Hi,
Yes.
In brief , there is a need for a common place where user can express/share
their experience. Like Mozilla:- There are many ways to get involved with
Mozilla. You don’t have to be a C++ guru (or even know what that means!)
Approach should be simple enough to encourage users,
Atanu
________________________________
From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tue, 8 December, 2009 4:57:02 PM
Subject: [Usability] Reaching Users
Firstly, I think bugzilla has no place in any discussions of usability. Bugs
are absolute, and bug tracking software is designed for people to report, and
then developers to fix. Usability issues are largely subtle, subjective and
often require some debate. While the bugzilla approach may apply to minor
issues 'Why can't I use my scrollwheel here, etc' it is simply unable to handle
anything that could be considered innovative or new. It is my belief that
bugzilla will never lead to a substantial improvement in software - If you
placed Windows 95 on a bugtracker would it fix the fundamental issues with
usability, security and stability? Architectural and large ranging issues are
simply a bad fit for bug tracking software. It is also intimidating and works
in absolutes, while usability doesn't - it's more of a discussion. I would be
very hesitant to post anything non-trivial to a bugtracker - it's simply not
the place.
Secondly, and ironically, there is no greater divide in the software community
between developers and users than in the FOSS community. While most closed
source, commercial software has various easy ways for users to give feedback,
Linux doesn't.
Barrier 1: The majority of Linux distro's (Ubuntu and Suse to name two) have no
place on their forum for discussing ideas or engaging the community - it is all
one sided 'support'. There are plenty of forums for discussing how to get your
sound card working, but nowhere for discussing a way to make fixing it yourself
simpler.
Barrier 2: The lack of any feedback forums above is understandable in context.
The main distro's package the upstream apps and release them - they are not
directly responsible for problems in Gnome's etc codebase. As a result there
is no real way of knowing who made or maintains which program or module to
suggest improvements to. Identifying and reporting anything non-trivial is in
itself non-trivial. Unless you want to blog about it, there is largely no
venue for feedback.
Thirdly, there seems very few systems designed to engage such users at the
developer end. As a developer myself there seems to be nowhere to go to
discuss such issues. I was hoping that given the 'community contributed'
nature there would be pages of free-flowing ideas and discussions, but if there
is I can't find it and I am sure neither could the majority of other people.
It seems the nexus point for Gnome usability discussions is a near-dead
mailinglist.
Windows Vista was pretty rubbish, I am sure there is no debate over this fact.
Windows 7 is pretty damn good and a worthy successor to XP, and the reason that
it is so good is because the massive backlash of hate and criticism of Vista
(by an audiance largely looking to find fault) gave them a massive list of key
issues to address. I would place good money on the fact that if Vista was well
recieved, 7 would not have been anywhere as good as it is now.
Free software though, as stated above, has no real outlet for users to speak
their mind about problems. The community is largely self censoring (as who
would complain about free food?) and the people who are not happy with the
software largely just go back to Windows/OSX. I always feel that the opinions
of 1 unhappy customer is more useful than the opinions of 100 happy ones, but
the Linux community in general consists entirely of 'happy ones' - everyone who
is unhappy just leaves, rather than sticks around and tries to change things.
Before any real progress can be made on usability and improving the marketshare
of Gnome (and Linux as a result) these issues should largely be addressed.
Users need a place to say why they don't like something without being called
idiots or trolls. There is very little point in having a community contributed
OS that the community cannot contribute to. Most users can contribute ideas
after all, but few can contribute code - which seems to be the sole focus.
Flame away!
_______________________________________________
Usability mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage.
http://in.yahoo.com/_______________________________________________
Usability mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
