The GNOME project at 15

Posted Aug 15, 2012 21:38 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (guest, #27950)
In reply to: The GNOME project at 15 by codewiz
Parent article: The GNOME project at 15

The Gnome Foundation could spend some money to run a serious usability study on Gnome Shell, similar to the one that Sun did at the time of Gnome 1 which led to many of the UI changes we saw in 2.x.

I have noticed (only lately) bugs that were filed as a result of usability testing. I asked for details and didn't get any response.. so I can only make assumptions. I'm guessing that a) only limited usability testing have been performed up to now b) it will likely increase as 3.x matures c) there are various things that designers/developers aren't happy with at the moment, so likely the lack of a big test is because things are still not considered to be good enough. There are still various changes being made to existing 3.x functionality; some are hard to notice unless you really follow all the NEWS files, bugs, etc.. or have really great attention to detail).

Some (don't mean Nautilus:P) of the issues people are complaining about are being changed in each newer version of 3.x. However, that is on a 6 month cycle and it sometimes takes multiple cycles to get things right. It seems some people expect changes within days.

On gnome-os-list there is a list of things they want to work really well. I personally would like another big usability study after that. That Sun one was awesome.

Note that various companies used to do usability testing. It was often talked about during conferences (how to setup your own small usability test).