KDE Developers and Usability Folks on Cooperation

sultanoslack writes "Over at NewsForge a story just popped up on the usability experts from OpenUsability and some of the issues on working with KDE development teams, specifically the KDE PIM team. There's some interesting content on the different working styles of the two groups as well as a little bit on some of the improvements that were part of the recent KDE 3.4 release."

Comments

Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Open Usability - Mission Statement

OpenUsability.org is a project that brings open source developers and usability experts together.

The idea behind is simple: There are many Usability Experts who want to contribute to software projects. And there are many developers who want to make their software more usable, and - as a consequence - more successful. "

I'm going to ask because no one else will. How do you know they're usability experts? Who's doing the vetting?

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[evanbd]

How do you know they're good developers? Who's going to do the vetting?

I think the answer is the same -- good work is evident to others in both cases, even if the observer isn't an expert.

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[Chris Burke]

How do you know they're usability experts? Who's doing the vetting?

Simple. Usability Expert Experts, of course. They in turn are vetted by Expert Expert Experts, who are vetted by me in exchange for cash money or beer. The system is perfect.

Re:Ignore the expert behind the curtain.

[zbik]

I'm going to ask because no one else will. How do you know they're usability experts? Who's doing the vetting?

Each member has an "OpenUsability Peer Rating" (borrowed from Advogato) and a Skills Profile. Not every member takes advantage of this but it seems like a good framework.

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wanted to share my excitement about this.

I think it's great that the KDE Devs have no problem acknowledging that KDE could even be better if it focuses more on usability.

Don't get me wrong, KDE is far from the usability nightmare some folks want to make it, however it certainly has issues and it certainly can use some polish. (As can probably any other environment out there for that matter)

Now getting usability expert on board to solve these issues sure is the right way and if KDE 3.4 is anything to judge from, there are great things to come for KDE.

Rock on!

Re:K!!

[mattyrobinson69]

gmean glike gnome gapplications ior iapple iapplications "microsoft or" "microsoft microsoft" "microsoft applications"?

openperhaps openyou openmean openlike openbsd's openapps.

How about working together with GNOME?

[mpontes]

Am I the only one who hates the way the whole GNU/Linux community is split up? There are already few apps (with a GUI) compared to Windows applications, if the community keeps splitting up, Linux will never pose a real threat to Windows in the desktop world. Your average PC user doesn't want to have to deal with a different look-and-feel every time he boots an application, so he'll be stuck with the apps that were developed for his desktop environment. Heck, I stick with Kopete because Gaim looks so damned ugly under KDE.

Sure, I have a lot of choices under GNU/Linux. Too bad that for every choice I make I become more and more limited.

Re:How about working together with GNOME?

[molnarcs]

Am I the only one who hates the way the whole GNU/Linux community is split up?

Unfortunately, no, you are not alone with this opinion. What you fail to see is that there developers are not droids. In other words, you can't think of them as a pool that you can shape into whatever form you like. You can't tell a GNOME developer to work for KDE because the latter has a better chance of success (as it seems now). The GNOME developer works on GNOME because that is what he wants to work on. And this is not necessarily a bad thing: competition between the two major desktop environments might be considered as a driving force behind the rapid growth of linux DEs actually.

For instance GNOME and KDE have incompatible aims - they approach usability from different perspectives ("less is more" vs. "more and more, better organized" to put it very simply). On the other hand, standardization of low level services/components might be a good thing, and work is already in progress (albeit I have to admit it is slow) to achieve that via freedesktop.org. Also, you have to be aware of the contradiction of your post: your problem is that there is too much and too few choice at the same time. You'd prefer to use GAIM instead of kopete (you have a choice) but because you choose KDE, you have to use Kopete for a consistent look (no choice). The question you need to ask is this: what is the problem with Kopete? What I'm trying to say is that KDE's application stack becomes more and more complete. They have their own, well integrated office suite (koffice). They have kopete, music players, webbrowser, even a viable gimp replacement for average needs (have you seen krita in koffice 1.4beta? - it is absolutely fascinating!) - and so on.

What needs to be done is to improve that application stack. So if Kopete is not fully satisfactory (you would like to use GAIM, don't you?) - than you should specify the problems. If a number of users agree with your claim - and that's the point of this article - you would be able to communicate your needs/problems to the developers, helping them improve the app you are currently 'forced' to use.

