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.

What? It’s not just testing - Usability in KDE

I will focus on the importance of defining the project goals and provide three principles to design good KDE applications.

When? Friday, May 30. 15.00-16.00.

Where? Messe Berlin, Saal Paris (UG)

With a total of 130 applications, selecting a student was not an easy process for our mentors - and a clear indication for us that we need to provide more projects in 2009! Usability professionals who are interested to participate as a mentor are welcome to contact me.

Celeste and me are mentoring two KDE projects. For Human Interface Guidelines and Design Patterns for KDE, we got two student interns: Becca Scollan, student of Science in Information, and Thomas Pfeiffer, student of Psychology. They will do their best to complete the KDE Human Interface Guidelines and define interaction paradigms for the most common design patterns used in KDE.

For the Toolbox and Palette Interaction for KOffice project, Neha Pahwa, student of Information Technology, will analyse the interaction paradigm of four core applications of the KOffice suite, KWord, KPresenter,the image manipulation application Krita, and the vector graphics application Karbon. As a first step, Neha will interview the developers to identify the major project goals and target users.

We will document the progress in our blogs. Stay tuned!

What: Usability in Open Source Projekten

Where: BeLUG e.V., Lehrter Str. 53, 12557 Berlin

When: Wednesday, May 7. 18.00.

We accept 10 students for design tasks, user research and UI analysis. The openings represent a wide range of applications, such as instant messaging, office suites, web applications and the One Laptop Per Child desktop.

With regard to KDE, Celeste and me will accept two students to continue the work on Human Interface Guidelines and Design Patterns for KDE4. Also, we will accept a student for KOffice.

If you are a student of usability, user interface design or related, send us your application until April, 14. Project work will start in May and will take approximately 3 months. An involvement of 15 hours per week is expected.

Students receive a stipend of $1000 USD, kindly sponsored by Google Inc., the Open Society Institute and Trolltech ASA.

Other project openings include:

• Redesigning DrProject’s Administration Interface
• Redesigning Gallery’s Image Upload Tools
• 3d Widgets for MakeHuman
• Handheld-Mode Interface for the OLPC XO Laptops
• Analysing Pidgin’s status quo and making design suggestions
• Instant Messaging and VoIP with SIP Communicator
• Supporting TV Viewers with TV-Browser

See the project details at the Season of Usability website

FLOSS Projects who would like to benefit from a usability student are encouraged to fill in our Call for Projects questionnaire:

>> Season of Usability 2008 - Call for Projects Questionnaire (available till February 20th)

For further details, please see the Call for Projects page on the Season of Usability website.

In an easy-flowing disucssion, we talked about the differences between Peter’s and my field of work - interaction architecture and usablity - and how we complement each other. We brought up various examples from OpenUsability as Peter and I have been working together on various FLOSS projects such as Gimp or OpenPrinting. The podcast is in German and available on the Chaosradio Express website.

To celebrate this event, there are several parties all around the world on January 18. In Berlin, we celebrate at the KDAB office in Kreuzberg. All friends of KDE who live in this area are welcome to join!

There will be free beer, coffee, mate and music. We will try to establish a live connection to the main release event in Mountain View, California - and of course you can test KDE 4.0.

Date: January 18, 2008 (Friday)
Start: 20.00 h
Place: KDAB Berlin, Adalbertstr. 7/8, U Kottbusser Tor (see Google maps)

Please register to facilitate our planning:
Send a mail to kde4-release-party@kdab.net

Reminder: Open Printing Project Opening

The application period for the Open Printing student project ends on January 10th.

Usability students who are interested in a challenging design project: Go ahead and send us your application!

The goal is to create a detailed design and UI spec for 7 types of printers; project work will start in the beginning of February.

Read the full project opening and application details on the Season of Usability website: “Project Opening: Printing Experience on Linux”

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