obso1337.org

In an effort to get to know better the needs of developers are from the Human Interface Guidelines, I solicited several groups of developers to participate in a survey which ran for two weeks in May. The outcome was very good with 52 participants providing their comments and suggestions.

After reviewing the results and compiling them in to a report I think several things are safe to assume about developer’s relationship with the HIG:

• They don’t trust it.
• They don’t trust us.
• They expect more from it.
• They didn’t know it existed.
• They might actually use it.

They don’t trust it. The old guidelines are just that — old. Being out of date and inaccurate are strong reasons why developers might not use them. Being incomplete also raised some questions in their validity.

They don’t trust us. Some of them flat out said they didn’t trust them (and those who write them) and won’t until they see some theory behind the claims. Trust in the usability community has always an issue. Theory is fine and dandy, but misunderstood or out of context its useless. Just because you don’t like it or don’t understand it shouldn’t be grounds for creating inconsistent interfaces. If you really feel that strongly against that particular guideline, there are better ways to change them than ignoring them.

They expect more from it. The quality and quantity of the guidelines are an issue. There isn’t enough there and what is there is dated and old. If the HIG is to be a definitive guide then it needs to be current and updated frequently. Important issues need to be added in order for them to be referenced, there were many comments of fruitless searches because content was missing.

They didn’t know it existed. Apparently it isn’t very easy to find the guidelines because many of the participants didn’t know they existed, or had looked for them and never found them. Along with a community-wide effort to promot the guidelines, it has to be more easily accessible.

They might actually use it. No one was really against having guidelines, infact many were optimistic they would use it if it met their explicit demands. If we can solve the Q&Q (quality and quantity) problem which is present in the existing guidelines, I’m optimistic the new guidelines will be happily adopted.

What you’ve been waiting for: KDE4 HIG Developers Survey Results (PDF 601KB)

seele :: Jun.02.2006 :: General, KDE Dev Blog :: No Comments »

Although earlier this year I had hoped to get the reports up by the end of January, that they got up by mid-February isn’t too bad. The 2005 reports page is here.

Reports were added for: KBruch, KMail Recipients, Koffice Startup, Kopete, KOrganizer, KPrinter.

There have been more reports than this, particularly through OpenUsability.org. These were just the ones which were specifically sent to me to get posted to the site. Also, much of our contribution is through talking and working with the developers and not necessarily preparing web-ready deliverables.

I also cleaned up some of the links to the XML contribution style we dont really use (OpenUsability.org however does, and reports can be submitted through them). I also removed some of the links to the older reports while I clean up the structure, and I will eventually add them to the archives.

BTW, I also have a Jabber account on kdetalk.net (celeste at kde dot org). I have never used Jabber before, so I’m still figuring out what this is about.

seele :: Feb.19.2006 :: General, KDE Dev Blog :: Comments Off

According to a recent C-Net Police Blotter, email surveillance without any evidence of criminal behavior has been approved. The new law only allows monitoring of email headers (hence justifies as ‘constitutional’), but the fact that they can freely monitor and log email traffic is alarming.

Also, our president seems to think its ok to monitor phone telecommunications in the name of ‘fighting the war on terror’. My question is how do they get through all the datanoise to find these ‘terrists’ without violating regular citizen’s privacy?

Remember Cindy Sheehan at the state of the union address? Now it seems as if protesting is an act of terrorism.

Where was that logic on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade a few weeks ago when we had thousands of pro-life protestors waving full-colored posters of dead fetuses in D.C? They’ll blur out a boob on T.V. but its ok to wave pictures of dead, mangled corpses in public. If I were protesting rape and incest of children, would I be able to carry a poster of an dead, 11-year-old boy who was sexually molested? I’m not suggesting it is in good taste (I certainly wouldn’t do this, but follow my logic here). Your first argument would be that dead boy is someone’s child. According to pro-life advocates so is that fetus, yet that hasn’t stopped them.

Free country to do what now?

Sometimes this place is ass-backwards. You can sue someone for almost anything in this country. The freedom of speech only applies if its pro-government or else youre a terrorist. If you dont support the war you dont support the troops. A computer is a tool only to steal media, look at porn, or hack in to another computer. You can murder someone on T.V. but ’suggestive’ sexual acts get censored.

We’re a nation of prudes in love with war. We are with war with cancer, sex, drugs, terrorism, obesity, iraq, nature, and our neighbors. Bush claims a terrorist plot on LA was thwarted yet there is no way of proving this. This constant manipulation by the government is making me think twice about our recent history. What if we really didnt go to the moon in 1969? I wouldnt be suprised.

What’s next? A tinfoil hat.

seele :: Feb.10.2006 :: General, KDE Dev Blog :: Comments Off

Friday is my last day at .gov where I will be moving on the bigger and better things. For the past 14 months Ive been through three natural disasters (Indian Ocean tsunami, Katrina/Rita hurricanes, Pakistani/Indian earthquake), watched a few funerals on TV (Pope John Paul II, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King) and scandal galore (too many to list).

I can’t say I’ll miss the job very much, but I will miss my coworkers. They were really the ones who made the job interesting, and while being a consultant I wont get that same ‘Office’ atmosphere.

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There needs to be a better solution for syndicating my blog. I have two active blogs, this one and my personal one. The difficulty with this is that I often cross blog because I have the same interesting things to say to both audiences. The KDE developers blog is the account which gets syndicated to Planet and LinuxChix, but it misses a lot of the random usability and interaction design rants I write. Although Planet reaches a lot of people, not everyone reads/syndicates it so I would be missing people who read only KDEDevelopers. But I’ve also had my personal blog for many years. What a dilemma, because one will have to go.

