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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: getting involved in a project
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () kde ! org>
Date:       2004-08-07 18:28:04
Message-ID: 200408071228.05307.aseigo () kde ! org
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On Friday 06 August 2004 08:07, Celeste Paul wrote:
> i was wondering, who actually implements these guidelines?  is the audience
> the programmers themselves or are there usability volunteers who are
> reviewing the software and changing it themselves, or just submitting
> suggestions to the project leader?

yes.

;-)

which is to say, all methods occur. the developers implement as much as 
possible at the library level such that usability decisions and tools become 
_policies_ rather than need to implemented in every single application.

such a per-application methodology breaks down when you deal with a large 
number of applications, especially large numbers of 3rd party applications 
due to the weight of duplicated efforts, the fragility of human consistency, 
the horror of ever having to change a guidline in all your apps down the line 
etc. thinking otherwise is to stare into the universe held within one's own 
navel ;-)

if you wish to tackle those sorts of issues, be prepared to delve into the KDE 
libraries a bit. this includes things such as the toolbar and key config 
dialogs, plugin handling, MDI, etc...

that said, there are many things that ARE unique to each application. those 
things are implemented, obviously, per-application. this is where the 
individual application maintainers come in. of course, in the spirit of Open 
Source we can create and submit patches in concert with the application 
maintainers that improve usability. these are the sorts of microusability 
improvements that have primarily been going on in the kde-usability list and 
they deffinitely help improve KDE.

finally, it is possible and useful to work with a specific aplication (or set 
of applications) as a usability gohper^H^H^H^Hconsultant. which is to say 
that you should have a good grasp of usability principles and methods and be 
willing to do testing and write reports useful for developers that you then 
maintain in concert with that project.

all sorts of ways to skin the cat, isn't there? ;-)

> i am interested in becoming involved and taking an active role in reviewing
> software and making suggestions for the UI guidelines.  can anyone give me
> suggestions on how to go about this? 

we are about to define these exact processes at the KDE World Conference in 
the second half of this month. keep your eyes peeled for what comes out of 
there.

> i am fairly familiar with the Gnome 
> HIG and began reading through the KDE docs.

cool... welcome to the KDE project, i'm sure you'll find a lot of fun things 
to do and meet a lot of cool people =)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
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