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Usability and Open Source Software
Posted by
michael
on Thu Dec 05, 2002 04:32 PM
from the click-and-drag dept.
from the click-and-drag dept.
Martin Soto writes "This article by two user interaction researchers, discusses many of the usability problems in current open source projects. The nice part is that, unlike many /. readers, it doesn't stop there, but goes into suggesting novel (at least for the OSS community) approaches to cope with those problems in an open source compatible way. Worth a read to those that, like me, still think that OSS should find its way to every desktop computer."
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next up! (Score:2, Funny)
Coming up next on slashdot: Sexual experience and Linux!
Under Government Control +1, Insightful (Score:2, Funny)
OSS will be allowed only under the auspices of Total Information Awareness [whitehouse.org] as the Amerikan people are drafted into the [mnftiu.cc]
War on Everything
Thank you and have a nice weekend.
Re:Under Government Control +1, Insightful (Score:2, Interesting)
Never shall the two meet.... (Score:5, Funny)
Full details are available by reading the source code.
Thank you.
Re:Never shall the two meet.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought it was just a distribution problem), and since so many people here on Slashdot rave about Debian I thought I'd give it a try. Especially since PGI(progenies graphical installer) is now 1.0.
So I actually bought a CD burner from E-bay for the sole purpose of burning the new debian-woody-pgi ISO to a CD so I could install debian. The drive arrived 2 days ago, and works like a charm. I burned the ISO to disk yesterday, and tried the install 3 times before I could even get the installer to start(My router has DHCP enabled, but for some reason the installer couldn't find it). Then X wouldn't run because the PGI ISO has ancient drivers(I have a GeForce4). But I had a command line right?...just ftp and get the drivers, np. Except ftp doesn't work. I can't even ping(yes, I did a remote install...which worked fine! guess debian just forgot how to connect after it installed...*sigh*). So then I tried using the other box (Suse) to write the drivers to a floppy and then copy them to the Debian install. Except...well...after 2 hours of trying to figure out how to mount the floppy drive I find out that I can't write to the floppy because I need to format it in ext2. Fine (grrr)
I use google and find the fdformat command and format the disk...except...that doesn't work either(for whatever reason). So fine, I'll just remove the Geforce 4 and swap in my old SIS card, do the install, then get the drivers and re-configure X. Sure that will work(30 mins later) X starts! Then I switch over to my Suse box to search around for HOWTO's etc (I use a KVM switch to share the monitor) and when I switch back, my mouse no longer works...and niether does the webbrowser.
After about 10 hours of this I just lost it. I have wiped the disk, and am now in the process of installing windows on both machines. I will probably never use linux again.
Don't get me wrong, I love using Mozilla and Open Office, and a few other open-source apps. They are superior to the Microsoft alternatives(and free as in beer!). But they are on my machine first and foremost because installing/configuring them was a breeze.
-Signed
A repenting Linux Zealot
Parent
Re:Never shall the two meet.... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, yes you will. This failure will stick in your craw. It will tug at the corners of your conscousness. Eventually - perhaps when you read about an interesting tid-bit in a new distro release, you will be drawn in again to redeem yourself.
Parent
Re:Never shall the two meet.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Modded as Funny, and rightfully so, but there's so much truth to what he's saying. This is what happened to me. I first installed Red Hat in 1997; I reformatted the partition about 12 hours later. Since then, I've re-installed Linux (on average) about twice a year. Each time, I stuck with it a little longer. Why? Because each time:
1. The installation process got a little smoother.
2. I learned a little more about this beast Linux and how it does things. This is akin to that "tugging" mentioned in the parent post.
3. There was a little more I could *do* in Linux. In other words, applications kept accumulating.
4. Microsoft just kept pushing me.
In the end ("the end" being about 6 months ago) it was the convergence of these factors that finally led to my full-time adoption of Linux at home. When MS started talking about their licensing plans for Windows XP, I made a resolution that Windows 2000 would be the last Microsoft OS I ever installed, and that I'd move myself over to Linux at home.
Sure enough, almost as if on schedule, Linux had finally reached the point where it did at least 75% of what I needed for day-to-day computing. For those things it still didn't do, there was WINE, WineX, and VMWare.
(I'll resist the urge to end this like a "Switch" ad...
Parent
Re:Never shall the two meet.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Never shall the two meet.... (Score:4, Informative)
"The Rhapsody system [precursor to OS X] has been in development since Apple bought Next Computer in December 1996" [1]
"So I started the GNOME project at that point in August 1997" [Miguel De Icaza, 2]
So not only was OS X started well before GNOME, it was based on NextStep, arguable a more solid foundation for a desktop than Linux and X. Of course, Mac OS X was released on March 24th, 2001 [3], nearly 5 years after it was allegedly begun, not "A couple of years."
I don't see why you're so quick to write off OSS.
