Re: [Usability]Re: Short article on OSS usability

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

On Fri, 2003-01-31 at 06:17, Michael Toomim wrote:

> Now, is this bad?

None of these things are "bad" and they're certainly better than
nothing.  I suspect the author is mostly venting his frustration at how
they don't match up with how he's used to practising usability in the
design lifecycle of a commerical product.

> - Is it bad to post a screenshot of your program on the usability list 
> and ask for advice?

No, it's not bad.  However, it's a lot better if the screenshot is just
a non-functioning mockup that somebody hasn't invested a lot of time in
effort in, otherwise they're usually less likely to want to radically
change it when the flame^H^H^H^H^Hconstructive criticism starts rolling
in :)

It's also well-recognised that people are less likely to criticise
something that looks "nearly finished".  Whereas if you give them a
pencil and a hand-drawn sketch of the same thing, they're much happier
to scribble their ideas all over it because they feel like they're
contributing right at the start of the design rather than crapping all
over somebody's labour of love.  Which of course they probably are
anyway, but you just have to learn to deal with that :)

Conclusion: posting a hand-drawn sketch or something schematic you've
drawn in dia would probably give usability folks a warmer, fuzzier
feeling than seeing a lot of polished Glade screenshots :)  Particularly
if they were already the result of an iteration or two of asking users
what they thought.

> - Is it bad to offer an educated opinion about what users want?

No, it's not.  But of course it's not as good as what the article author
is used to doing: asking the users themselves.  Or rather, watching them
do their work and then asking them, as the users themselves often don't
really know what they want-- so you can understand why he might regard
the Chinese whisper chain of somebody else telling him what they think
their users want with a little scepticism :)  After all, even if you
speak to the users themselves they have a habit of only telling you what
they think you want to hear...

> - Is it bad to imitate the approach of a major vendor which already puts 
> an enormous amount of effort into perfecting the usability of their 
> approach?

No, it's not bad, provided they really *have* done their homework
(Microsoft Bob, anyone?), and the vendor and the product have the same
target audience as yours, and use the same conceptual models across the
desktop as you do.

Copying Microsoft in particular is always potentially risky, as the
majority of Windoze users probably have little option but to use Windoze
apps whether their UI is good, bad or indifferent.  On the other hand,
people tend to use other desktops by choice, so their popularity is
often a better indication of how usable they are.  (But only for that
particular group of people, of course).

> Or is the author saying that *other* beneficial types of usability 
> discussion are conspcuously absent from our mailing lists?  If so, what 
> kind of discussion would be more useful?

That's the six million dollar question I guess... anybody want to write
and ask him?  :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems