22 March, 2009

usability in KDE

I'm not a usability dude, and following the usability mailinglist has taught me it's an art I shouldn't get too involved in. Unfortunately, while we have a few hard-working usability experts in KDE, they can't thoroughly check each and every application.

Luckily, we have users joining KDE from a platform known for a strong focus on usability. I'm not saying we should copy the approach others have chosen for usability. KDE is different and has different ideas about usability - enough has been said about that. However, advice never hurts - and there are several points in this blogpost that make sense. The contents have been discussed a bit on the usability mailinglist, and as I said - several points make sense, others might not. Yet Sebastian's blog might be helpful for somebody who wants to improve some obvious areas in KDE in terms of usability, so I thought it'd be good if ppl read it.

Personally I think such articles (I can hardly call it the usual blog) can help in improving KDE, as they point to issues and solutions developers might not have been aware off. Peter Penz (of Dolphin fame) has read it and implemented at least one suggestion, while several others were already done in KDE 4.3 branch. Who's next?

4 comments:

  1. I totally agree with you. Constructive criticism is always good, especially when it comes to usability.

    Thank you for heading me in the direction of that blog post :)

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  2. I also totally agree, Kde needs to get to a public mass like OSX does(yes... they really know about usability!)

    Kde should be used by normal user, try to think in a no geek user profile

    Kde needs a refinied desktop envioroment without too much eye candy (a really professional look) and stable rock system.

    Marco

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  3. KDE really needs some usability love... It's true that it lags way behind GNOME in terms of usability...

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  4. Thank you very much for pointing to this article. It's nice to see people showing up with constructive critisism as Sebastian did! IMHO he made some pretty good points.

    go KDE!

    Neil

    ReplyDelete

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