Erik
[1] http://www.aessf.org/newsletters/may98.pdf [aessf.org]
[2] http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/gnome-history.
[3] http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/01q2/macos-x-f
Parent
The reason Apple could do this... (Score:3)
One of the problem with an OSS operating system like Linux, is that all of the components come from different projects and different places. These different projects all have different goals, different levels of maturity, and different degrees of momentum and ability/inability to change.
Sure, there is some cooperation among groups, and the level of usability and integration does improve slowly, though often not until nudged along by a big player like Red Hat. For example, take fonts. To get a font to work in most versions of linux, the font has to be separately installed into all of the various components that may need the font, for example X and Ghostscript, and because of the lack of a consistent API, many apps, such as StarOffice, require yet their own installation of fonts. Efforts are finally being made to integrate this mess, but progress is slow and usually involves creating yet another piece of "glue" software to tie the pieces together instead of making the projects all change to use a common system.
In the end, with OSS, there is no authority that can say to all the components "get this shit integrated, and do it in a consistent way".
Now, before you flame me, yes, this has good aspects as well - there will be more innovation because more ways to do something will be tried, and one project doesn't necessarily have to be hampered by some bad decision made by another project. But it does unfortunately have the downside that usability and integration suffer.
Apple, on the other hand, would have been blithering idiots to allow three or four different parts of their OS to use some wildly different font system. If they did, they would have been laughed out of existance by the same people who praise this kind of behaviour in OSS projects.
Re:Never shall the two meet.... (Score:5, Insightful)
My very first Linux install was with a purchased copy of RedHat 6.0. Even then I was impressed at how well it worked. Literally 30 minutes from CD in the drive to a working desktop getting on the net.
Later, I ran a Suse 8.0 install. This one had some problems with the drive which required a low level format from an OEM utility. After that, I was again extremely impressed with both the presentation and functionality of the installer.
I can honestly say the same for Mandrake as well.
I have other issues with all of these that keep me using FreeBSD, which doesn't have the same super-slick installer, but provides for many other benefits. Even still, I managed to get it installed and working properly on the first try without anywhere near the kinds of problems you had.
I suppose the appropriate response here would be to illustrate the many frustrating hours fighting various Windows installs that didn't play nice due to a variety of reasons. How many folks here intuitively knew about the F6 trick to get SCSI loaded properly for NT? How about changing out a motherboard from underneath an already installed system. Oh yeah, Windows just loves that!
Why just pick on Windows though? I've run into all kinds of interesting glitchies with Mac OS 9 and X in the past. Various formating gotchas, or extension conflict finding sucking away the hours.
Go have yourself a visit on any newsgroup or mailing list for OS tech support. All of them have horror stories or odd gotchas that impact every darn thing out there. Coming up with one for Linux is hardly that noteworthy, escpecially when the vast majority of folks are able to get their installs to work properly.
Parent
Re:Never shall the two meet.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, I call bullshit. Tens of thousands of other people have performed the task, but they did not do it with "little or no trouble" unless they already had significant knowledge of Debian. Nobody has little or no trouble the first time the install Debian. I've been using Linux since 0.99pl14 and I've written a miniscule portion of the code in the kernel, and I _hate_ installing Debian, but do so because after I install it I feel that I have installed a system which contains only the things I want (i.e. thinnest possible system).
Any corporate entity I talk to I steer way clear of Debian because their tech people would use it to deride linux as completely unusable. RedHat and Mandrake are much easier. In the time it took me to get 1 good Debian install, I could have installed Mandrake 4 times.
Parent
Losers who don't understand computers. (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right. Math and computer skills are absolutely necessary for everyday life just like reading and writing, although perhaps not to the exact same degree. Similarly, and increasingly as time passes, they are essential skills to being an informed citizen (who votes with his or her rights) and consumer (who votes with his or her wallet). Anyone without a solid understanding of computers and digital information is set up to lose out big time.
Now I am going to have to make room in my big ass loser bag for people who are unable to install linux.
BZZT! Wrong. You need to make room in your big ass loser bag for yourself and anyone else who understands technology. When there is a widespread ignorance of and resistance to using Free software, everyone loses. The existance Palladium itself is not a threat to the survival of OSS and the freedom of information; however, the result of combining a cleverly devised public key crypography scheme, terrible legislation like the DMCA, and a bunch of ignorant, sheep-like users is that the universal perception of information is perverted into something false and harmful. You may see that, "If you can see it, you can copy it," is a basic principle of the physics of information, but with enough experience with commercial software and DRM "solutions", I can guarantee you the average consumer can be convinced otherwise.
There are two ways you can approach this problem:
1. People are too stupid and lazy to migrate en masse to free software. Since people won't switch, everyone's screwed.
2. Free software, on the whole, is not usable enough to tempt the average user or create large numbers of converts. Unless software gets easier to use in the near future, everyone's screwed.
