[dot] Usability Events at aKademy 2005

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1125757722/

From: Celeste Paul <seele at obso1337.org>
Dept: lets-make-this-user-friendly dept.
Date: Saturday 03/Sep/2005, @09:28

Usability Events at aKademy 2005
================================

   Usability has grown over the year since the last aKademy. During the
Coding Marathon portion of the conference, the KDE-Usability group gave
several presentations and tutorials so developers can learn more about
usability, and get live usability support while they hacked away. It was
a great success and there were a lot of great bug fixes completed during
the weekend. The following is a summary of the presentations and
tutorials from the conference.
    Usability experts [http://static.kdenews.org/jr/usability.jpg] Ellen
and Jan (sitting) with core developers Dirk and Kulow
     Usability has grown over the year since the last aKademy. During
the Coding Marathon portion of the conference, the KDE-Usability group
gave several presentations and tutorials so developers could learn more
about usability and get live usability support while they hacked away.
It was a great success and there were a lot of great bug fixes completed
during the weekend. The following is a summary of the presentations and
tutorials from the conference.

     Report on KDE Usability

     There was a brief report on the major usability work which has been
done over the past year. There have been several reports and tests done
for various applications as well as bug fixes. Major work has been done
on Kontact, KMail, KPDF, and many other applications.

     BoF Human Interface Guidelines

     The usability section of the HIG has made slow progress over the
past year. After speaking with developers, we found that they would like
more technical code examples in the document, as well as more
explanations about concepts. There are also grey areas as to how we
would like the interface to look and react to the user and we need more
community feedback. We are currently coordinating with some developers
to collect code examples and technical information.

     Exercise Usability Methods: Personas by Tina Trillitzsch and
Florian Graessle

     Tina and Florian presented a tutorial on how to build personas
using KDissert. Personas are a good way to get to know who your users
are, and to determin who is your number 1 user you should be designing
for.

     Live Usability Test: KDissertby Ellen Reitmayr

     El demonstrated a live usability test with KDissert, showing
developers one of the methods we use to discover and address usability
issues. It was a very good test which found several issues with the
behaviour of KDissert and allowed the developers to discuss solutions to
the problems.

     Usability Research: Alternatives to the KMenu by Celeste Paul

     Celeste collected and presented research information related to
some of the issues with the KMenu. She gave developers background
information in recent research in information management, information
retrieval and menu design. Additionally, she applied this research to
the KMenu, explaining the good and bad things about it. There were also
some suggestions for reworking the KMenu and replacement applications
based on her findings.

     Exercise Usability Methods: Paper Prototyping by Tina Trillitzsch
and Florian Graessle

     Tina and Florian presented a hands-on demonstration with developers
on how paper prototyping can save interface development time and
discover usability issues early on in development. Several developers
participated in the exercise and performed on-the-fly paper prototyping
tests with each other.