Usability

[Alistair Davidson]

I'm sure that most people here have alread seen Sun's Gnome Usablity
report (
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/ut1_report/report_main.html for
those who haven't)

Usability was, of course, a subject of much discussion on this list
recently. It seems to me that these are exactly the sorts of reports we
need. Actually, we need many more of them- this report is good, but its
scope is limited. We need tests of more Gnome features, and of KDE and
GNUStep features (perhaps GNUStep less so, because its interface aims at
replicating NeXT's). We also need tests of new, experimental features.

Would it be feasible for the FSFE to run these sorts of tests? We had a
very brief discussion of this in a different thread, but it sorta
petered out. I guess it boils down to: could we afford it, and how would
it be to finding a person to help us?

I guess then there's a potential argument over the cost:benefit ratio,
but I can't help feeling that usability is our biggest problem right
now. We need more usability (GNUsability? <g>) studies.

-- 
Lord [INSERT NAME HERE]
Rick's World: http://www.altgeek.org/lord_inh/comic/index.html