If you go with #1, you give up all your power to correct our disasterous course towards unbeatable proprietary domination of the software market. You lose. Please step into the bag. If you go with #2, the opposite happens. You may not be able to change the way everyone thinks, but you sure can develop usable software. When you bitch and complain about how incredibly stupid people are, you pull yourself and everyone else away from a constructive solution to the very problem that irritates you. When you realize what you DO have the ability to accomplish, you are empowered.
Help make newbies comfortable. Help save your future.
Re:Never shall the two meet.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and for its intended audience, that is highly usable: it's concise, it's easy to automate, it can be typed quickly, it works through ssh, and you can talk people through it over the phone.
The "usability" alternative is something like this:
For end-users who don't know what they are doing, I suppose clicking around provides at least some entertainment, even if it's a waste of time. For expert users--people who have to use this stuff every day--however, even a cryptic command line beats the UI any day.
Parent
Lusers Reference! (Score:4, Funny)
Eric S. Raymond and Guy L. Steele, 1991. The New Hacker's Dictionary. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
For any of you writing a paper (not an article as the story says), you can actually refer to 'lusers' and sound learned.
Too many wheels (Score:5, Insightful)
X has had a succession of user interface projects, most of which have been open, including Athena, OpenWindows, CDE/Motif (closed), OpenStep (Sun had a closed version from NeXT bundled with Solaris at one point, and there's GNUStep - open), Enlightenment, KDE, GNOME, XCFE, etc. Some of these are great losses that they weren't further developed or didn't take off, OpenWindows is a good example.
Every time one gets close to maturing, either it rests on laurels it arguably doesn't have, or it gets taken over by the be-like-Windows-mob, or it loses people to other projects, or it just gets too proprietry to be usable.
Re:Too many wheels (Score:5, Interesting)
I kind of get the impression that in cases like that, more development is put into making an interface pretty (woo! Anti-aliased fonts!) than into easing work-flow.
The problem is that programmers are not interface designers. Maybe bringing artists into the OSS world would improve this situation. I'm not saying this because artists can make things pretty. I'm saying this because an artist's job is to convey an idea, not pick a pretty color scheme. There are things you need to expose in any given interface, and it sometimes takes a right-brained mind to find the best way to visually communicate to the user what functionality is available.
So here's the question: How do you get artists involved in an OSS project? I'll tell you what got me interested: Star Control 2. There was a Slashdot story a few days ago about Star Control 2 being made available under GPL. When I went to go check it out, I found a community of SC2 fans who have created a bunch of artwork. I'm really enamored with that game, and it occured to me that I could make some artwork for them and they might just use it in the game! That'd be a great accomplishment for me. I hope that serves as an example of how to lure artists into a project like that.
Parent
Re:Too many wheels (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you should be bringing in interface designers? I'm in both the developer and design scene. I can tell you that most artist type designers are just as bad (if not worse) when I comes to usability.
A good interface designer is hard to find, because they need to be both strong in both left and right brain. To put it another way, they need to understand the modularity of design elements, how they should work, have a good understanding of the whole UI, a good understanding of things like information architecture and psychology, and well as keep it aesthetically pleasing (not distracting etc).
It's a difficult thing to do, because there is usually no logical answer since the end output is to users, not to an API or something with a specific way of doing something.
Parent
maybe the missing link! (Score:5, Insightful)
Developers are not users (Score:4, Insightful)
OSS (Score:2, Insightful)
At the same time, though, I think that most of the touchy-feely open source projects, ala KDE, gnome, etc, are strongly modelled after closed source products whose producer presumably spent a substantial amount of time in tweaking appearance. Does it really make sense, and is it even practical, for a group such as KDE to put effort in to redesigning the wheel when someone else has already done the leg work?
The Main Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
How does "openness" affect useability? (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, the general trend of open source is to follow the leader in the most positive way possible. If someone builds the perfect UI, open source folks will copy it sooner or later.
Re:How does "openness" affect useability? (Score:3, Interesting)
Certain skills aren't given enough credit in OSS (Score:4, Insightful)
However, when it comes to interface design, usability, documentation, and any of the 101 other skills related to developing applications, there just isn't the same level of acceptance.
How many open source apps have good documentation, easy to use interfaces, and professional Web sites? One or two.
There's some darn fine software out there (Apache comes to mind) but where is the demand for good documentation, design, art, QA people in the open source world?
I think that those few writers, artists, and interface people working on open source projects are extremely underrated and aren't getting the credit they deserve.. while someone who comes up with a clever hack in C++ gets their name in lights.
Re:Certain skills aren't given enough credit in OS (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that those few writers, artists, and interface people working on open source projects are extremely underrated and aren't getting the credit they deserve..
I think you overstate this. All documentation writers and artists receive credit on the OSS projects I'm involved with.
Parent
Frankly, (Score:5, Funny)
Keep out the riff-raff -- stick with command line interfaces!
