Draft specifications for OpenUsability.org

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On Sunday 29 February 2004 16:17, Jan Muehlig wrote:
>
> finally we found the time and peace of mind to write down what we
> think is needed to bring OSS developers and usability people
> together. Most of the thoughts were developed during Castle times and
> the subsequent discussions. You can find it at:
> http://www.linux-usability.de/download/Draft_OpenUsability.pdf

I had a look at www.openusability.org and it already looks great. Some 
of the action of the first round described in the draft seem to already 
be done. That's good so we can proceed to get something done.

One comment about the assumptions 1.) of the draft: I think you would 
gain better acceptance by programmers if you don't assume that 
programmers aren't capable of performing usability tests. That could be 
seen as one variant of the prejudice between programmers and usability 
people, that programmers have no clue about usability.

> Another issue is that the draft does not limit the scope to KDE, but
> to OSS. The reason why I think we should label it OpenUsability is
> that it is (again) more accessible for usability people (an
> alternative label/URL could be UseForge.org).

In my view OpenUsability is the perfect title for this project.

> Nevertheless I think that KDE is (one of) the most active OSS
> projects with respect to usability. Hence I hope that KDE maintainers
> and the whole usability group of KDE take the platform as a neutral
> ground which can be easility integrated into KDE development.

Is the portal already ready for content being added? I was missing the 
usability reports Ellen posted a couple of days ago there. Does it 
already make sense to register and add project information? I would 
like to add something about KOrganizer and Kontact.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>