Seele 

In an effort to get to know better the needs of developers are from the Human Interface Guidelines, I solicited several groups of developers to participate in a survey which ran for two weeks in May. The outcome was very good with 52 participants providing their comments and suggestions. Read More

This and next week will be busier than average. Tonight I met up with pmax (who was in town for biz) with Justin to drink some beers and play some darts at a local bar. Its too bad pmax wont be in town long enough to visit downtown, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom (last night's storm had spared them for yet another week) and its always nice to go site-seeing in the nation's capital. Read More

Recently I went to Ohio to interview young students and their parent about a client's home schooling education system. They were surprised (although I wasn't) how the students were actually using the system (software, materials, teachers, etc.). It just reminded me of how important it is to identify your audience in order to have success. Here are a few things I took away from my trip which could be applied to KDE-Edu (grades K through 6)... Read More

I've been a buzzy little bee for the past few weeks. I would have posted a few days ago, but it ended up turning in to a DOT article. I started my new job a few weeks ago. Yay for working at home, but I'm having trouble leaving work at work and actually "going" home. Last night I came home from class at 2300 to make phone calls and write emails until Justin reminded me I was "home". Its easy to roll out of bed and go to work, but hard to leave the keyboard at a certain time and stop being a IxD for the rest of the night. Read More

Although earlier this year I had hoped to get the reports up by the end of January, that they got up by mid-February isn't too bad. The 2005 reports page is here. Read More

According to a recent C-Net Police Blotter, email surveillance without any evidence of criminal behavior has been approved. The new law only allows monitoring of email headers (hence justifies as 'constitutional'), but the fact that they can freely monitor and log email traffic is alarming. Read More

Friday is my last day at .gov where I will be moving on the bigger and better things. For the past 14 months Ive been through three natural disasters (Indian Ocean tsunami, Katrina/Rita hurricanes, Pakistani/Indian earthquake), watched a few funerals on TV (Pope John Paul II, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King) and scandal galore (too many to list). Read More

sorry for the caps, but i am yelling :) this weekend justin and i went home and watched (and later celebrated) the steelers play in the super bowl. for those of you who are not familiar with the super bowl, it is the championship game for american football (you know that weird game that is nothing like soccer). for those of you who are not familiar with me or the steelers, you should know that i am from pittsburgh and so are they ;) Read More

Since I havn't posted in a while, a quick QOTD: kawakokappa (10:55:29 AM): could you imagine reproducing a series of steps with half of them missing? seele varcuzzo (10:56:15 AM): no, and youre going to make me core dump if you make me Read More

Oh hell.. why not. Maybe if I say I'm going to do something on public forum, I'll actually get it done :) Of course, I shouldn't give myself the entire year to do some of these things, so maybe I should set an expiration on each item. Read More

One month ago I presented some ideas for an application repository. This interface would give users an unrestrictive way to search and explore software installed on their system within several contexts. The system is one part of a response to dissastisfaction with the KMenu. The other parts of my solution include an interface to quickly launch applications and a "smart" system to help the user relate data and applications together as tasks. Read More

Many of you have probably seen or read some of the emails being posted on the OSDL DA mailing list. Theyve been on slashdot, blogs, and forwarded to other mailing lists.. but what have they accomplished? Read More

i spent a part of this weekend working on the kde usability website. unfortunatly it doesnt get updated very often, and considering we have dated 'recent news' on our home page.. the content looks quite dated. Read More

Theres been lots of talk and speculation what a new KMenu would look and act like. I presented some background research as well as some of my own ideas at aKademy in August. I had sketches, diagrams, and notes of what a new system could look and act like, but nothing too visual which didnt require reading my book (literally a notebook full) of notes. Read More

Redefine yourself with this interaction architect job title generator. My favorite: Information Deity Runner up: Digital philosopher

Lack of information about the user is one of the largest hurdles towards OSS usability. User research hasnt been a typical part of the KDE development process, software is available for download anonymously at no cost, and not many marketing or demographic studies are done. Read More

Learning applied to a finite set of knowledge (knowledge base or KB), such as the interaction and functionality of an interface, can be described in a sigmoid curve. It helps describe the learning process, as well as visualize "the learning curve" and "memory retention" humps in beginner and advanced users. Read More

November 3rd is World Usabiltiy Day, an event sponsored by the Usability Professionals Association and Human Factors International. The local D.C. Metro chapter of UPA is participating in World Usability Day by hosting a poster session during the larger event held at the American Institute of Architects. Even though the theme of the event is "e-Government", other projects, case studies, and test results were invited to participate. So, what would be a better time to promote KDE Usability than during World Usability Day? Read More

This weekend I finally finished writing my review for KBruch. KBruch is an Edutainment application which allows students to practice fractions. It has several modes of operation: Evaluation of multiple terms, Factorization of numbers, Comparison between two terms, and Conversion to decimal. Read More

Featuritis is a condition in which the functionality of an application increases with each revision (and such, complexity increases). The functionality that aggravates this condition is usually that which a single user (or group) requests (or is given) without consideration of the implications it has on the rest of the users, interface, and experience the application is meant to address. Read More

The weekend thusfar has turned out to be pretty productive. Sunshine, KMenu work, SVN access.. I got a lot done, and I still have a few more waking hours! This has been the first weekend in a few months I havnt had to travel or work, so I am enjoying every minute of it (and spending it WORKING anyway :) Read More

Last night I figured I would do something useful and go through the Suse 10.0 rc1 installation. It is a very pretty and straightforward installation process provided you have the CD media to install packages. One button label, which was EVERYWHERE, bothered me a bit: Read More

Some of you may have first heard of this at aKademy. Jan and I are conducting a simple survey of developers in order to get a better idea of your development style and how we can make the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) better and more attractive for you to use. Read More

I managed to get a lot of work done today, but not the kind I was aiming for. Things are still insane here at my job in DC so instead of the KDE Usability work I was planning on getting done (sorry Jan, maybe Monday) I get to deal with more crap updates and fight the battles which were usually reserved for the middle of the week (FYI: Just because it VALIDATES for §508 Accessibility it does not mean it is accessible!). Read More

I have to say that my first aKademy, first time travelling abroad, first time in Europe, first time in Spain, first time meeting so many absoultely cool people was amazing. Read More