Havoc has some good points... (Score:4, Interesting)
The man makes some good points about usability and free software. I think that Havoc sometimes takes these ideas to the nth degree and borders on almost RMS style dogma sometimes. Still, it is a very good read.
The other side of the coin that these folks do not take into account is the fact that OSS application developers for all the desktop adoption talk are not coding for the masses. They might think they are but they are not.
They are coding for the select few geeks that decide to install a brand new Unix or with Linux Unix-like OS on top off or besid the OS that came with their box. This number is small. The OSS developers in some ways are simply giving the geeky few the big, unwieldy, powerful applications they want to go along side their *Nix powered OS.
Where are the forums and groups for usability? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who's working on the "cutting edge" window manager of the future? Where are the groups playing around with their pet interface projects? This is open source, there should be hundreds of different user interface projects floating around. Most of them would be horrible, but it's that open development spirit that condenses bad ideas into really really good ones.
I'm legitimately interested in working on this problem, but I've never discovered places where people ask serious questions about usability. So now I'll post the same question here, where is good usability and GUI stuff happening?
I will tell you... (Score:4, Interesting)
BECAUSE NOBODY USES IT
Usability means: The software will do what is intended, a lot of people will be able to use it, use it fast, and use it easily.
And please, let's get real: Linux is open source (or free software, whatever), but 99.99... percent of the open source applications are not Linux. So, when you say that "all open source" lacks usability, you are right.
BECAUSE NOBODY USES IT
And I mean, USE it. Not opening a text file to edit an entry to allow 10% more connections to your server. I mean, sit down and USE it for 8 hours straight like most normal people will do.
Open Source, in general, serves the purpose of its creator.
You've scratched, you solved your problem, you hope others will enjoy your solution. But this doesn't mean they will constantely USE it, they will just open, edit, close.
When you get down to what really matters, the real deal behind usability, it is about making software so OTHER people can use. They didn't put the menu item there, but they NEED to know that it exists.
What developers need to have in mind is "I will solve my user's problems". This doesn't mean just wait for a complain. Developers need to actively search problems. Don't you want your software to get better? Then go and hunt the problems! Ask people what they think about it.
You don't have time? Then you are wrong about the priorities. A hard to use software won't get people to USE it, and you won't be helping the free software at all.
Get people to use your software. Doesn't matter that it's bloated, it works XX% slowly, if it means more users.
Apply economic laws: More users = More Money = More Developers.
GET THE USERS, they don't care if the source is closed or open.
Great references (Score:4, Informative)
Usability Testing of Athena User Interface [mit.edu]
Voices from the Open Source Revolution [gnome.org]
KDE Usability - First Steps [kde.org]
A few of these books grace our desktops here at work.
No OS is that great (Score:3, Insightful)
As they mention, OS X has shown a way (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As they mention, OS X has shown a way (Score:5, Interesting)
Scroll bars are on the wrong (right) side, so using NeXT's wonderful Miller column browser becomes an awkward back and forth burlesque for broad directory structures w/ lots of entries
Monolithic main menu, no pop-up right-button main menu (and the contextual menu is all-too sparsely populated most times) which can become gestural in nature with sufficient usage (Altsys Virtuoso - right click, Arrange | Path Operations | Punch is a single flick of the mosue for me
No tear off sub-menus---in NeXTstep one can customize the UI by strategically tearing off and placing sub-menus (need to print a bunch of Envelopes? Install Poste.app, open one's word processor, tear off the Services menu and position it so that ``Print Envelope'' is at (say) the bottom left corner of the screen---you can get to it with a single flick of the mouse and a click).
Carbon implementations drag UI expectations down---all too often they don't support Services, File Filters &c. Sometimes not even Quartz live-window drag / re-size
Verbose Mac-style menu shortcut descriptions which use weird symbols which aren't even consistently on all Apple keyboards (NeXTstep, Save == s, Save As == S; Mac OS X, Save == S, Save As == S)
Dumbed-down print dialog box w/ no Fax or Save (PostScript) buttons
File dialogue boxes which no longer support tab completion, filename selection to populate the filename text field, or automatically creating a path of folder(s) in which to save a file
And altogether too many apps haven't made the transition yet---I still want replacements for NoteBook.app, Lotus Improv / Quantrix, TouchType.app, Altsys Virtuoso (and don't point me at Illustrator or FreeHand, the UI for the former disappoints me, the latter isn't sufficiently integrated w/ Mac OS X, no Services, &c.), TeXView.app (TeXShop is quite nice, but lacks the IPC (inter-process communication) which made InstantTeX possible---EquationService.app isn't supported by a lot of apps too, so isn't as useful as TeXView.app's TeX Eq -> eps Service), Webster.app, Digital Librarian (MT Librarian is close, but crashes when I try to index texmf's doc tree), Digital Shakespeare, Oxford's Book of Quotations and TypeView.app
I've some information on NeXTstep and its UI on my personal pages at http://members.aol.com/willadams but GNUstep sadly lost GYVE, so improving on NeXTstep / Altsys Virtuoso seems rather remote at this time
William
Parent
Re:As they mention, OS X has shown a way (Score:4, Interesting)
>I would argue that using NeXT ruined Apple's UI work...
and your arguments for this are?
