Open source user experience

[Michael Rudolph]

2009/2/18 Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org>:
> On Tuesday 17 February 2009, Michael Rudolph wrote:
>> So we could just be happy that everybody likes us (well, besides
>> ourselves, designers seem to like us :-), but we could also think
>> about some kind of outreach program, with which we try to bring both
>> cultures closer together. Basically what the user council does for
>> users and developers.

Hello everyone,

first of all I should perhaps note, that openusability has of course
also been mentioned in that IxDA thread. So although you seem to be a
little sobered regarding your involvement with KDE Celeste, a lot of
what you do is on the map of a lot of people. And I think the only
thing that's missing is, just as you noted yourself: we need to make
these efforts sustainable, make it so designers can come and go
without impacting a project too much, just as programmers can come and
go.

> what would such an outreach program look like in your mind?

Puh, tough question.

One thing I had thought about is My Dream App
(http://mydreamapp.com/). A competition run by a bunch of Mac
developers. They invited people to share ideas for their dream
applications and over many rounds had the "best design" crowd-sourced,
with corrections and refinements happening along the way. During the
final stages the developers sided with the remaining designers
(perhaps to bring some sense of technical feasibility to the designs
:-) and in a final round a winner was awarded. First prize being
having your dream app developed.

I didn't keep too close an eye on the developments there, but I think
they failed. (they started shortly before Leopard came out, so they
wanted to wait for all the cool new features and start development
only after it was released, but in the process of waiting lost all the
momentum they had picked up) (by the way, just looking at all the
initial entries might be a nice inspiration, especially now that SoC
is around the corner: http://mydreamapp.com/contestants/ :-)

I'm not sure that we can or should copy them, but a couple of aspects
of My Dream App seem to be at least noteworthy. (1) A competition is
not an ideal format, because of its one off nature, but it's an
excellent way to get some attention. (2) Furthermore doing iterative
development in the open fits nicely with what we do with code already.
They used blogs to publish mockups and the comment-feature to discuss
those mockups. They also posted questions and design problems to "the
community" to ask for help. Looking at the progress some of the dream
apps made, this procedure can work. (3) Using blogs as communication
tools imposes some form of hierarchy, that we are not used to in
traditional open source development. Or so it may seem. So far talk is
cheap in OSS land, because all that counts is code (talk to the ML,
the VCS won't listen anymore :-). For design "mere talk" is much more
important, so having the tools to not let "talk" get out of hand, like
it can happen on mailing lists, might even be an asset.

> honestly, we're lacking a couple of critical tools to really start bringing
> designers in en masse; plasmate is a step towards addressing that, but
> certainly can't/won't be the whole answer.

I agree with you. Although I'm not really sure what tools exactly
would be needed. Should I just try to create a stencil set for
inkscape with all (or many) of the common widgets? Or wouldn't a
simplified version of Qt Designer be better suited? Or would actually
both solutions be detrimental? Since I agree with Aza Raskin, that
there can be such a thing as a "toolkit straitjacket", a "controlled
nothingness" might be the best starting point, because it allows you
to design more in terms of the problem you try to solve than in terms
of the tools you have.

Another thing that might be important: we should have a "My Dream
Designer" competition first, so we together have a clearer
understanding of what we actually expect from a designer :-)

So clearly no definitive answers here, but perhaps some ideas to keep
the ball rolling. What do you think?

michael