/.ers, what's wrong with you?

[vlad_petric]

Usability (intuitiveness and "just works"-ness) is precisely what's keeping Linux from being adopted by the masses.

This is one of the best news I've heard in years.

Re:/.ers, what's wrong with you?

[Stevyn]

and before people say "but windows sucks too!", linux and the desktop environment have to be a LOT better to win people over.

kioslaves is a major improvement. I plug a drive in, and an icon appears on the desktop. A thing I noticed randomly was if I scroll over the JuK tray icon, it skips to the next song. If I scroll over the speaker tray icon, the volume increases or decreases. When you go to rename a file, it highlights the name but not the extension because you rarely change the extension of a file. These of course are little things, but they do make a difference. There are also countless usability improvements that I can't think of right now.

KDE has come along way since the days of 1.0 and I'm sure the pace is going to increase as more people get involved.

So yeah, KDE is improving and at this pace, it may be a LOT better than windows. Of course that's before longhorn comes out and I'm sure a bunch of people are trying to get linux adoption up before that hype takes over.

Congrats

[molnarcs]

Hmmm... that's very nice. KDE can learn a lot from the pitfalls GNOME went through in their quest for usability. I'm thinking of the failure to provide facilities to establish communications between developers, users, and usability experts. This was one of the gripes of Eugenia not so long ago (and as much as I hate to admit it, she was right!). It seemed to me that the main problem was that usability changes was decided by fiat - spatial browsing as the default, reverse button order, and a few years ago, the file selector - there was and still is a sense that some of these are 'forced' down the users throat by developers who like to cite their HIG (yet they violate it in the next turn by frustrating user-expectations). Anyway, the sign that KDE is heading towards the right direction is the effort they put into providing a framework with the purpose of faciliating communication between users, experts and developers. What I have in mind is the bugzilla equivalent for usability suggestions/comments that the article mentions.

The work they have done with KDE 3.4 speaks volumes about the success and the potential of these efforts. If you had problems with the 'clutter' of KDE before (I never had I might add) and haven't tried KDE 3.4... you should. And they did it without frustrating their present userbase: no features were removed, they were just reorganized. This seems to be the difference between gnome and kde approach to usability. GNOME seems to have the 'less is more' mantra, while KDE has the 'more, better organized' mantra. Both have its merits btw - I can very well imagine that GNOME's approach suits some user's taste better, so no flames please. Me, I love every feature, and those that I don't use can be easily removed (more easily than in previous KDE iterations).

It is also interesting to see how developers had to be "converted" to cooperate with openusability folks - and it is really nice to hear that this has been a success story so far (11 KDE projects already work closely with openusability - and what's more, they enjoy it :) For instance:

"The reports produced by OpenUsability are, according to Adam, "full of clear, concrete ideas that are well-reasoned, that have an overall vision, and that follow principles. They are also an appropriate length, without being too long or vague."

Nice!

Re:Some KDE Screenshots from SVN TRUNK

[molnarcs]

Are you aware of the fact that you can configure almost every aspect of KDE - including colors, icons, style? Also, KDE doesn't have its own distribution - so it is up to distro makers to change the default look to whatever they like.

...but I am a programmer and user interface designer Yeah, sure, and you have a degree in communication as well I assume? (BLEAH. Positively BLEAH.). (Come on mods, who modded that post interesting?)

Re:KDE Print

[vegaspctech]

Seriously, I totally agree with you. I think kprinter actually is a very good example of the problems kde faces. Kprinter is technically an awsome tool if you take the time to really get into it. However the problem is, for simply setting up a local printer it is way to confusing.

No, but your post is a very good example of the problems KDE, Gnome and the rest face, when it comes to adoption by Windows users. If something has a configuration option or two less than Windows does for the same thing, then it's not configurable enough. If it's got a configuration option or two more than Windows does, it's too confusing. I just pulled up the default Windows and vendor provided printer configuration panels on Windows 2k, XP and 98 SE and printer properties in Kprinter for KDE 3.4. Kprinter appears to have just a couple more options than the default Windows equivalent and a couple less than the configuration tools provided by Epson and Canon. The most significant difference I see is a matter of depth. In Kprinter and the Epson tool all the options appear to be presented at the same depth, a handful of tabbed pages in one window, while the Windows and Canon tools have buttons on some pages that open additional windows. The latter have most the same options as the former, they just hide more of them.