>NextStep had all sorts of terrible Unixisms in it
>that have infected the Mac, e.g. the file
>structure,
As opposed to the typical ad hoc mess w/ no system or file hierarchy of the typical Mac user's desktop?
>security and multiuser systems,
Oh, it was a _good_ thing for one of my co-worker's files to've gotten clobbered by another co-worker who'd had the file open in Quark XPress so that when it was closed by the second co-worker Quark restored the file as it was when originally opened losing ~3 hours work?
Wait, networking should only be for connecting to a printer like on a 128KB Mac? and one should use sneakernet and only share files on floppies?
>outdated CLIs, etc.
Show me a Mac tool which approaches the efficiency of handling complex file editing tasks as sed and awk and this might have some merit as an argument. The other day one of our clients added two pages to the middle of a book whose index had already been done (manually
>MacOS should have been replaced by the mid-90's at
>the latest, but it's sad to see the crap coming
>out of Cupertino these days.
Only because it's not as nice as what NeXT used to make available. It's far better than what Apple has in the past made with the exception of A/UX and when they were selling OpenStep (which I wish they'd continued).
William
Parent
For those of you that actually READ the article... (Score:3, Insightful)
The paper was meaty, but made its points well. Early on, the authors touched on the difference between the two user communities - the average user and the developer. Sorry for belaboring the point, but that's the problem with the OSS user interfaces - they're not designed to be used by te average user.
My opinion is that the best solution to actually selling OSS software to real users (the 'other' 99%), is to wrap it in a functional GUI that users can use, usefully. If I were Microsoft, that's what I'd be afraid of.
As an aside - there was a good feel of humour to the paper:
Usability and Utility (Score:4, Insightful)
Somebody in an earlier post said that OSS app coders are just interested in "utilitarian" stuff and that's why they are like they are (the apps, that is). Uh Uh. I don't think so. "Utilitarian" means that someone has to *utilize* the thing. If there's no usability, then utility is a lot harder to acheive.
I don't think Neilsen is god. I think his usability equations don't give enough credit for software and sites that are compelling, as well as functional but, that said, the usability gurus have a lot to teach OSS creators. IMHO.
dcobbler
Usability is a relative term! (Score:4, Insightful)
Due to the Microsoft monopoly, most users are trained to understand how to interface with Microsoft products. Thus, people define usability based on how close it is to Microsoft's interface.
Case in point, I was in a library recently. The library has a bunch of iMacs running OS X. A young woman and her friend approached one of the computers and began fumbling about with it. After failing to find what she wanted after 5 minutes, she told her friend in disgust, "I hate Macs," and left.
To me, it appears that OS X has a fairly straightforward, easy to use interface. To this young woman, however, it is apparent that she finds Microsoft Windows more usable than Mac OS X, because her home PC is likely a Windows machine, and she doesn't want to put any effort into learning anything new.
Sure, OSS usability is a bit rough around the edges in many categories. However, the only way it will be "usable" in the eyes of many users is if it copies the interface of Microsoft's products.
Don't criticize all software... (Score:4, Interesting)
I write software on my own time to solve my own problems. When I got bug reports, I fixed them. I wrote a manual and released it.
But don't tell me that my UI isn't good enough: If you want it better, I'll help you port it to Qt. I don't feel like learning anything other than GNU readline, so I didn't.
You miss the point: My software (*MY* software) has a shitty UI, and I could give a rat's hairy feces covered mutated ass whether or not you find it intuitive. If you don't like it, fix it, because I think it's good enough, and I am not going to waste my time maintaining it, because it works just fine!
My next project is intended to be a good piece of software, to be the best at what it is. That one will have a great UI and amazing documentation. But never forget that most developers don't develope for you: they code for themselves, for their own problems. When those problems are solved, they share their solutions, but don't expect them to bolt a better UI on it, if they don't need one.
Like I said, I've written software for me, and I don't care about that. The software I write for other people too will have a good UI, but never forget that those are two entirely different classes, and don't tell me what I should write in my spare time!
Alternative hypotheses (Score:5, Insightful)
in most open source software is connected to
open source licensing and open source development methodology.
That is, does open source = poor usability.
Two alternative explanations for poor usability
should be explored (and need to be disproven
before blaming "open source") IMO:
- by historical accident, most open source
developers are unix programmers who don't
know a UI from a hole in the ground.
i.e. the argument is that more UI-attuned
open source communities can do just fine
with the open source licensing/methodology.
- open source GUI software is simply quite
immature. We're just maturing on the server
side; the UI is still comparable to Linux 2.0 or
earlier, not Linux 2.6.
