On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 10:54 PM, Tim Hutt <tdh...@gmail.com> wrote: [snip] > Anyway, I've been following CERN's work on Kicad, and thought I'd give Kicad > a try. These sorts of programs always seem to fail on basic usability things > (like how to copy/paste) so I recorded my first ever Kicad session! > Hopefully it will be valuable so you can see what new users thing when > trying Kicad (assuming you care). > > It's 30 mins. Somewhat low quality youtube (it downscaled 1024p to 720p > stupidly): > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k93cSNXEFUk [snip]
Thanks Tim. I think this is a very valuable contribution. It has reminded me that there is some work foreseen on the user interface in the roadmap [1], but it may not have received as much attention as it deserves. There is a big difference between commercial proprietary applications and FOSS applications with no paid labor: in the former, if your usability is bad, nobody buys your software and you starve. In the latter, there is a strong temptation for developers to do things as they think they should work and place a bit less importance on usability for new inexperienced users. There is also a temptation to think that what's good for an expert user is what is ultimately good and all new users should just become experts. This is all quite natural and justifiable. Watching 15 minutes of your video has been a very painful experience. I could not take in the whole 30 minutes. There are clearly things that could be more intuitive. Things which cannot be considered controversial. I think those things could be the object of a detailed work package to be included in the roadmap. Then there is the controversial/religious stuff. How to copy/paste and such. I think that part needs more debate, but it looks to me that if one accepts the premise that KiCad should be very usable by a new user, the *default* behavior for things which are done in a given way in 99% of the graphical applications out there should be that de-facto-standard way. And users who are expert users should know how to customize KiCad in a way that maximizes their productivity. That customization could very well include very fast and efficient ways of cutting, pasting, moving, rotating, etc. Another option would be to try to make the two types of methods co-exist at the same time. It's difficult to discuss how possible this is without getting into a lot of detail. BTW, the fact that KiCad is undergoing major change in several important areas is not helping in the usability/coherence department. Things should be better soon even without major efforts. The good news is that, as you say, the effort to improve in this area is not that great. There is some low-hanging fruit. KiCad is already very powerful, and the work on usability is probably smaller than several of the big work packages people have been taking on lately. I think KiCad should have a usability team as it already has people concerned with libraries, documentation, etc. Same goes for testing BTW. If some people (maybe also from the users list) step up for the task and Wayne thinks it's a good idea, I think it could do a lot of good to the project. If the idea moves forward, you can count on the help of the CERN team in this domain. Many thanks to you and to all KiCad developers. These are exciting times for us. Cheers, Javier [1] Search for "ergonomics" in http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~kicad-product-committers/kicad/product/view/head:/Documentation/development/road-map.md _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : kicad-developers@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp