This aKademy’s Human Computer Interaction workshops will take place on Wednesday afternoon in Room 3 (A118). We start at 13.00.

The sessions cover all types of HCI topics related to KDE as well as an interactive workshop at the end of the day.

Presentations

Welcome to KDE HCI Day

A welcome to KDE HCI Day and review of the day’s activities.

Design Research Methods

Usability is not just about testing. There are all types of research methods
designers use to create usable interfaces, some that include participation
by users and others that do not. In this session, we will review the
different type of research activities and how the results feed back in to design
and development. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions to find out
which research activities are right for your project.

User Groups and Personas

Lack of user research is one of the primary reasons usability in open source
software is so hard to achieve. Learn about the importance of defining
user groups and creating personas and how it can improve your
project’s usability by helping developers understand their users. After a
short introduction on user groups and personas, this session will be a
hands-on activity where developers can ask questions specific to their projects
and users and get help creating user groups and personas for use in their
project’s KDE User Research Profile.

HCI Concepts of the Plasma Desktop

This session will talk about current HCI issues and future goals of the
Plasma Desktop, including discussion on interaction concepts such as zooming
user interfaces (ZUIs), passive configuration, and direct manipulation,
as well Plasma and its use across the device spectrum.

KDE4 Human Interface Guidelines

During the past summer, 2 Season of Usability interns helped us create patterns
and guidelines for the KDE4 Human Interface Guidelines. In this session we will
review notable changes between KDE3 and KDE4, review new guidelines and
patterns, and discuss samples of HIG violations and their fixes. A question
and answer session will follow for developers to ask specific questions about
the guidelines and how they might apply to UI problems they are working on.
More involved questions or design problems may be discussed during the
KDE4 Open UI Workshop.

KDE4 Open UI Workshop

This is an open discussion period for KDE4 HIG- and UI-related issues.
Developers should come prepared with questions and sample screenshots
(website links or USB key) to discuss and get assistance. Benefit from
other developers’ questions and participate in the discussion.