KDE 
Usability Conference... any takers? :-> ) but considering our resources, the 
amount of volunteer time we have, and the skills of our volunteers (only a 
handful can actually implement these changes, which is a rather nice 
bottleneck in our development cycle), I think we're making good steps 
forward, not backward.

-- 
-- Arcana  (Irwin)
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