Lots of our GUI software is very newly-written.
And a lot less people are working on it than
are working on the kernel and Apache and
so on.
This will change as the userbase grows.
I also don't take it as a given that commercial
software is hugely better; some important
commercial packages (such as Quicken) have
pretty awful interfaces. Though some
are very nice, for sure.
OSS usability success story (Score:5, Informative)
I've been working on this project for almost two years now, and the experience has completely shifted my priorities and my perspective in software development. Before I started working on Audacity, I had the mindset that I think many OSS programmers have of only caring about the capability and raw power of a program. I never really considered the non-programmer users a significant concern.
Audacity's project lead is Dominic Mazzoni [dominic-mazzoni.com], who is uniquely excellent at both programming and user interface design. He comes from a Mac background, a world where interfaces generally don't suck. From day one he was writing for maximum usability and maximum use. Doing simple things with Audacity is child's play. Dialogs and messages are written to be easy to understand. Audacity is portable to Windows/UNIX/MacOS9/MacOSX, so right off the bat the potential audience is much larger than an application written for only one platform.
There is an audacity-help list that is advertised in big letters on the web page. This is an open invitation to ask questions that most would see as newbie questions not worth their time. This gives us a chance to see what users are having a hard time understanding. Most of these questions are answered in a timely fashion, which means these users don't abandon Audacity.
Documentation is another area where Audacity shines. Tony Oetzmann has been writing some really excellent, concise, useful documentation [sourceforge.net].
As a result this focus on usability, a lot of people use Audacity. We're pretty consistently in the top 20 downloads on sourceforge. People write often to ask if they can incorporate Audacity on CD compilations. We've been reviewed in the Washington Post.
I've really come around on this in the last two years. Usability is worth it. Anyone can appreciate software that is usable, even programmers. This doesn't mean dumbing things down -- right now a feature is in the works that will allow a project to have a speed envelope, that will allow you to have the speed continuously vary (with appropriate resampling). This is a pretty advanced feature that most users would never have a use for. But a lot of thought is going into how to integrate it into the GUI in the best way possible. It's not going to just get bolted on.
Nobody will see this (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason OSS hasn't taken hold is because of usability, hands down. Mozilla, OpenOffice, CDex, gAIM, all are good examples of OSS that is quality, easy, etc. They install graphically and simply, have intuitive interfaces, and work like professional commercial software.
Most other OSS is designed by one person. That person has an idea for a program and they design it to suit their personal needs. This software often does not suit the needs of 10000000 users the way something like Office does. It usually ends up being CLI or a piss poor GUI. It's difficult to install and only compiles correctly on one specific version of one specific distro of linux with one specific kernel. The rpms don't work. And there is often already a commercial product for windows that does the same thing, better, easier, and is free, can be pirated, downloaded, or otherwise obtained.
OSS doesn't fail because it is open source or because of the free as in speech mentality behind it. It fails because most often, it sucks. Look at Winzip. Nobody pays for winzip. They crack it or deal with the I agree box. But zillions of people use winzip, myself included. They use it because it is a high quality piece of software, that is free as in beer (not in the world of law, but in the real world), is easy to use, easy to install, and it works.
If winzip happened to be open source it would do just as well. When more OSS reaches the quality of professional software in the same way that Mozilla/OpenOffice/gAIM/CDex have then more people will use it.
Usaebility Linux Desktop Future (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Elitists. Come on, lets be reasonable now. If that were true, we wouldn't have anything but bash shell scripts for all our software.
2) Don't care about users. Also a comment I have seen, also not true.
3) Don't have the resources to do useability testing. Perhaps, but not universally so. Mozilla? Open Office? Not usable? I don't think so. SOMEONE is doing there homework there in the usability department.
But, seriously, I think the problem, all of the problems, Linux (UNIX) in general is facing is that the stage for which operations and use are/were confined to the server room.
We are in a TRANSITION PERIOD, which is going to take another 5 years to work out to address DESKTOP issues, now that the conquoring of the server rooms is a tide no company can reverse.
(Weep in the corner over there Bill....)
This 5 year transition period with usability is going to solve the following issues:
1) Up until now, there has really been no serious demand for desktop apps, in the office arena in the Unix market. This is turning now because the American software industry is, well, maturing beyond Windows. Windows is too monolithic, and too expensive to go beyond its current habitat.
Alternatives are wanted, and want generates development and need because companies that do not play by the Microsoft rules, that have to compete against companies that must, will rule the day in sheer economic terms of operating thier IT infrastructure. Regardless, in fact if you are a company or a country, if you embrace the new way, you will win the day!
2) As a result, mature GUI API's are needed to begin the process of building usable component software products to build software that is easy for the masses to use. Without a mature GUI API to program with, you can't make software that has a similair look and feel.
3) The API's most people will use will probably based on Qt or GTK. (i.e. GNOME and KDE).
