[Sigia-l] Open Source Usability -- curable?

[Listera]

Laurie Gray:

> One possible solution to this problem might be the creation of standards
> groups to help guide Open Source developers. Perhaps style guides or design
> guidelines would help. Then again, I have seen a certain renegade mentality
> in the Open Source community and there is a strong possibility that such
> standards would be disregarded. In any event, the creation of such bodies
> would need to be voluntary and somewhat "open source" as well, I think.

OS, at some point, will have to make a concerted effort for higher
visibility on the desktop. From IBM to Novell, there'll likely be corporate
sponsors for this effort. As such, it represents a significant potential
growth area for designers of information/interface/interaction/usability/etc
at the operating system, applications and web support areas.

Currently, the process is entirely programmer-driven. (The article was
complaining about UI designers not being able to keep up with continuous CVS
commits as the app progresses, as if UI design happens at that level.) So
there's a legitimate question as to whether an entirely programmer-driven
process can ever be cured for usability. Is that, in fact, the Achilles'
heel of the OS movement? On the other hand, there are people on this list
who think UI/usability is an "engineering science" and "it doesn't depend".
:-)

Ziya
Nullius in Verba