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Some people consider the gnome usability guidelines a nuisance and some consider certain applications way too simplistic. While it is really hard to get the usability right, it's well worth it.
ingimp is an instrumented version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program that collects real-time usability data, such as the commands used, the size of images worked on, and so on. This usability data is automatically transmitted to ingimp for anyone to download and analyze.
Could open source software benefit from more usability testing? It sure seems so, and usability labs are heavily emphasized at big proprietary software companies, especially Microsoft.
Canonical aims to improve the Ubuntu user experience by fixing a multitude of minor usability glitches. The project, which is called One Hundred Paper Cuts, will entail a collaborative effort by Canonical's new design team and the Ubuntu community to fix one hundred usability bugs before the release of Ubuntu 9.10.
I was doing some research on a paper I am writing about open source usability practices when it hit me: Lack of user research is the #1 problem in open source usability
TechRadar has gathered a few users and subjected the 3 main Linux desktops to some usability testing for both experienced users and some new to the whole concept
I've put together my opinion on the top ten usability issues that exist now in Hardy's Alpha and will most certainly be in the final long-term release. I also try to suggest a solution, if there is one.
For years usability languished in the FOSS world due to a combination of elitism and the belief that it was just a theme-pack away. As a result most FOSS projects are riddled with massive usability problems.
Ever since last summer, when Mark Shuttleworth called on Ubuntu to surpass Mac OS X in desktop design within two years, Ubuntu mailing lists and blogs have become one of the main places to go for detailed discussions about GNU/Linux usability.