I will make a prediction here that Qt will win the day. It is further along that GTK and has a much more mature development environment, which is effect is the foudations developers will need to build the API's and toolkits to make coherent GUI interfaces for apps.
The KDE team knows this, and as a result the toolsets for KDE development have been given equal pairing in attention to detail as KDE's GUI API has evolved. This makes it easier to build higher quality Qt apps at a faster rate than GNOME apps.
I point out in particular, the rapid pace of development of KDevelop and QtDesigner.
In the next 2 years, I predict a very visual studioish integration of all KDE toolsets, into one new development environment that will enforce look and feel much more effectively than right now, and allow Qt developers to make better GUI decisions as a result.
In the end though, you have to remember, the demand for Linux desktop apps will not really start to hit home for another 2 years yet. Linux is still wrapping up its winnings in the Windows Server war.
After a while, the larger server market will provide a new offense base to launch economic warfare against Microsoft's monopoly and Linux will eventually begin a new attack. This time, the target will be Microsoft's home world, and once we enter that system, we will deploy the PENGUIN DEATHSTAR.
What that "DeathStar" application will be, I am not sure. But I will guess and say that it will be OpenOffice full decked out 5 years from now, along with some sort of Exchange killer, yet to be named...
"We have entered the Redmond system Lord Penguin."...
"Fire at will!"
-hack
Re:Usaebility Linux Desktop Future (Score:3, Insightful)
Compare KDE/Qt apps to their GTK/toolkit neutral competitors and often there's no competition: Mozilla is a better browser than Konqueror (I've often wondered why the Konq team is still reinventing the wheel; GNOME noticed there was a beautiful, easily-embedded rendering engine available and we got Galeon. Konq could embed Gecko and advance by huge leaps and bounds). Evolution is a better PIM/e-mail program than anything in KDE. OpenOffice beats KOffice on so many levels it's not even funny (how about "actually works with MS file formats" for starters?). There may be some flashy, shiny, GUI IDEs available, but that doesn't make good apps by itself.
Sure, KDE is pretty. Sure, Qt is nice to work with. Sure, the development tools are great. But the KDE team isn't accomplishing anything with them. That's why big companies that use *nix desktops go with GNOME. That's why Red Hat set Mozilla, Evolution, and OpenOffice as defaults in Psyche. And that's what KDE's developers need to realize and deal with if they want to compete seriously for desktop market share in the future.
Here we go again....... (Score:3, Insightful)
Somebody comments: I thought it was just a distribution problem), and since so many people here on Slashdot rave about Debian I thought I'd give it a try. Especially since PGI(progenies graphical installer) is now 1.0.
Big mistake - you should have found out why they rave about Debian first. Hint: it's to do with raw power, not ease of use or nice interfaces.
tshak says: I'll keep trying so that I'm "open minded", but when a company can take a couple years and get unix on the deskop right (OS X) practically the first time (admittidly, it was released a few months too early), I become uninterested in the year after year failures of the OSS alternatives.
First things first, the usability woes of OS X are well documented. The idea that it somehow magically requires no effort to use is a fallacy. I always end up expending more effort when using a Mac than when using Linux or Windows simply because the Mac needlessly breaks habits to which the vast majority of computer users are accustomed to. This isn't me complaining about things being different, I have no problems with things being different, what I have problems with is the Mac doing things differently simply because that's the way they've always been done, not because it's better. Take the non standard keyboard for instance. Why? Apps don't close when the last window closes, meaning I constantly forget to quit them manually. Why? Software only ejects. Why? These are all usability booboos that you have to force yourself to become used to.
Second point, there's nothing hard about making a desktop based on UNIX. Unix, or rather, POSIX is just a set of standard technologies. What's hard is building a truly free (in both senses of the word) collaborative OS that is flexible enough to appeal to everybody, and yet integrates well enough to be very easy to use. It's hard. We're getting there. Comments like that don't make it any easier.
Tackhead writes: Precisely. Another part of the problem is that OSS developers, typically being geographically-disperse and having little access to funding, have no contact with their end users during the design and development phase and cannot do usability testing.
This applies to most software: any software in fact that isn't produced by a large group usually will not have dedicated usability experts on the team. I don't see people flaming the Windows shareware scene, despite it being home to some of the worst UI atrocities in history. And what do you know, the largest open source projects (gnome, mozilla, kde) have usability teams. It mirrors real life. The idea that all commercial software is more "usable" than open source software is imho a stereotype that's only loosely grounded in reality.
ChileVerde: "It raises the question though, how will the need for usability specialists fit in the current model for developing OSS? AFAIK, most of the usability/interface work on the projects are handled by programmers, who doesn't necessarily have the background on this topic."
Havoc is a great example of a programmer who "gets" usability (though perhaps a bit over the top). I always think of usability when designing my interfaces. Programmer != GUI monster. Often though they're not experts, but that's why we have experts such as the guys from Sun working on GNOME. They already are fitting into the open source model.
