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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Progress
From:       mattc <matt () flowine ! com>
Date:       2001-08-16 18:26:06
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Hello List,
I'm new here and looking forward to contributing.  I'll start quickly by 
saying how impressed I am with the thoughtful and sophisticated attitude you 
all are going about getting your usability issues addressed.  It is the right 
approach.  Maintainers, developers, directors, and everyone else involved are 
all here to make KDE a richer, and better experience for the user.  The 
developers are eager to get our input in the process.

Now to my point.  The developers don't want to hear from a couple of people 
who arn't programmers who think they have some good ideas.  We are all 
technically experienced and hardcore KDE users already.  We have little to 
contribute from our own experience that they havn't already thought of.  
Remember, they are hardcore KDE users as well.

If we really want to be heard, we need input from people who are not involved 
in using KDE, and lots of them.  An effective use of our time would be to 
come up with a study that we could put users through and then record their 
experience.  (Has anyone read the study Sun just completed for Gnome?)  Make 
it about an hour long, asking the user to perform common, everyday tasks.  
When they have to ask the test administrator questions to complete the task, 
you have found an unintuitive part of the GUI that needs to be addressed.

Finding people to participate in the study is the easy part.  Go to the 
computer center at your local university, and find subjects there, or better 
yet, get the guy behind the counter who is making sure everyone swipes their 
ID cards to help adminsiter the test.

Or, take your laptop to the local coffee shop, and find subjects there.  
There is a buzz around Linux that has reached the average person, many would 
jump at the chance to see what it is all about, and these are exactly the 
kinds of users we want to study.

In my mind, usability issues are all about the GUI's first impression, and 
ease of the transition from M$.

I will coordinate this project.  If there already is such a project started, 
please let me know where I can contact those people and get involved.


Take Care
Matt
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