Didn’t blog about this at the time as I guessed anyone who was interested would be on the usability list anyway, but in retrospect that’s probably not true so I’ll summarise here as well.
Just prior to the Boston Summit, mostly in response to some prodding from Brian, a few of us started kicking around some ideas for dragging GNOME’s usability activities into the 21st century. General areas for discussion include:
- improving the HIG (e.g. turning it more into a visual pattern library with code samples, with a wordier secondary document for issues that still required it)
- novel ways to gather valid usability data for GNOME (e.g. instrumenting applications, online surveys, remote usability testing via webcam/voip)
- possibility of a Foundation-funded mobile usability lab, similar to the one Máirín demonstrated at the Boston Summit
.
Anyway, if you want to join in the discussion, it’s mostly happening over here.
here is a usability idea. I’m just trying to get some work done on centos which uses gnome. now every time I use the slider to drag to a new position, if the thing is clicked down for maybe more than a couple seconds, it sticks to the slider. now, when I get to the desired location, I have to click twice or I’ll lose my location as the pointer moves off…
now I know it must be settable somewhere, but goddamit if I can find it.
why in the fuck would something so fucking simple not be settable from a goddamned settings bar. There is a whole good goddamned systems menu wasting space up there… then there is the settings … but fuck it if this is over there…
why in the god damned hell, in 2009, do I have to spend more than 20 seconds finding something so fucking trivial as this goddamend Shit!
for fucks sake people! think like the users … and not like someone who’s been with the product for 20 years!
For Fucks Sake