SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: [Sigia-l] Designers and Developers
Re: [Sigia-l] Designers and Developers
On Tue, 2004-05-25 at 22:57 -0400, Listera wrote:
> John Fullerton:
> >> why Developers shouldn't be in the design business
> > I'd like to hear more.
>
> After nearly two decades of designing *and* developing every imaginable kind
> of app from standalone to interactive to client/server to web with a price
> tag from four to seven digits, in small and large settings, I've come to
> this simple conclusion: "design by committee" sucks.
>
> For evidence, one need not go any further than a cursory survey of
> user-facing open source apps. Strong leadership is a sine qua non of good
> design.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your conclusions, but I think you'd
be surprised at how few open source projects have more than one person
working on them. Open Source software's UI troubles come from a /lack/
of feedback and a lack of "design by committee", not because too many
people are contributing.
Open Source projects like GNOME are trying to move in the other
direction. A small number of designers are trying to educate a large
number of developers about good design practices for applications.
They've produced design guidelines:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/
They produced documentation on user testing and scenarios:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/usertesting.html
They review applications for usability problems:
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.5/ui-review/
They explain why software needs to be usable:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/articles/
They even have resources for people to translate the project into any
human language:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gtp/
Not to mention make application accessible:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/
------------
When replying, please *trim your post* as much as possible.
*Plain text, please; NO Attachments
Searchable list archive: http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/
________________________________________
Sigia-l mailing list -- post to: Sigia-l_at_asis.org
Changes to subscription: http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigia-l
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6
: Wed May 26 2004 - 03:09:22 EDT
|
