How To Fix the Poor Usability of Free Software 690
flosofl writes "Matthew Paul Thomas has an entry on his blog called Why Free Software Has Poor Usability, And How To Improve It. While this advice is helpful and may indeed lead to improvements in many open source programs, the guidelines may be much more difficult for smaller projects. From the entry, 'Free Software has a long and healthy tradition of "show me the code." But when someone points out a usability issue, this tradition turns into "patches welcome," which is unhelpful since most designers aren't programmers. And it's not obvious how else usability specialists should help out.'" Thomas has been developing the ideas in this essay for years. The critique is comprehensive, listing 15 challenges in the way software projects, and in particular free software projects, are structured, with suggestions for improving each one.
Re:Really a matter of taste... (Score:3, Funny)
We designers have a mantra for that, usually attributed to Henry Ford:
"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."
You may like to ponder that in the light of that statement you made.
Didn't Henry Ford also say: "They can have any color they want as long as its black"?
Re:Usability is a matter of opinion (Score:4, Funny)
I don't want to insult anyone with this, but that whole discussion about who knows what design is "TEH BEST!!!!1one(lim x->0 ((sin x)/x)" is rather stupid. It's based on the logic flaw that there is something absolute in this world.
There isn't.
And that's a good thing.
Now I thought about this quite a bit, and wrote a possible solution to in in my other post [slashdot.org].
Re:Usability is a matter of opinion (Score:2, Funny)
I will call this the "submarine Blender defense"
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Usability is a matter of opinion (Score:5, Funny)
The issue is more general than that. The usability experts who can't code *can* improve usability, by telling the developers what to do.
It's more of an issue of *just* criticising, instead of offering constructive opinions. If all you can do is say "this sucks" but not say why or how it can be improved, then I agree, you have no business in software. If, on the other hand, you can find a way to improve it, I'm sure many people will welcome your advice and implement it.
RE: Bugfix, Usability is a matter of opinion
*WONTFIX*
Usage works for me.
*Ducks and runs*
Re:Usability is not even CLOSE to the problem. :( (Score:3, Funny)
I can't wait to be greeted by a dialog like this:
Level up! You have unlocked the spelling checker.
Re:awesome! (Score:2, Funny)
People don't buy Lotus Notes?
Re:Usability is a matter of opinion (Score:4, Funny)
The issue is more general than that. The usability experts who can't code *can* improve usability, by telling the developers what to do.
It's more of an issue of *just* criticising, instead of offering constructive opinions. If all you can do is say "this sucks" but not say why or how it can be improved, then I agree, you have no business in software. If, on the other hand, you can find a way to improve it, I'm sure many people will welcome your advice and implement it.
RE: Bugfix, Usability is a matter of opinion
*WONTFIX*
Usage works for me.
*Ducks and runs*
Note to self: fork codebase. Send snarky message at 1.0 release. ;)