Hi,
[Please keep the Cc list intact for anything on this topic that's not
purely about what we at Tails should do internally.]
Following-up on Zack's initiative to have us meet some designers
interested in working on FOSS projects, some of us have recently met
Claudio and Mael.
The starting point is the obvious fact that FOSS projects too often
have poor usability, and are not attractive enough to potential users.
Claudio and Mael want to play a role in improving this situation, by
building a bridge between the designers / graphics artists / UI
experts community on the one hand, and the FOSS people on the other
hand. This seems to be a great idea, and for a number of reasons,
Tails would be a good candidate to try it :)
Here is the plan and timeline we've drawn together:
1. $NOW--late May
- make Tails/Wheezy ready for usability testing [[Tails folks]]
* https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/6862
- brainstorm a list of exercises (practical goals to achieve)
that match the intended Tails use cases, and could be handed
out to the people who'll participate in the usability testing
session(s). Send the results to Claudio & Mael.
* https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/6864
* https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/usability_testing/
- think about who we want to participate in the usability testing
session; e.g. having good diversity seems important to me, to
avoid the "developers with a specific cultural background and
social position optimize software for their peers" trap.
There's also the question of optimizing for first-time use, or
for daily users, which are conflicting goals sometimes.
- design, plan and organize a usability testing session [[Claudio
& Mael, based on the input we will have provided]]
2. late May: conduct a usability testing session in Paris [[Claudio
& Mael, but it would be useful if some Tails people were there]]
3. late May--late June: draw conclusions from #2, identify a set of
3-5 major usability and/or design problems (it's unclear to me if
we'll focus on low-hanging fruits or critical problems to start
with, we'll see) [[Claudio & Mael, most likely with some
{communication with,participation from} Tails folks]]
4. late June: possibly present a talk about the ongoing process and
current results at PSES (Pas Sages en Seine, a hacker conference
in Paris) [[Claudio, Mael]]
5. mid-July: have a few teams of designers and UI experts at the
Tails hackfest in Paris; give each team one of the previously
identified problem, and half a day or two to find and propose
a solution to it [[everybody involved + guests!]]
6. Implement the designed solutions. Build long-term collaboration
with designers / UX experts / graphics artists upon this
experience, wooo :)
Claudio, Mael: please correct any misunderstanding and add missing
bits as needed.
Cheers,
--
intrigeri
| GnuPG key @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/intrigeri.asc
| OTR fingerprint @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/otr.asc
