[Sigia-l] Marketing vs. design

[Stewart Dean]

On 22/11/05 8:56 pm, "Listera" <listera at rcn.com> wrote:

> Open source has had terrific opportunities to carve out several beachheads
> out of the Photoshop empire, with superior design and usability and without
> having to worry about Photoshop's massive userbase and commercial
> obligations. That opportunity, I'm afraid, cannot be fulfilled by
> repackaging GIMP, as Robertson proposes with his CompareX series. Give us
> better not more/less of the same in a different package!

Totally agree with you on this one. I obviously have to say than a better
user experience (which is more than usability and design) can make a product
or bit of software a must have item as opposed to something well engineered
but overly complex.

In my view the way open source software is produced makes creating a
holistic user experience very difficult as that design process is best
centralised to ensure consistency as opposed to the decentralised philosophy
of open source. Adding a UI on top of an existing App can solve many
problems but cannot shift the basic structure of the application.

Repackaging open source software is, to use a common phrase, putting
lipstick on a sow. 

I also think trying to make open source 'as good as' commercial software is
a path to failure as not all commercial software comes with the best user
experience. The latest version of Photoshop is a bit better than the last
but it feels like every version of office I've used has got slightly more
muddled and confused. User interface items are grafted on rather than
integrated. It takes a brave team to think 'okay - it's now 2005, if we
start from scratch how would we create a word processor?' - only a few can
do that, and they are either folks like Apple or open source teams.

I would love to see a fully speced out an open office type suite and fully
working prototype created before a single line of the actual final
application is written!

Stewart Dean