Usability and Open Source
Sunday, October 7, 2007 – 7:29 amYou can always tell a human factors person, but you can’t tell them much. 
The guys over at Humanized provide some food for thought about designing usability into Open Source applications. My favorite suggestion was the first one:
Get a Benevolent Dictator
Someone who has a vision for the UI. Someone who can and will say “no” to features that don’t fit the vision.
If there isn’t someone on the team whose job it is to say “no,” you’ll say “yes” to everything, and you’ll wind up with bloatware. Having a plug-in architecture (suggestion 4) is the compromise that makes this suggestion workable.
2 Responses to “Usability and Open Source”
It’s not necessary for their to be such a person. The important thing is that their is a vision and that it’s clear. People make errors, they also die. Their ideas and vision will not die. Furthermore good ideas, can branch, as well as merge. To rewrite that statement:
Set a clear vision, with defined goals.
- Define the goals of the UI. That way decisions can be made as to what to say “no” and “yes” to.
I have a full response here:
http://www.interfce.com/?p=201
By Braydon Fuller on Oct 7, 2007