I would like to be a part of this. I dual boot my mac with fedora and
my PC with ubuntu and have some feedback on this initiative.
Sent from my iPhone
On Sep 11, 2008, at 1:56 PM, "Celeste Paul (seele)"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Thursday 11 September 2008 16:44:39 David Cortright wrote:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080911-canonical-to-fund-upstream-li
nux-usability-improvements.html
"Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced Wednesday that his
company,
Canonical, will hire professional designers and interaction experts
to
improve the usability of the Linux desktop software ecosystem. They
will
work closely with upstream developers to bring a better experience
to users
of the open source operating system... He emphasizes the importance
of
making usability enhancement a community-driven effort. He
acknowledges
that improving usability across the entire scope of the desktop
software
ecosystem is a daunting challenge, but he believes that the
collaborative
spirit of the open software development model can get the job done."
A necessary step in getting open source software ready for a more
mainstream market. Is anyone here working on this?
I've been working on the Kubuntu project (KDE Ubuntu) for the past 2
years and
KDE for over 4 years. I don't work for Canonical but I am on the
Kubuntu
council and I attend the Ubuntu Developer Summits. If you closely
read his
blog article, it is unclear if he is going to hire more designers,
or if he
has already hired more designers and if those designers are going to
be
artists or "interaction designers". Currently there are a handful
of artists
and a UI designer.
Canonical is not the first FLOSS-centered company to invest in UX.
Others,
such as Redhat, Sun, and Novell have had staff designers for years.
How much
this has effected FLOSS is hard to tell. Canonical has vision, but I
don't
believe they have anyone to guide it yet. If they manage to get
someone in
there who knows what they are doing in terms of design, and also
understands
FLOSS, then I will be more optimistic that this effort will make a
difference. It is hard for a software company to make the necessary
cultural
change to truly integrate UX in to their processes -- especially one
centered
in a FLOSS culture.
Until then, I will be watching with baited breath.
~ C
--
Celeste Paul (seele)
obso1337.org
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