[Usability] User Experience Advocates

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hi all,

A few of us GNOMErs attended a UDS meeting yesterday with the title
'Working Better with Upstream' (or something like that). One interesting
idea that came out of that meeting was of each module/sub-project having
a designated usability/design person. This User Experience Advocate (the
name isn't that important; we don't have to use this name if we don't
like it) would have responsibility for making design and UI decisions,
looking after usability bugs, and would act as a liaison (both across
projects and with downstream) on UI matters.

I think this is a great idea. It would enable us to prioritise user
experience within our development processes and would make it possible
to give those with usability and design expertise a bit more
acknowledgement and responsibility within the project as a whole. It
would also mean that we could have people who have an awareness of
design and usability involved in development decisions.

What do people think of this idea? How could we make it happen? Brian
has suggested that we have a usability BoF at GUADEC: this could be a
good topic to discuss there.

Allan
--
IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org
Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/