1. Proposed Goals

The GNOME Usability community is in the process of preparing an agenda of topics to work on during this event. In October, 2008 there was discussion in the GNOME Usability community to brainstorm and create a roadmap of things to work on. Refer here:

• Bringing GNOME Usability Forward

It is anticipated that there will be further discussion to flesh out the agenda so it is a more concrete list of tasks. Proposed ideas include the following:

1.1. GNOME 3.0 Usability

GNOME Shell, zeitgeist, emerillon, and other new GNOME components will provide GNOME 3.0 users with a revolutionary new user experience. Information is detailed here:

• GNOME 3.0 Plan

• GNOME Shell Design

Now is an excellent time for the GNOME community to discuss ideas on how to improve the design and usability of GNOME Shell and other new GNOME 3.0 components.

Also, this is an opportunity to consider what other usability changes could fit into the GNOME 3.0 schedule to further revamp GNOME design and usability. Perhaps, for example, some attention to how GNOME applications should be modified to fit within the overall GNOME 3.0 usability model.

1.2. Usability Studies

Many new GNOME 3.0 technologies would benefit from design and usability direction from the GNOME Usability team:

• gnome-shell
• zeitgeist
• emerillon
• accessibility
• evolution
• file management (nautilus)

Therefore, spending time at the hackfest to do some design brainstorming and usability testing seems a good idea. With the hackfest being a full week, there should be time to invest in such activities.

1.3. Develop An Open Usability Process

In the past, most GNOME Usability studies have not been done with an open process. Organizations associated with GNOME have done usability studies and shared results with the GNOME community afterwords. Moving forward, it would be more effective if the GNOME community had a straightforward process for conducing more open usability studies where the community has more say in what gets tested and the expectations. This would help to get various GNOME partners working more effectively and closely together when making design and usability considerations.

Towards this end, all attendees are encouraged to bring existing user research and usability data to the hackfest, and this data can be used to help setup a framework for organizing data in a more open fashion going forward.

The data created by doing a usability study can be large. Video and audio files associated with usability studies have significant storage requirements, and can be difficult to share. Finding a mechanism to share this accessibility data in an open fashion with the wider GNOME community would be a good outcome of such a project. The Design In The Open project is an example of how this can work in the free software community, so there may be opportunities to collaborate with them or provide something similar for the GNOME community.

The GNOME project has not yet compiled good documentation to enable volunteers to easily do a usability study. One of the outcomes of doing a usability study would be to document how it can be done to assist others in doing future studies, how to prepare materials, and how to prepare a report based on research. This way future projects can follow a template. For example, it would be useful to have documentation to help decide what should be tested, how subjects are selected, setting up hardware, providing template confidentiality/release form for subjects to sign, etc.

Canonical plans to do a usability test before the event so that there is at least some data to work with. Canonical is considering doing testing on Empathy because they have local engineers in London working on this project who can assist in developing test plans. It would be interesting to invite some developers who are working on projects being tested (or work with them remotely) and effectively 'test' how the GNOME Usability team delivers findings and how the developers respond.

1.4. GNOME 3.0 HIG

The GNOME HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) has not been significantly updated in some time, and new GUI technologies such as GNOME Shell and clutter are currently not discussed. The HIG needs some real attention to ensure it continues to be useful with GNOME 3.0 and going forward.

Ideas for how to improve the GNOME HIG:

• HIG Scratchpad

• Update and improve the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines proposal

1.5. Acquisition and Communication of Usability Data

The GNOME community needs to consider more creative ways to get GNOME users to provide more effective usability data. Methods to acquire more effective usability data might include things like encouraging developers to test paper prototypes with family and friends, card sorting, instrumenting development builds of software (cf. InGimp), or devising self-administered usability tests where users run through tasks that are provided in an email or on a website, and either record themselves doing it (using something like Pongo) and/or fill in a questionnaire afterwards. Documentation that helps people know how to do these sorts of things effectively would be useful.

Charlene Poirier also wants to discuss the presentation of usability results to developers.

1.6. GNOME Foundation Mobile Usability Lab

Setting up a GNOME Mobile Usability lab would make it possible for the GNOME Foundation to be more involved with scheduling and organizing usability tests. Such a lab could be provided to various conference, events or hackfests when there is value in doing a usability study.

Something along the lines of Máirín Duffy's Open Source Portable Usability Testing Lab. Here are specifications for setting up this type of lab.

1.7. Other Usability Ideas

• Developing a better set of Personas

• Provide more direction and mentorship to encourage more volunteers, maintainers, etc to be engaged with the GNOME usability process.
• Provide more feedback to the GNOME release team about what usability requirements should be considered when doing each release. Should there be more usability requirements for new modules to be accepted as GNOME modules, for example?

• Look at how the Control Center will improve in GNOME 3.0 (suggested by ThomasWood)

• Specific gtk+ usability issues, nautilus revamp, GNOME first impressions (suggested by KarlLattimer)

• Opportunity to observer Card Sorting sessions that Canonical are running (suggested by MatthewPaulThomas)

• Discussion about Contacts/Address Book application (suggested by Nick Richards)

2. Proposed Agenda

Here's a summary of the topics that have come up so far. Perhaps people can put their names against the ones they're most interested in, and note whether they'd be willing/able to lead discussion on that topic, and we can start trying to figure out an agenda from there?

2.1. GNOME 3.x topics

2.2. Usability Process topics

2.3. Monday 22 February

• Introduction and Round Table	Everyone
  Brainstorming	Everyone
  Lunch
  Card Sorting	MatthewPaulThomas
  Sharing Usability Data	Ivanka Majick and MairinDuffy

2.4. Tuesday 23 February

• Accessibility	WillieWalker
  Lunch
  HIG	Calum Benson, KarlLattimer, MatthewPaulThomas, BrianCameron, WillieWalker
  GNOME Shell & Nautilus	Everyone
  Card Sorting	Calum Benson and Thomas Wood

2.5. Wednesday 24 February

• GNOME Shell and Nautilus	Everyone
  Card Sorting	MatthewPaulThomas, GarrettLeSage

2.6. Thursday 25 February

• Co-Design Challenge	Charlene Poirier
  GNOME-Shell
  GTK+
  Card Sorting	Charlene Poirier

2.7. Friday 26 February

3. References

• Pongo

• Istanbul

• Better Desktop

• Getting From Research To Personas

• Ideas for Usability Hackfest