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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: How to join the KDE Usability Team?
From:       Stephen Kelly <steveire () gmail ! com>
Date:       2008-12-29 18:40:59
Message-ID: gjb5jq$v69$1 () ger ! gmane ! org
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Celeste Lyn Paul wrote:

> On Monday 29 December 2008 09:59:46 am Stephen Kelly wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> In an effort to lower the barrier to entry for new and potential
>> contributors to KDE, I'm making a few techbase pages to guide people in
>> the process of becoming a contributor.
>>
>> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Contributor_Paths
>>
>> I want to get help here on finding what the steps are to become a
>> contributor to the usability of KDE. What are the entry points? Where are
>> the resources? What are the tasks? What is the easy stuff?
> 
> Thanks for starting this.  The usability.kde.org website is terribly out
> of date and I've been debating on just asking it to redirect to
> techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability

Great, thanks for the response. I don't know enough about this stuff yet to
make this valuable.

> 
> Just for reference, in my mind there are two types of contributors.
> Sometimes these can be the same people, but often they are separate
> people.
> 
> One, as a developer who is interested in actively improving the usability
> of their/any application by making code changes, commiting them and
> releasing them.

Yes, this is something that would be covered in the 'Creating usable
applications' in the Developer path section.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.kde.devel.general/56132/

Also part of 'Creating usable applications' is using designer to make uis.
Easier for usability designers to work on that aspect.

From the Usability contributor path, we'd have a link to the same page. This
is also what I meant by 'Fixing usability issues in code' below.

> 
> Two, as a design who is interested in (not exactly passively, but they are
> not a first party) improving the usability of any application by making
> recommendations of changes to developers.
> 
>>
>> My draft ideas are below
>>
>>
>>
>> *****************
>>
>> This page is for people who want to improve the usability of KDE.
>>
>> == Dive in ==
>> What is the HIG?
>> Reviewing KDE apps - What to look for.
> Reviewing would be extremely difficult to write guidelines for. The easy
> topics are HIG violations, but anything that doesn't have a written
> guideline for is
> always contested.  Unless you are quick with design theory or have a
> reputation, recommendations get shot down pretty quickly.
> 
> I would suggest the following sections
> 
> * What is the KDE4 HIG (purpose, goals, link to HIG)
> * Writing bugs for KDE HIG violations

Cool, that's a good starting point.

> 
>> Using qt designer to fix usability issues.
> I don't know what you mean by this.  Qt designer doesn't fix usability
> issues, but using .ui files makes it easier for designers to assist
> developers with coding -- something usually inaccessible to designers.
> Designers who are comfortable with an IDE can go in to a .ui file and make
> the changes for the developer, and just need a review afterwards.
> Sometimes that saves a lot of time for minor changes like alignment and
> labelling.

Yes, that's what I mean. Using designer it's simple to fix alignment issues
etc with results that can be quickly seen with the form preview button, and
the resulting file or patch sent to a developer or mailing list. These are
fairly low hanging fruit.

> 
>> Fixing usability issues in code.
> Same as above, also I think these are mostly HIG issues.
> 
>> Use cases and scenarios
>> User research profiles.
> 
> These two things go together.  I wish we had a more extensive
> description/tutorial written up somewhere.

Well, we can call that a gap and plan to fill it. I've been doing some
research on the use cases side of things recently.

> 
>>
>> == Resources ==
>> Seeles blog
>> HIG
>> openusability
>> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/Project_User_Research_Template
> Books
> Lots more beginner websites on UI and Usability
> 

Got some examples or links to the good websites? Or choice picks of the most
relevant articles for certain aspects?


Thanks for helping,

Steve.

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