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I will be doing some interesting work in the upcoming weeks in which I should be able to donate some of the materials to the KDE-EDU project (I still have to work out the details to see what deliverables I can release from the contract). I will be conducting in some in-depth requirements research for education software for children from Kindergarten to 12th grade. Non-proprietary materials such as personas, survey results, usability studies, and style guides could greatly help the KDE-EDU project in creating better educational software. I’m excited for the project mostly because I’ll be able to give some of my daily work back to KDE.

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For those of you who play WoW (world of warcraft): an addiction test

Well on your way!
You are 73% Addicted!
You play a lot, and you’re starting to get hooked. Keep it up and soon you too will be part of the ever-growing group that is totally addicted. Or, see the warning signs now and get out while you still can!

Truthfully, if I took this test a few months ago I probably would have been 90-95% addicted. I’ve been very busy lately and havn’t had the time/opportunity to sit and play for hours on end because of homework, housework, and other random things. My second character (undead rogue) is slowly leveling up, so I think once she gets to 45/50 I’ll be in get-to-60 mode.

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El mentioned in her recent blog entry about an issue with the Defaults button in many of the application configuration UIs. She also posted this thread (list membership required for archive) about this issue, which led to a discussion about it in #openusability.

A preliminary solution would be to create ‘[Reset all defaults] [Reset (Fonts) defaults]’ buttons to better save the user from accidently resetting ALL defaults instead of just the current tab defaults. In the end we’ll just have to test it and see if it is a better solution and by how much.

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I will be in Las Vegas March 17-20 if anyone is going to be in the area. Also, there were some small talks about having a Usabiltiy/HCI-WG meeting in Washington, D.C. in the beginning of April before a meeting in Georgia. If there is any interest in this, drop me a line so I can work something out.

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And finally, a funny story:

This morning, I bought a banana from the cafe in my building. The only bananas they had were green, and I tried to pick the ripest one. When I got to my desk, I thought about my banana and said ‘I wonder if it would riped if I put it on my laptop?’. Fruit, afterall, ripens with the help of heat not time, and my laptop runs very hot. And so I put this banana on my laptop (I use an external keyboard and mouse) and told my friends about it. ‘Do you think this will work?’, I ask my coworker as he looks at me with a strange look. ‘Guess what I did!’, I tell a friend who proceeds to laugh at my silly idea.

Well guess what. Four hours later my banana no longer has green spots, so by the time I leave for class I should have a nice ripe snack for the drive. Whoo!

seele :: Feb.08.2006 :: General, KDE Dev Blog :: Comments Off

sorry for the caps, but i *am* yelling

this weekend justin and i went home and watched (and later celebrated) the steelers play in the super bowl.

for those of you who are not familiar with the super bowl, it is the championship game for american football (you know that weird game that is nothing like soccer). for those of you who are not familiar with me or the steelers, you should know that i am from pittsburgh and so are they

saturday night in the south side (one of the bar districts) reminded me of mardi gras. people dressed up in black and gold, drunk in the streets singing “Here we go STEEEEEELERS, HERE WE GO!”, cars blasting steelers polka (yes polka, dont ask) and blaring horns down carson street, and almost every store/bar/restaurant/house decorated in black and gold for the Big Game.

why was it such a Big Game (other than it being the championship of course). well, the super bowl is a big deal to pittsburgh for many reasons. *) it is a family owned team (which is getting rarer these days) of which the father of the current owner won 4 superbowls with. *) jerome ‘the bus’ bettis has been inducted in to the hall of fame, yet had not won a super bowl AND has been hanging in with the team for 2 years trying to get a ring (he is a broken man) AND is from detroit (he is from detroit). *) ben roethlesberger is the second youngest starting quarterback (and now youngest winning quarterback) *) bill cowher has been coaching the steelers for something like 15 years and has taken them to the playoffs something like 9 or 10 times with only 1 other appearance (loss) in the superbowl (1996).

so it was time for ‘one for the thumb’ (the super bowl prize is a ring and trophy for the team)

oh and strangely condoleeza rice (U.S. secretary of state) was at the game and publicly picked the steelers to win (this is strange in part because a) she was at the super bowl and b) public figures do not usually publicly pick sides in sports unless they are a hometown team and she is from Alabama).

anyway.. being more interested in getting drunk and staying warm to watch the game than ‘freezing our nuts off’ (as justin would put it), we watched the game from the comfort of a house party in north pittsburgh rather than going down town in the craziness. popular bar districts in pittsburgh were closed for the game (south side, strip district, station square, oakland..) to allow people to wander the streets and celebrate (or riot) after the game.

people from all around the country came in to pittsburgh just to watch the game here. pittsburgh has a great following, once from pittsburgh, always from pittsburgh. i have friends in California who have found a steelers bar, a friend in Boston who has found one, and Justin and i know of at least three in DC/Balitmore. (as for stats, i think Florida is the #1 place for pittsburghers to move to, DC-Metro #2)

the game was full of ups and down, ill let you read commentary to see the close calls and bad plays from both sides, but overall it was a great game to watch.

the street scene broadcasted to the post-game news was insane. the streets were littered with cheering fans, far from sober but all smiles. luckily most of the streets around the districts were closed as well and would not be opened until 3am, which gave people plenty of time to party (er.. sober up).

im afraid to know what the scene would have been like if we lost. something would have been torn down, set afire, blown up, who knows. but who cares, bettis has a fairy tale ending, the rooney’s have one for the thumb, pittsburgh native coach cowher has a superbowl win, ben is the youngest winning qb in superbowl history, and pittsburgh will be a very happy place to be for a long time.

GO STILLERS! (I is an intentional accent )

seele :: Feb.06.2006 :: General, KDE Dev Blog :: Comments Off