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I recently came across an article on Newsforge.com which was posted in the Open Source Usability (registration required) community.

Overall it doesnt really give the user much information about the state of usability in Open Source. The author did not seem to know or research a whole lot about usability, which makes the article a little difficult to read. Using the KDE project as his example, he concludes the problem with its usability is “noise”. Really. What the hell is “noise”? He doesnt really stop to explain, but does continue to make an open plea to both usability experts to take an interest in Open Source, and software engineers to become more sensitive to non-technical users.

To him, the solution the community is asking for is outside consulting by usability specialists to evaluate software and submit changes. I agree with his point that this is “too big of an issue to rely on outsiders”, “outsiders” being paid (or voluntary) consultants to fix our software problems. He raises the question of why there arnt more usability experts in Open Source, and I dont think its that hard of a question to answer. The community is small. I remember five (or six?) years ago when I began using Linux and Open Source software, one thing that stuck out in my head were the ugly graphics. Why did were there ugly graphics? Probably because the author(s) of the software wasnt much of a graphic designer. Things are more “pretty” now because the community has grown and more graphic designers are interested in Open Source, not because programmers spent hours of their time reading HOWTOs for GIMP.

The same problem applies to usability now. The community is still relativly small. Usability and HCI is a relativly new concept in business and software, even though it has been studied for years. It may take some time, but the interest for usability in the Open Source community is growing. Asking developers to read a HOWTO on usability will not solve any problems. One thing about this community is everyone loves standards. There do exist some excellent HIGs which can be reviewed for some good ideas on good and bad interface design.

Also check out my post on the GNOME 2.6 Usability Study.

seele :: Jul.29.2004 :: General, HCI, Open Source :: 1 Comment »

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