KDE 3.3 Usability Study
User Instinct recently posted a usability study on KDE 3.3. Several months ago, they had also posted a usability study on GNOME 2.6.
Overall, the article indicated that KDE is “good”. It recognized several groups who have been actively improving the overal usability of the environment, including the KDE Usability Team and aKademy. The usability website is mentioned (”.. however, their website has only been updated a couple of times over the past year and a half“), but Aaron kindly informs the author in an email explaining the recent changes I have been making to the site.
The article states issues which have been discussed by the team but have yet to be acted on. Konqueror has been a continuing effort. The smaller issues such as “Expected Default Settings” havnt been resolved because of a lack of participation or notification of these issues. The KDE Control Center is also being reorganized.
User test results were very interesting and informative. The article includes user comments about issues they come across. Several users didnt like how KDM’s password field did not show a representation for their password as they typed it. It also seems they didnt like KWallet and some of the menu organization didnt make sense to them. All of these things are valuable information we can use to improve KDE.
Just for reference, here is the KDE Usability Project Website and the KDE Human Interface Guidelines.
seele :: Sep.21.2004 :: General, HCI, KDE/Kubuntu :: 1 Comment »
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