Report: KDE at Comdex

Posted Nov 25, 2003 10:48 UTC (Tue) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link]

Accessibility

Does it work with "assisted technology": stuff like screen readers and voice input? Does it work without a mouse where appropriate? Can "large print, high clarity" themes be applied across the desktop environment?

The subtext is "can it be used by disabled people?" If the answer is no, and KDE is put into a place where people are expected to use it, you're discriminating against the disabled.

Usability

This is usually measured by "grab a bunch of potential users and see how long it takes them to do certain tasks", and potentially how enjoyable they found it (which, of course, is subjective, and harder to measure).

Often these users will be new users: sometimes they'll be users who have used the product for a while.

For example, most new users don't know that Konqueror is a web browser, so they can't complete the "open a web site" task unless the install actually has "Konqueror web browser" as a description somewhere. Or they take too long to add a horizontal rule in Open Office because they find the icons confusing.

More experienced users can alert you to places where the metaphor is inconsistent: "why can't I just drag this here?" Unfortunately, users with Windows exposure will expect KDE to work the same way, even if there is a better and different KDE way.

A while back, Sun did a usability study on Gnome, which shows a lot of these points.

Obviously, better usability for new users seriously cuts down the cost of cross-training existing business users and training new ones, and it gets them productive faster. For a large business rolling out Linux, this represents a lot of money.

By comparison, this is the Gnome accessibility checklist.

Sorry both these examples are Gnome, but they were the two closest examples to hand. The Gnome project has spent a lot of time and thought on these issues.

James.