Re: Prioritiy for UI issues?

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Tue, 2002-11-19 at 09:34, Ben FrantzDale wrote:
> This is meant as a discussion starter.
> (This is not a flame about deprioritizing bugs I've opened.)
> 
> Many times I have opened bugs on usability issues. These are usually
> things that I, as an experienced computer user, was unable to figure out
> without asking someone. These bugs are always marked as "enhancements".
> 
> My question: Is there such thing as a "normal", "major", or worse UI bug
> where the program works as intended but that intention is usable only to
> the person who designed it?
> 
> I think the answer is yes, but I have no idea how that can be decided.
> In my limited experience designing UIs, it is the designer who is least
> capable of being objective about the interface, yet in bugzilla, it is
> usually the maintainer who gets to decide what severity a bug is.
> 
> Any thoughts?

You've touched on a subject that I've gone back and forth with both Seth
and Bill Haneman (of the accessibility team) on. 

What this boils down to is 'can the usability team tell maintainers what
to do.' Because, to a certain extent, that's what priority /is/. If
that's /not/ what it is, then it's useless to the maintainers.

I have worked very, very hard to make sure that when I set priorities,
maintainers know why I'm doing things and trust my evaluation. As a
result, maintainers rarely over-rule my priority judgements, and they
are willing to do what I (implicitly) ask them to do via my
prioritization. 

For better or for worse, the usability and accessibility teams have not
made similarly successful efforts (or much of an effort at all) to
convince maintainers that their judgement is important and valid.

So... that leads us to the current situation. Basically, the maintainers
are all volunteers, to a certain extent or another. If you're a
volunteer, and other people who you don't agree with set priorities,
then you don't do them. And if you don't do them, pretty soon they
become next to useless. So... maintainers have and always will have veto
power over prioritization, as long as either they are (1) volunteers or
(2) I'm at all involved in GNOME.

Now, I think we probably need a 'parallel' prioritization system, so
that usability, accessibility, etc. can set and (more importantly) track
their own high-priority items. But when it comes down to it, only people
who the maintainer trusts and agrees with can set the main priority, and
the maintainer can always override. 

I understand why some members of the usability team want to dictate
importance. But I think I've proved over the past ten months that it is
much better for maintainers to trust your judgement and work with them.
Usability in GNOME will not succeed in the long run unless that is the
approach usability chooses to take.

Hope that answers the question, Ben-
Luis