FOSSCamp and Ubiquity
This past weekend, I flew up to Boston for FOSSCamp, and un-conference for getting open source projects together. These frequent community meetings give an important opportunity for designers to work out interface and usability problems with developers.
One of the major points on my agenda was to get together with the correct people and discuss the results from the user-based testing I conducted on the Kubuntu installation process. This feedback was also beneficial to Ubuntu since ubiquity is pretty similar for both projects.
Basically I did as I do with any of my clients and briefed everyone on the study and reviewed the results and recommendations. Rather than dumping a 30 page report in someone’s mailbox for them to hopefully read one day, the face-to-face meeting gave developers an opportunity to ask questions about the issues and recommendations and discuss alternative designs for fixing the problems. This one hour meeting accomplished what takes hours of email and IRC communication and days of correspondence. Hopefully, it will result in a more usable installation process.
seele :: Oct.30.2007 :: General, KDE/Kubuntu, Usability :: No Comments »