You'll do much better educating your developers than you will mining your userbase. Have them read a few books. Umm.. Off the top of my head: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum - Alan Cooper Why Software Sucks - Can't find it to see who wrote it, think it was Platt.
About Face 3.0 is most likely too thick, but would be good too if you can get them to read it. That is also by Cooper. This kind of change has to come from inside, the users know if they can figure something out. They are somewhat trained to expect to have to be trained, and it is only you who can untrain them. I think you are already doing a fantastic job of getting the word back to the developers, you just need to get them to realize they are the problem. That they can't make what works for them. It is kind of like trying to tell a planet of all men that women need to sit down to use the bathroom. Programmers are the men, users are the women. And the women won't get that the men stand up, so you can't expect them to know what the problem is either. Even if you do IxD in the middle of the project, repackage what the programmers do through another layer. Have them build an API for internal use, and that will make being more flexible with your user experience possible. Another alternative is to take a pause in between development, once you release a new version, and have someone, like myself, do some IxD for your Open Source project. I know I'd be honored to do that, and I'm sure many others here would love to contribute to open source more than we get to. But in the end, you can't fix the problem without treating the cause. Maybe someone else here can give you more ideas about how to work around your problem. I do contract work for the government, maybe someone else will come along who has worked through these issues in an os project. Us IxDs are nothing if not capable of finding ways to weasel in our ideas. We sorta have to do that all the time. Best of Luck, Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=34208 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
