Usability Project
THIS PAGE INCLUDES ARCHIVED MATERIAL FROM THE NOW DEFUNCT GNOME USABILITY PROJECT
"What's important is not that we can conceive the idea, but that when we actually test it on people you discover it doesn't work... your intuition is wrong." - Daniel M. Russell (IBM Almaden / Xerox PARC)
From 2001 until around 2011, the Usability Project played a critical role in the GNOME project. The first ever usability study of GNOME was conducted as a part of this effort, and the Usability Project created and maintained the GNOME Human Interaction Guidelines.
This initiative helped to establish a concern with usability within the GNOME project, which was reflected in usability requirements for GNOME modules. Nowadays, design and the design team have taken over the role of the Usability Project. However, our history is very much rooted in what the Usability Project achieved, and we owe a huge debt to those who made it a reality. CalumBenson deserves special recognition for leading the Usability Project for many years.
Many pages from the Usability Project have been incorporated into the design space on wiki.gnome.org. For example:
The rest of this page links to other archive material from the Usability Project.
Mailing List Archives
hig@gnome.org (retired, links to web.archive.org)
gnome-gui-list@gnome.org (retired, links to web.archive.org)
Usability Hackfests
The GNOME Usability project has held a number of Usability hackfests:
The GNOME 3 Usability Hackfest @ London, February 22-26, 2010
First Usability hackfest @ GUADEC, 2005
User Interface hackfest @ GNOME Boston Summit, 2008
Usability Project Meetings
03-Oct-2001 Minutes
17-Oct-2001 Minutes
GNOME UI Reviews
These were reviews carried out primarily on IRC prior to each stable GNOME release.
UI Review Checklist (Aug-2003)
How to Write a UI Review (Jan-2004)
Co-ordinating a UI Review (Mar-2004)
GNOME 2.7 UI Review (Aug-2004)
GNOME 2.9 UI Review (Nov-2004)
GNOME 2.13 UI Review (Feb-2006): gedit gucharmap metacity screensaver sound juicer
Proposals
Feedback (May-2001)
Menu Layout (Aug-2001)
Control Center (Oct-2001)
Login/Logout (Oct-2001)
Nautilus (Dec-2003)