OpenUsability
Encyclopedia
OpenUsability is a project to help usability
experts coordinate with open source
software projects to improve the software's interaction
and usability. They have worked with projects such as GIMP
and KDE
.
GIMP
projects.
Usability
Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything a human interacts with. A usability study may be conducted as a primary job function by a usability analyst or as a secondary job...
experts coordinate with open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software projects to improve the software's interaction
Human–computer interaction
Human–computer Interaction is the study, planning, and design of the interaction between people and computers. It is often regarded as the intersection of computer science, behavioral sciences, design and several other fields of study...
and usability. They have worked with projects such as GIMP
GIMP
GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...
and KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
.
History
OpenUsability was originally a thought that developed at the KDE developers conference in 2003 after a comparison of usability in Windows XP and KDE 3.1 was performed. Open source projects where able to register with OpenUsability from 2004 onwards.Examples
OpenPrinting- OpenPrinting is a project to increase the quality of printing on Linux Desktops. The user interaction and interface has been designed by members of the OpenUsability project.
GIMP
GIMP
GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...
- An interaction design team has been formed for GIMP, the lead developer of GIMP Sven Neumann originally applied to OpenUsability.
Season of Usability
Season of Usability is a series of sponsored design projects for students, in order to get them involved in FLOSSFloss
Floss may refer to:* Dental floss, used to clean teeth* Embroidery thread, machine or hand-spun yarn for embroidery* Fairy floss or candyfloss, alternative names for cotton candy* Rousong, i.e. meat floss-Computing:...
projects.