No, not just yet! ;)

[Jason Bainbridge]

Ayup, a good ole Requirements Specification is what I'm thinking of. :-) The requirements have to be gathered firstly though...

I like the concept of the Usage scenario as well, I'm currently doing the at work whilst the boss isn't watching thing so I can't go into much detail but I generally think that any kind of analysis is a good idea.

I might ask the sysadmin's if we can get a cvs module setup that everyone can submit any documents and what not to, along with a cron job to refresh it onto one of the servers at a frequent interval. That way we can centralise it all and make use of the version control as well. Is this a good idea? If so I'll send a quick request off. 

Regards,
Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Ellsworth <whalesuit at softhome.net>
To: kde-usability at mail.kde.org
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 21:37:23 -0700 
Subject: Re: No, not just yet! ;)

On Tuesday 22 October 2002 8:58 pm, Jason Bainbridge wrote:
> I am planning to start semi-formally gathering requirements for the new
> design and look at it as a real life project using the proper methodologies
> as I think this has been one of the major problems with the way things have
> been developing.
Glad to hear it.  What you propose sounds to me like a spec.  I thoroughly 
support writing a spec for the website - especially as it might help the 
usability team establish some practices in this regard - and, I will 
hopefully improve my own spec-writing skills through the discussions.

> I will be doing my best to trawl through
> past mailing list posts and recording anything that is usable as a
> requirement, but not any of the "I like this one better" comments unless
> there is a reason given that can be used as a requirement.

Excellent idea.  Perhaps you can post a summary of this trawling to the 
usability.kde.org?

> I think this step backwards is going to end up being a huge step forward in
> the long run, we shouldn't be rushing into anything as when you rush you
> make mistakes.

Yes.  I also think this is a good opportunity to think about KDE's interaction 
with people outside of the tech community.  The project would be well served 
by making clear information about itself readily available.

> Eric's analysis is a perfect example of the kind of stuff we need so it is
> a good starting point to expand upon as suggested by Irwin.

Can I suggest set up some usage scenarios, act them out, and review the 
results?  And also decide roughly how many usage scenarios we need to cover a 
reasonable cross section of people?

Attached is a usage scenario as I've described.  Please let me know if you 
think this is useful.  Likewise, if someone could post this to the web for 
review, dissection, and modification, it would be much appreciated

Cheers,

Eric