Re: Triaging ui-review, HIG, usability keywords

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Sat, 2002-11-23 at 15:10, Andrew Sobala wrote:
> On Sat, 2002-11-23 at 19:56, David Kennedy wrote:
> > Some of these questions relate to the thread Ben started, but I'm not
> > sure how to interpret what was said there. Some concrete examples might
> > help the discussion.
> > 
> > 
> > I've come across a few reports regarding HIG violations - dialogs which
> > aren't instant apply, things like that. Should their severity be
> > adjusted acording to how big a violation, and how prominent the program
> > is?
> > 
> 
> It should really be how much of a problem it is with the application,
> rather than problem with obeying the HIG. Most usability bugs would be
> minor/trivial. The HIG is a set of guidelines, not rules, and severity
> is a measure of how big the usability problem is with the application.

Well put.

> > And how often should the usability keyword be used? It seems like any
> > feature request is going to have a usability keyword.
> 
> No. The usability keyword is for usability bugs - not "things I would
> like most in this program" - which in turn are not normally feature
> requests/enhancements.

Yup. The other decent rule of thumb is that it doesn't apply to _bugs_-
i.e., 'if this were not broken the app would be more usable' should not
get a usability keyword.

> > And any bug with
> > HIG, keynav or accessibility could have usability as well.
> 
> Yes, maybe they should always :)

HIG and usability... /probably/. keynav/a11y are almost always 'just'
bugs, and fall into the last case I mentioned.

> > The keyword
> > description can be interpreted to be pretty broad - I'm not sure if that
> > was the intention.

It's certainly not clear, but I'm not sure how to make it more so.
Probably the two rules of thumb we just enunciated should go into the
guide. [Does anyone have a copy of that they could send me? Aschwin's
web site seems to be down, and I'd like to give it some thought while
traveling this weekend.]

Luis