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Usability and Open Source Software

Posted by michael on from the click-and-drag dept.

Martin Soto writes "This article by two user interaction researchers, discusses many of the usability problems in current open source projects. The nice part is that, unlike many /. readers, it doesn't stop there, but goes into suggesting novel (at least for the OSS community) approaches to cope with those problems in an open source compatible way. Worth a read to those that, like me, still think that OSS should find its way to every desktop computer."

3 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. IN SOVIET RUSSIA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant


    Open source USE YOU!

  2. mgkimsal's reply says everything I'd like to say by wackybrit · · Score: 0, Redundant

    n/t

    --
    mogorific carpentry experiments
  3. What do You actaully need a GUI for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Don't get me wrong GUI's can be useful but I suspect the problems you are having are not because of the X GUI but because you don't understand how to use your system. The major merit of GUI's is that they allow you to learn to use the system by playing with it. Pull down the menus, push the buttons and see what is there. The problems arise when you have to do something that the designers never envisaged. This happens after you have learned the basics and actually want to get work done. The second problem is that the more menu's/buttons you add the less effective this become, to the point where you have to read the help to find out what you want to do. At this point your GUI has become less useful then a shell tool. If you can compare DOS to a Bash shells, you should learn a lot more about shell tools, there really is no comparison. Learn the following and many of your shell problems will be resolved. --help -h will give you a summary of available commands man will give you a more detailed guide. info will give you an interlinked guide (you might find this easier then man if you just want to find one thing) There are also ways to get a list of available man pages but I don't know of the top of my head. I generally use tkman & tkinfo, which gives a window GUI, and some cross-referencing of man pages. I think the major reason that OS X has managed to come up with a simple GUI quickly is because that is what they were trying to do. Most Linux users have real work to do, for us functionality and access to information is the most important and deciding factor. I use Windows at work and have installed cygwin because my time is limited.