Re: [Usability] Special Open Source Issue of Interactions Magazine

[Lennart Borgman <lennart borgman 073 student lu se>]

Hi Jonathan,

I am not going to contribute because I am not an expert in this area. 
But could you please also look at accessibility at the same time. 
Accessibility is difficult and it seems to me that it often get 
overriden by some personal usability style. This is very unfortunate.

Microsoft has been a proponent for accessibility and sometimes they have 
listen well and done it good. Now I am sitting here with XP (I need it, 
unfortunately and my latest test of GNU/Linux led to a reinstall of 
everything - those small little details...). What I see is that 
Microsoft has recently done the same mistake. The latest Windows Media 
Player is more good looking than accessible. Bah! Why do they hire that 
kind of kids that can't keep enough details in their head to do both 
things - both a nice and accessible GUI.

Well, that is the story in my opinion. It seems like when things gets 
complicated then accessibility is forgotten. It simply makes it simpler.

That is my belief of course. That the developers or perhaps rather the 
managers are not good enough. It could be worse. It could be that they 
do not care. It could be that the time lines are so short that they do 
not care about accessibility. And that is worse!

Antoher of my favorites when it comes to usability is my frustration 
about the continous wheel inventing. One time when I installed GNU/Linux 
everything went very, very fine -- until I should login and start using 
it. I had no mouse on that system. I tried Ctrl-Esc, the Window Keys, 
Ctrl-Alt-Del and everything else I learned from my MS Windows 
experience. Nothing of it worked.

I never got to test GNU/Linux on that system because of that. Too much 
waste of time. Of mine and a lot of good developers that had worked hard 
to get the system to me. It all failed because of that reinvention of 
the wheel. Was it Alt+F2 that I should have hit? I am not sure, but I 
believed I heard that a month later. However I do not care, I do not 
want to learn that. Why should I? Instead I tried to get my point 
through to the developers and usability groups working with GNOME: Try 
to let the user use their experience. Even if they have experiences from 
the big EVIL MS. Do not bannish the users for their experience. That is 
just not the way forward!

Best wishes,
L


Jonathan Arnowitz wrote:
> Hello,
>  
> I am the co-editor in chief for Interactions Magazine, the leading 
> magazine for HCI (and the membership magazine for ACM/SIGCHI). We wanted 
> to have a special section on Usability and Open Source software. We are 
> particularly interested in best practices, challenges and experiences 
> and case studies in making software with a good user experience as well 
> as open source.  If you think you might be interested in contributing, 
> please contact me at j s arnowitz acm org <mailto:j s arnowitz acm org>.
>  
> Best regards,
>  
> Jonathan Arnowitz
> co-Editor-in-Chief, Interactions Magazine
>
> Co-Author, Effective Prototyping for Software Makers
> Now Available from Morgan Kaufman www.mkp.com/prototyping 
> <http://www.mkp.com/prototyping>
>
> j s arnowitz acm org <mailto:j s arnowitz acm org>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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