openusability

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 11:31:01 +0300, Jani Monoses wrote:

> Jani Monoses wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > would there be interest on getting specific Xfce apps or even the
> > whole desktop getting checked out by usability people?  I have met
> > Ellen Reitmayr from the Open Usability project and she said that
> > time and resources permitting, they are willing to help out any
> > open source projects that requests their input.
> 
> Rereading my mail, I see no mention at all of 'wasteful effort' or
> 'investing time' on the xfce devs part. It would be just like normal
> user bugreports/feedback on interface issues, only from people who
> actually have studied users and know what most want, and base their
> decision on some experimental data, as opposed to personal taste as it
> often happens with very insistent and vocal users.

This is theory. Have you looked through the project "forums" and
"usability reports"? If there *were* active discussions and frequent
reports this site really might be helpful. But this community is rather
a dead skeleton containing projects interested in usability-related
help but *no* people working on usability reports and bugs. So it's
wasteful effort to take the time to register Xfce, look at this page
frequently and check for new reports just to see that there are none.

Really, I like the idea, but it obviously doesn't work as there are not
enough people interested in working out reports and checking all the
projects regularly.

> The offer was that if Xfce is interested _they_ will invest their time
> (also volunteer work btw) to help. From what I understood this is the
> usual first reaction of various projects so all is not lost ;)

This seems to be a voluntary community. Leaders of this website can't
just *offer* work their community members won't do. Maybe I'm wrong and
they're doing a lot of work for the registered projects - but if so,
this does not happen on openusability.org.

Just to say it again: I'm really not against the concept/idea of that
project, I just don't think it works the way it could.

Regards,
Jannis
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