There may be a connection. A closed project allows one person to impose their will religiously throughout an interface. Open source ultimately is about concessions and cooperation, which may negate this type of centrist control.
No, it's about cooperation. That doesn't necessarily involve concessions. An open source project is like any other project - the leaders can impose their will with an iron first, or they can be weak and agree with everything. This happens in the commercial world as well.
ACK!! says "The other side of the coin that these folks do not take into account is the fact that OSS application developers for all the desktop adoption talk are not coding for the masses. They might think they are but they are not."
Important insight here - the GNOME flamewars demonmstrate this very well. Some people felt GNOME2 was being taken away from them and retargeted at the corporate desktop user. It had a lot of "crack" features stripped out. It took balls to do this. The flamewars on the lists weren't pretty, and still the trolls keep trolling on forums like slashdot and FootNotes. This is a good example of a large open source project (that doesn't even have one leader) taking the initiative with usability. GNOME proves that a lot of the FUD in this thread is simply wrong: open source can be very usable, and it can be written for non-developers.
I have seen open source overcome every problem it has encountered so far, back when I was excited about this new new thing called Windows 95. I have seen it go through "toy OS", "can run web servers but will never get enterprise acceptance", "good at servers but will never get enough apps for the desktop", "too hard to install" and now "software isn't usable enough".
Every single one of those problems has been solved. This one is being solved too. Tomorrow I release autopackage 0.2 - it's CLI interface was designed with usability in mind. It uses colour to make the text easier for the eye to process, it uses simple, obvious command names (with aliases to facilitate guessing) and it comes with documentation. Open source is dead. Long live open source.
Re:. / Readers? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Useability is anethma to OSS... (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah. You didn't even read the article. They defined usability right at the beginning of the document: "Usability is typically described in terms of five characteristics: ease of learning, efficiency of use, memorability, error frequency and severity, and subjective satisfaction (Nielsen, 1993)."
They wrote a well-researched, seriously informative document with tons of examples, quotes from experts, and more. I find their comments far more compelling and substantial than yours.
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Re:Useability is anethma to OSS... (Score:5, Informative)
Useability is something you add on the backend of a product to market it. What they really mean by useability is a nice GUI where you can get a mouse trail going.
No. You obviously know nothing about the subject. Usability is not something you hack onto the backend of a product after all is said and done. If you're serious about designing an application to be highly usable, then the interface becomes a central development point just as important as the actual functionality (perhaps more important because if you can't figure out how to use it and use it well, what good is it?). And to say that usability means just putting together a whizbang fancy GUI is a massive understatement. There is years of research on the human brain and how to best present information to it on which the principles of good GUI design are built. Sure, it's obvious to you now because you've had lots of experience with applications from which you can borrow concepts from, but at some point in the past someone had to ask the question "what is the best way to do this?"
What most people don't realize is that it's not just the "big" things like provide menus at the top of the screen, etc, but also little things that are taken for granted. You probably don't notice them but when they're not there you miss them. Ever used an application that just didn't "feel" right but you couldn't really explain why?
Useability is great in most OSS work, extremely efficient and powerful...it just has a higher learning curve to the uninitiated user
Here you contradict yourself. How can useability be great if the learning curve for a new user is high? Usability is about reducing that learning curve by making the interface intuitive (among other things).
Parent
Re:Useability is anethma to OSS... (Score:5, Insightful)
sure, you say it in a much more palatable way ("... it just has a higher learning curve to the uninitiated user."), but the meaning behind the words is always the same.
people like you fear a "dumbing down" of OSS, and yet you are the same individuals who are first to champion Joe Average abandoning a platform he is comfortable with and "just works" (from *his* perspective, which, as much as you might want to disagree, is all that matters) in favor of one which is completely foreign and threatens the prospect of having to relearn even the simplest of tasks.
wake up. useability is much, much more than "something you add on the backend of a product to market it." it is ultimately what decides, after the marketing hype and initial bandwagon inertia have settled, the success or failure of anything from the simplest script to the most complex architecture.
and, oddly enough, it's actually YOU who really thinks that "useability is a nice GUI where you can get a mouse trail going."
!!!!! useability != gui !!!!!
a gui must take useability concerns into account just as much (in many cases moreso) than a command-line interface.
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Re:Useability is anethma to OSS... (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely. Another part of the problem is that OSS developers, typically being geographically-disperse and having little access to funding, have no contact with their end users during the design and development phase and cannot do usability testing.
(There's also a "willingness" aspect -- a developer is often not the right person to be doing usability testing with naive users. It's a touchy-feely kind of task, which most developers, OSS or not, wouldn't enjoy, let alone be able to do it well. In commercial environments, that's what the human-factors folks are for.)
Which is how we got to the present situation on OSS and usability testing:
"When writing Soviet GPL code, user interface tests you!"
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