Designing mass-transit support for GNOME Maps

Posted Aug 28, 2016 8:09 UTC (Sun) by liam (guest, #84133)
In reply to: Designing mass-transit support for GNOME Maps by bredelings
Parent article: Designing mass-transit support for GNOME Maps

That the GNOME folks have been that ignorant about standard ux practices just reinforces something that others have been pointing out for years.
designer != UX

Absolutely maddening....

Designing mass-transit support for GNOME Maps

Posted Aug 28, 2016 16:41 UTC (Sun) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (2 responses)

This isn't a story about being ignorant, because everyone starts that way, but about overcoming ignorance by doing appropriate research, which a lot of smart people think they don't have to do because they are competent in one area of expertise and don't recognize when they are outside their zone of knowledge. If you only discuss your software design with a group of people who think similarly they may end up erroneously validating your design by having the same misconceptions, it's by talking to different people that shined light on the gaps in knowledge the developer actually had on the subject and encouraged them to do the research that led to a vastly superior design.

Designing mass-transit support for GNOME Maps

Posted Aug 29, 2016 3:50 UTC (Mon) by liam (guest, #84133) [Link]

The comment is NOT about the story but the events that happen between the "stories".
I'm absolutely glad that some of the GNOME folks have recognized that their preferences shouldn't be the determinant for the resultant user experience,
The issue that I'm referring to is when prior ux testing is, long, ignored.
At least we have Jim Hall who has been acting as a mentor to gsoc students who've been examining GNOME ux the past couple of years in the open.

Book: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

Posted Sep 4, 2016 15:55 UTC (Sun) by qu1j0t3 (guest, #25786) [Link]

Great book about why software in general fails users and how to fix it. Definitely relevant to all products referenced here.

Designing mass-transit support for GNOME Maps

Posted Aug 30, 2016 10:22 UTC (Tue) by andreasn1 (guest, #88420) [Link] (2 responses)

It's not only GNOME, I would say user research is absent in most parts of the free software ecosystem, and to large parts in the entire software industry.
I think that is fixable by more people learning how to do it, and to succeed and fail with it until they start feeling comfortable doing it as part of their regular development process. I'm especially interested in how something like user interviews can be done by all designers and developers on a development team, both to spread the load and to get a shared understanding of the problems facing the people who'll end up using the software in the end.

Designing mass-transit support for GNOME Maps

Posted Sep 1, 2016 13:33 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> It's not only GNOME, I would say user research is absent in most parts of the free software ecosystem, and to large parts in the entire software industry.

Which is why, as a dedicated Free Software user, I feel much more "at home" in the Microsoft world. They do a lot of user research, and it shows. Credit where credit's due.

But they also believe to some extent in a monoculture "one size fits all", and where I don't like the Microsoft Way, I HATE it. Especially when their monoculture attitude destroys the alternatives ...

Cheers,
Wol

Designing mass-transit support for GNOME Maps

Posted Sep 2, 2016 21:53 UTC (Fri) by liam (guest, #84133) [Link]

I know there was once talk about putting together the reqs and tooling needed for user-testing at one of the Boston GNOME or Fedora conferences, but little follow-up occurred.
I know, from those I dealt with, there was a general feeling that there wasn't even much point in doing it (for Fedora or GNOME) because the testing results would be ignored. Rather it, quickly, turned into a discussion about providing the greater floss community with a single resource that explained about the Why for ux "literacy". The main purpose, however, was to provide the means for developers to gather and incorporate data into their projects.
This was, iirc, about three years ago, so the particulars are a bit hazy.