From kde-usability Fri Aug 30 21:21:23 2002 From: Alistair Davidson Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 21:21:23 +0000 To: kde-usability Subject: Re: Kcontrol reorganisation (was Re: Control center organization/ clutter) X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-usability&m=103074222312624 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 30 August 2002 18:33, Aaron J. Seigo wrote: > On Friday 30 August 2002 05:21, Alistair Davidson wrote: > > Personally I think the whole KControl concept is flawed, the vertical > > list of icons to choose your control is just repeatign a mistake Apple > > made, and corrected, in the 80s. > > solutions are welcome. Heh, now you're asking for it! I'm not a usability genius and I don't claim to have all the answers, I also mean no personal criticism of those involved in creating or improving KControl- they've done a great job for the most part and if you're going to repeat anyone's mistakes, you could do a lot worse than Apple's :) The problems for me with designing a new KControl are severalfold- I lack the necessary information (usability tests), the necessary inspiration (I'm not sure what to replace it with, though I have some ideas), and the necessary skills (I can code but I wouldn't know where to start codign an app like KControl; I'm inexperienced at UI form design). However, I do have one skill I can apply, which is my organisational abilities, pattern-recognition and organisation being my greatest natural talents (I'm one of those people who makes neat piles out of things compulsively :o). So here's my solution, though I don't know that it's the sort you were challenging me to provide: for serious usability issues that will take significant [wo]manpower to resolve, we should form small task-groups of ten or fewer people who are prepared to put a reasonable amount of effort into actually getting things done. Such a group would consist of at least one experienced KDE coder, at lest one experienced UI form designer, and at least one person with the ability to perform user-tests. They would meet on IRC once a week and use private email to discuss things, producing draft solutions and presenting them to the main list for discussion. I'd be happy to join such a group for KControl, if there was someone who knew how to start coding such a thing I'd learn pretty quickly and I know plenty of people I could test the latest wacky ideas out on :) Who would join me? What does everyone think of the idea? - -- Alistair Davidson Prying open your third eye since 1823 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE9b+HWLIWOIXLHtfQRAn9HAKDCiFCFo30i4h7f5Q7KrCIo36PjewCgxBlH nnHur610M9lD6CQpzNTDwqs= =tFVE -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ kde-usability mailing list kde-usability@mail.kde.org http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability