[Fedora-marketing-list] Fedora usability : a new project?

[Damien Durand]

Hello everyone,

Fedora usability was born but it's not official yet;-) :
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DamienDurand/Usability

What's fedora Usability?

The Fedora Usability project aims to provide coherence, accessibility and
intuivity for all people using Fedora Core and its associated resources.
Fedora must be easy and making things simple and coherent for a pleasant use
is my objectif with this project.

I need feedback, if you're interested to contribute feel free to add your
name in the usability group :
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DamienDurand/Usability/UsabilityGroup

Once this project completed and approved by you, I'll move the wiki pages
and will send an official announce ;-)

Thanks in advance

Damien Durand

[Jef Spaleta]

On 8/6/06, Damien Durand <splinux(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  I need feedback, if you're interested to contribute feel free to
> add your
>  name in the usability group :
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DamienDurand/Usability/UsabilityGroup 
I STRONGLY  suggest that you make a sincere and very comprehensive
effort to touch base with the people working on the upstream desktop
usability level.  I honestly do not see how a fedora centric project
is going to work inside the framework of the decisions which are being
made upstream inside the desktop projects. Striking out on your own to
"fix" usability inside fedora without understanding how the desktop
usability decisions impact the fedora experience, is going to do very
little but become an ultimately frustrating and fruitless waste of
time for you.. unless there is very clearly defined relationship
between what the fedora centric group is doing to support the
usability vision of the upstream desktop projects and how the fedora
centric work is moved upstream. There are very few "right" answers in
usability in the limit of a large population. You need to make damn
sure that your vision for Fedora usability works inside the upstream
vision for the desktop project you are looking to impact.  The very
very last thing you want to do is have Fedora specific usability
changes to be stuck as fedora specific patches. Tie you mission
statement to specific "deliverables" that the desktop projects are
looking for help with upstream.

-jef"all this talk about "Fedora human users" is sooooo egotistically
human. You want to be ahead of the curve... think dophins.. or dophin
human hybrids."spaleta

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Sun, 6 Aug 2006, Jeff Spaleta wrote:

>  On 8/6/06, Damien Durand <splinux(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  > I need feedback, if you're interested to contribute feel free to add your
>  > name in the usability group :
>  > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DamienDurand/Usability/UsabilityGroup
>  
>  I STRONGLY  suggest that you make a sincere and very comprehensive
>  effort to touch base with the people working on the upstream desktop
>  usability level.  I honestly do not see how a fedora centric project
>  is going to work inside the framework of the decisions which are being
>  made upstream inside the desktop projects. Striking out on your own to
>  "fix" usability inside fedora without understanding how the desktop
>  usability decisions impact the fedora experience, is going to do very
>  little but become an ultimately frustrating and fruitless waste of
>  time for you.. unless there is very clearly defined relationship
>  between what the fedora centric group is doing to support the
>  usability vision of the upstream desktop projects and how the fedora
>  centric work is moved upstream. There are very few "right" answers in
>  usability in the limit of a large population. You need to make damn
>  sure that your vision for Fedora usability works inside the upstream
>  vision for the desktop project you are looking to impact.  The very
>  very last thing you want to do is have Fedora specific usability
>  changes to be stuck as fedora specific patches. Tie you mission
>  statement to specific "deliverables" that the desktop projects are
>  looking for help with upstream. 
A big +1 from over here.

--g

-------------------------------------------------------------
Greg DeKoenigsberg || Fedora Project || fedoraproject.org
Be an Ambassador || http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors
-------------------------------------------------------------

[Paul W. Frields]

On Sun, 2006-08-06 at 14:39 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
>  On 8/6/06, Damien Durand <splinux(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  > I need feedback, if you're interested to contribute feel free to add your
>  > name in the usability group :
>  > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DamienDurand/Usability/UsabilityGroup
>  
>  I STRONGLY  suggest that you make a sincere and very comprehensive
>  effort to touch base with the people working on the upstream desktop
>  usability level.  I honestly do not see how a fedora centric project
>  is going to work inside the framework of the decisions which are being
>  made upstream inside the desktop projects. Striking out on your own to
>  "fix" usability inside fedora without understanding how the desktop
>  usability decisions impact the fedora experience, is going to do very
>  little but become an ultimately frustrating and fruitless waste of
>  time for you.. unless there is very clearly defined relationship
>  between what the fedora centric group is doing to support the
>  usability vision of the upstream desktop projects and how the fedora
>  centric work is moved upstream. There are very few "right" answers in
>  usability in the limit of a large population. You need to make damn
>  sure that your vision for Fedora usability works inside the upstream
>  vision for the desktop project you are looking to impact.  The very
>  very last thing you want to do is have Fedora specific usability
>  changes to be stuck as fedora specific patches. Tie you mission
>  statement to specific "deliverables" that the desktop projects are
>  looking for help with upstream. 
+1 from where I sit.  I don't see what this project plan accomplishes
that can't be solved by (1) working with upstream, and (2) filing bugs
or working through the existing Triage.

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
       Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
    Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

[Steven James Drinnan]

Good on you Damien. I am all for a project that can give users a method
of suggesting improvements that can be filtered and then sent on to he
necessary teams for implementation. The development teams should not be
hassled by a lot request changes. In saying this if there is already a
method that I am not aware of then the existing process should be used
or if necessary modified so that good customer feed back is achieved. 

My experience with linux is limited but I do know the importance of good
usability of a computer program - if people can not intuitively figure
out how do something then that is a problem - 1 area is networking
-though a  lot of improvements have been made there is still a lot of
bugs - (eg on my laptop sometimes the eth0 and eth1 (wired and wirless)
get transposed or network manager decides to create a new ethernet
device- there are a few other issues but not the time here.

We are humans after all not dolphins. We all think in a particular way.
And need to make operations more smother. One good example is Add remove
programs and Software Updater

We have a great product. That needs promoting and user feed back. 

There are few ideas i have but i would like to stress, lets not reinvent
the wheel, if there is a system in place lets use it to its full
potential.

Anyway just my 2 cents worth






 
On Sun, 2006-08-06 at 18:20 +0200, Damien Durand wrote:
>  Hello everyone, 
>  
>  Fedora usability was born but it's not official yet;-) :
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DamienDurand/Usability
>  
>  What's fedora Usability? 
>  
>  The Fedora Usability project aims to provide coherence, accessibility
>  and intuivity for all people using Fedora Core and its associated
>  resources. Fedora must be easy and making things simple and coherent
>  for a pleasant use is my objectif with this project. 
>  
>  I need feedback, if you're interested to contribute feel free to add
>  your name in the usability group :
>  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DamienDurand/Usability/UsabilityGroup
>  
>  Once this project completed and approved by you, I'll move the wiki
>  pages and will send an official announce ;-)
>  
>  Thanks in advance
>  
>  Damien Durand 
>  --
>  Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
>  Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list

[Paul W. Frields]

On Mon, 2006-08-07 at 08:53 +0800, Steven James Drinnan wrote:
>  My experience with linux is limited but I do know the importance of
> good
>  usability of a computer program - if people can not intuitively figure
>  out how do something then that is a problem - 1 area is networking
>  -though a  lot of improvements have been made there is still a lot of
>  bugs - (eg on my laptop sometimes the eth0 and eth1 (wired and wirless)
>  get transposed or network manager decides to create a new ethernet
>  device- there are a few other issues but not the time here.
>  
>  We are humans after all not dolphins. We all think in a particular way.
>  And need to make operations more smother. One good example is Add remove
>  programs and Software Updater 
Have you filed bugs?

>  We have a great product. That needs promoting and user feed back. 
The first is what Marketing is for.  The second is what Bugzilla is for.

>  There are few ideas i have but i would like to stress, lets not
> reinvent
>  the wheel, if there is a system in place lets use it to its full
>  potential. 
Right on!

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
       Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
    Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

[Damien Durand]

Well, this project is now official, please use the fedora-desktop list to
speak about it or join #fedora-usability channel. I'm sorry for this but it
is to avoid the multiplication of malls on different list.

Thanks in advance

Damien Durand

2006/8/8, Paul W. Frields <stickster(a)gmail.com&gt;:
>  On Mon, 2006-08-07 at 08:53 +0800, Steven James Drinnan wrote:
>  > My experience with linux is limited but I do know the importance of good
>  > usability of a computer program - if people can not intuitively figure
>  > out how do something then that is a problem - 1 area is networking
>  > -though a  lot of improvements have been made there is still a lot of
>  > bugs - (eg on my laptop sometimes the eth0 and eth1 (wired and wirless)
>  > get transposed or network manager decides to create a new ethernet
>  > device- there are a few other issues but not the time here.
>  >
>  > We are humans after all not dolphins. We all think in a particular way.
>  > And need to make operations more smother. One good example is Add remove
>  > programs and Software Updater
>
>  Have you filed bugs?
>
>  > We have a great product. That needs promoting and user feed back.
>
>  The first is what Marketing is for.  The second is what Bugzilla is for.
>
>  > There are few ideas i have but i would like to stress, lets not reinvent
>  > the wheel, if there is a system in place lets use it to its full
>  > potential.
>
>  Right on!
>
>  --
>  Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
>    gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
>         Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
>      Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
>
>
>  --
>  Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
>  Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
>
>
>

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Mar 8 août 2006 13:14, Paul W. Frields a écrit :

> > We have a great product. That needs promoting and user feed
> back.
>
>  The first is what Marketing is for.  The second is what Bugzilla is for. 
I strongly disagree.

1. The weight of a Fedora bugzilla report is pretty low,

2. A lot of Fedora packagers consider it's not their job to push user
reports upstream.

3. Using upstream bugzilla is asking to be ignored - any feature evolution
(and usability fixes are always considered feature evolutions) will be
discussed in mailing lists/irc channels by developpers between themselves.
Not in the bugzilla where the reporter can follow the discussion. Then
when the user complains after a few months he'll be informed the decision
was taken somewhere else without leaving him any opportunity to make his
case or asking seriously fo his input. (and you and I know old bugzilla
bugs will be ignored forever, since if they were important, someone would
have acted on them before)

Which means any problematic interaction between app A, B and C (typical
usability problem) requires users:

1. to be able to locate the A, B, C forums where usability is discussed

2. to join them, learn the mood and discussion conventions

3. to convince A, B, C to work together (with zero credentials "just basic
user report"), probably at an inconvenient date for upstream

ie requires a *lot* of time, communication skills, mastery of technical
english, etc

Practically that means that without any group support a user report will
go nowhere. Even if he found a perfectly valid problem.

Distributions which create usability SIGs are able to influence upstream
evolution the way their users need. They help formalise user reports in
clean technical english. They are able to gather data and numbers that can
not be waved away like an individual user-level report often is if
upstream deems it inconvenient.

Distributions which don't are only represented by their developpers, who
are supposed to represent distro users but in practice only push their
personal agenda (which may be good or bad but has often little in common
with the wishes of users)

No usability group gave us most of the UI gems of early GNOME 2, and an
awful lot of the bad reputation GNOME and Fedora still suffer from (GNOME
is not Fedora but Fedora/Red Hat people were certainly major players in
the decision making process then).

Till Fedora developpers/maintainers consider usability problems bugs (to
be fixed) and not "enhancements" (to be ignored at will), someone else
needs to mediate between Fedora users and all the upstreams Fedora
distributes.

Lastly this kind of group is a major generator of user goodwill - "let the
users engage upstream alone" leads to the kind of Fedora-bashing articles
we've seen lately.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

[Paul W. Frields]

On Tue, 2006-08-08 at 14:53 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  Le Mar 8 août 2006 13:14, Paul W. Frields a écrit :
>  
>  >> We have a great product. That needs promoting and user feed back.
>  >
>  > The first is what Marketing is for.  The second is what Bugzilla is for.
>  
>  I strongly disagree. 
[...snip...]

Thank you Nicolas, this is the first substantial discussion I've seen on
this topic.  I really have no opposition to a SIG for this work, but I
want to see it hashed out on the appropriate lists transparently, not
unilaterally announced.  Unless I missed the big discussion elsewhere --
which is possible; unlike the superhuman Rahul, I monitor only a subset
of the work going on!  (I don't know how he does it, honestly.)

SIGs should be working under the umbrella of one of the existing
subprojects.  I'd like to see that happening, to insure the work is
monitored and supported correctly.  If Marketing is not the correct
umbrella, this discussion should be started on the list for the correct
one.

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
       Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
    Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le mardi 08 août 2006 à 15:18 -0400, Paul W. Frields a écrit :
>  On Tue, 2006-08-08 at 14:53 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  > Le Mar 8 août 2006 13:14, Paul W. Frields a écrit :
>  > 
>  > >> We have a great product. That needs promoting and user feed back.
>  > >
>  > > The first is what Marketing is for.  The second is what Bugzilla is for.
>  > 
>  > I strongly disagree.
>  [...snip...]
>  
>  Thank you Nicolas, this is the first substantial discussion I've seen on
>  this topic.  I really have no opposition to a SIG for this work, but I
>  want to see it hashed out on the appropriate lists transparently, not
>  unilaterally announced. 
The appropriate list is certainly the desktop one, as any cli/server
usability problem is very low prio nowadays. However since it's been
almost dead lately I don't think discussing it directly there would have
had any effect.

>   Unless I missed the big discussion elsewhere -- 
I missed it too :)
I only rationalised why a usability group would be useful, I have little
idea if it's the kind of usability group proposed today.

Also I have my fingers in enough pies today I hope someone will take up
the program and make it real, but I've little time to contribute myself.
Though this is a direct result of trying to engage upstream alone as
we're supposed to do nowadays.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

[Máirín Duffy]

Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  Also I have my fingers in enough pies today I hope someone will take
> up
>  the program and make it real, but I've little time to contribute myself.
>  Though this is a direct result of trying to engage upstream alone as
>  we're supposed to do nowadays. 
Are there any other distro-specific usability groups out there?

I'm kind of confused at the goal of a distro-specific usability group. 
Doesn't it make more sense to work with an upstream usability group such 
as the GNOME Usability Project (which is somewhat dormant AFICT)? Has 
someone tried to engage upstream via projects such as this and met with 
resistance? (this is the feeling I get from your email?)

Where I see a distro-specific usability group being useful:

- Software update tool usability (because different distros handle this 
differently)
- Infrastructure usability (e.g. usability of the Fedora website(s), 
account system, bugzilla, etc.)

But neither appears to be the goal...?

~m

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le mardi 08 août 2006 à 16:08 -0400, Máirín Duffy a écrit :
>  Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  > Also I have my fingers in enough pies today I hope someone will take up
>  > the program and make it real, but I've little time to contribute myself.
>  > Though this is a direct result of trying to engage upstream alone as
>  > we're supposed to do nowadays.
>  
>  Are there any other distro-specific usability groups out there? 
Novell I think has an active usability project

>  I'm kind of confused at the goal of a distro-specific usability
> group. 
>  Doesn't it make more sense to work with an upstream usability group such 
>  as the GNOME Usability Project (which is somewhat dormant AFICT)? Has 
>  someone tried to engage upstream via projects such as this and met with 
>  resistance? (this is the feeling I get from your email?) 
The problem is actual users won't have "GNOME problems" or "KDE
problems" or "OO.o problems". They'll have Fedora user problems.

So if on Monday a user hits a usability problem in OO.o we ask him to
integrate the OO.o ecosystem.

On Tuesday frustrated with OO.o he tries koffice (he didn't set up
fixing OO.o after all - he want to make it work within Fedora not wait
months before the next OO.o release). It works but then there is another
problem which wasn't present in OO.o. We'll tell him "finished digesting
OO.o upstream - try KDE now"

And so on.

(you'll note that when a user reports a crash we don't ask him to report
upstream directly - if we followed this logic we know perfectly well a
lot of problems would never be fixed satisfactorily)

Who there has enough time to follow every single Fedora list and IRC
channel? On the usability front we're asking users to do an effort
several orders of magnitude higher - engage with every single upstream
they may use as part of their everyday Fedora experience. That's not
realistic.

Red Hat/Fedora moved from a "patch everything to accommodate Red Hat
customer wishes" to "use as vanilla upstream as possible". This is all
well and good but I don't see why using vanilla upstream should prevent
the Fedora community as a whole from telling upstream what we wish in
the next release. Other distributions are not afraid to do so.

This requires actively collecting and discussing problems at the distro
level. Sadly almost never done in Fedora - the sole exception I remember
was the new print tool requirements. The influence of Fedora as a user
community over upstream is so diffuse one can ask if it even exists at
all.

>  Where I see a distro-specific usability group being useful:
>  
>  - Software update tool usability (because different distros handle this 
>  differently)
>  - Infrastructure usability (e.g. usability of the Fedora website(s), 
>  account system, bugzilla, etc.)
>  
>  But neither appears to be the goal...? 
Apart from the general "help bridge the gap between upstream and users"
you need to consider the following.

A usability problem means "it works technically but it's awkward for
me". So:
1. there is a way to get the job done nevertheless - making it not worth
spending the time reporting if it's difficult (and unless you already
work with the affected upstream it will be)
2. lone reports may be subjective

You can only do good usability work by correlating many user reports. If
you make it hard enough for reports to percolate upstream, the few which
make it will be dismissed as "non representative" especially if they
don't fit in the user abstraction upstream devs have (if they did fit in
it chances are the problem would never have happened in the first place)

One major usability problem is inter-app inconsistency.
By definition this kind of problem impacts many different upstreams.
And it's dependant on the actual software collection the user runs.

The Fedora context is very specific - we refuse to ship many apps which
are good enough legal-wise for competing distros. Therefore our users
won't have the same problems as a distro who ships mplayer instead of
totem for example. Similarly the userbase of a project like OO.o will
span several operating systems, so Fedora usability priorities won't map
to OO.o usability priorities, and if Fedora does not make the effort to
make its case loudly OO.o will just develop for their biggest port -
Windows.

And so on. 

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot

[Paul W. Frields]

On Tue, 2006-08-08 at 22:02 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  Le mardi 08 août 2006 à 15:18 -0400, Paul W. Frields a écrit :
>  > On Tue, 2006-08-08 at 14:53 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  > > Le Mar 8 août 2006 13:14, Paul W. Frields a écrit :
>  > > 
>  > > >> We have a great product. That needs promoting and user feed back.
>  > > >
>  > > > The first is what Marketing is for.  The second is what Bugzilla is for.
>  > > 
>  > > I strongly disagree.
>  > [...snip...]
>  > 
>  > Thank you Nicolas, this is the first substantial discussion I've seen on
>  > this topic.  I really have no opposition to a SIG for this work, but I
>  > want to see it hashed out on the appropriate lists transparently, not
>  > unilaterally announced.
>  
>  The appropriate list is certainly the desktop one, as any cli/server
>  usability problem is very low prio nowadays. However since it's been
>  almost dead lately I don't think discussing it directly there would have
>  had any effect.
>  
>  >  Unless I missed the big discussion elsewhere --
>  
>  I missed it too :)
>  I only rationalised why a usability group would be useful, I have little
>  idea if it's the kind of usability group proposed today.
>  
>  Also I have my fingers in enough pies today I hope someone will take up
>  the program and make it real, but I've little time to contribute myself.
>  Though this is a direct result of trying to engage upstream alone as
>  we're supposed to do nowadays. 
Don't get me wrong, I see that a usability initiative is worthwhile.  It
*is* difficult to expect to users to follow multiple upstream vendors.
Unfortunately, I think Bugzilla is not living up to its potential as far
as serving as a conduit for issues to upstream.  Being able to link to
one or more "outside Bugzilla" bugs and follow them with a single
Fedora/RH Bugzilla entry, for instance, would be a major boon.  I seem
to remember that idea being discussed at one time.  I found this:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=178305
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=189813 

The latter seems more relevant.  What would be *really* useful, IMHO, is
to be able to enter an outside bugzilla URL which would cause the
RH/Fedora Bugzilla to CC itself on that outside bug, as well as take its
discussion upstream unless marked otherwise.  (We don't want to clog
upstream with very Fedora-specific stuff, for example.)

That's neither here nor there, though -- most importantly I wanted some
public discussion of this usability initiative and some more concrete
goals and objectives than what I currently see on the wiki.  It's a
worthy effort that deserves more thought and input.

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
       Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
    Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

[Rahul Sundaram]

Paul W. Frields wrote:
>  On Tue, 2006-08-08 at 14:53 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> > Le Mar 8 août 2006 13:14, Paul W. Frields a écrit :
> >
> >>> We have a great product. That needs promoting and user feed back.
> >> The first is what Marketing is for.  The second is what Bugzilla is for.
> > I strongly disagree.
>  [...snip...]
>  
>  Thank you Nicolas, this is the first substantial discussion I've seen on
>  this topic.  I really have no opposition to a SIG for this work, but I
>  want to see it hashed out on the appropriate lists transparently, not
>  unilaterally announced.  Unless I missed the big discussion elsewhere --
>  which is possible; unlike the superhuman Rahul, I monitor only a subset
>  of the work going on!  (I don't know how he does it, honestly.)
>   
Nicolas comments can be summed up as Red Hat does more work on upstream 
than it does on polish which is what I said in the earlier board 
discussions too. You shouldnt be missing that being a member yourself.

Rahul

[Paul W. Frields]

On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 12:59 +0530, Rahul wrote:
>  Paul W. Frields wrote:
>  > On Tue, 2006-08-08 at 14:53 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  >> Le Mar 8 août 2006 13:14, Paul W. Frields a écrit :
>  >>
>  >>>> We have a great product. That needs promoting and user feed back.
>  >>> The first is what Marketing is for.  The second is what Bugzilla is for.
>  >> I strongly disagree.
>  > [...snip...]
>  > 
>  > Thank you Nicolas, this is the first substantial discussion I've seen on
>  > this topic.  I really have no opposition to a SIG for this work, but I
>  > want to see it hashed out on the appropriate lists transparently, not
>  > unilaterally announced.  Unless I missed the big discussion elsewhere --
>  > which is possible; unlike the superhuman Rahul, I monitor only a subset
>  > of the work going on!  (I don't know how he does it, honestly.)
>  > 
>  
>  Nicolas comments can be summed up as Red Hat does more work on upstream 
>  than it does on polish which is what I said in the earlier board 
>  discussions too. You shouldnt be missing that being a member yourself. 
Rahul,

It's possible that you're missing the point of this particular
discussion.  It wasn't that I don't understand the potential goals of a
Usability initiative (I do), nor that I don't understand a need for it
(I do), nor that I didn't understand Nicolas' comments (I did).  The
entire problem -- and you will see the threads on fedora-advisory-board
to this effect -- is that announcements are being made about "official"
Feodra projects without any prior discussion about those needs, setting
concrete goals and objectives, and so forth.  I came back with some
comments intended to raise issues about possible duplication of effort
and get people talking about it.  I don't mind being wrong, but the
discussion needs to take place.

My final comment was intended to point out that I hadn't seen any of
this discussion, although there was a possibility they were being held
somewhere that I hadn't seen them.  Those should be community
discussions like RFCs where interested parties can hash them out before
bringing them to the proper venue for backing.

I haven't missed your comments in board meetings, but they don't
constitute public discussion either, AFAICT.

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
       Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
    Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi,


>  Rahul,
>  
>  It's possible that you're missing the point of this particular
>  discussion.  It wasn't that I don't understand the potential goals of a
>  Usability initiative (I do), nor that I don't understand a need for it
>  (I do), nor that I didn't understand Nicolas' comments (I did).  The
>  entire problem -- and you will see the threads on fedora-advisory-board
>  to this effect -- is that announcements are being made about "official"
>  Feodra projects without any prior discussion about those needs, setting
>  concrete goals and objectives, and so forth.  I came back with some
>  comments intended to raise issues about possible duplication of effort
>  and get people talking about it.  I don't mind being wrong, but the
>  discussion needs to take place. 
Sure. We definitely did expect discussions to take place. Wider set of 
announcements depend on fedora-announce list mails being moderated and 
we need to make sure we dont end up announcing things without the right 
ideas in place. When a new sub project is being announced, it gets a lot 
of attention and we would do better to explain things properly and give 
plenty of room for potential contributors to work their magic.


>  
>  My final comment was intended to point out that I hadn't seen any of
>  this discussion, although there was a possibility they were being held
>  somewhere that I hadn't seen them.  Those should be community
>  discussions like RFCs where interested parties can hash them out before
>  bringing them to the proper venue for backing.
>  
>  I haven't missed your comments in board meetings, but they don't
>  constitute public discussion either, AFAICT. 
They arent public discussions as such but I wasnt expressing a 
fundamentally new idea. See the problem is not that we dont know the 
issues involved but that our priorities have been elsewhere and arguably 
misaligned but unless there is more people going to contribute and fix 
the issues announcing a new project isnt going to change things. The 
immediate reactions I see to a new project discussion involve is people 
listing their favorite alleged issues and that wont get us very far.


Rahul

[Paul W. Frields]

On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 18:31 +0530, Rahul wrote:
>  > It's possible that you're missing the point of this
> particular
>  > discussion.  It wasn't that I don't understand the potential goals of a
>  > Usability initiative (I do), nor that I don't understand a need for it
>  > (I do), nor that I didn't understand Nicolas' comments (I did).  The
>  > entire problem -- and you will see the threads on fedora-advisory-board
>  > to this effect -- is that announcements are being made about "official"
>  > Feodra projects without any prior discussion about those needs, setting
>  > concrete goals and objectives, and so forth.  I came back with some
>  > comments intended to raise issues about possible duplication of effort
>  > and get people talking about it.  I don't mind being wrong, but the
>  > discussion needs to take place.
>  
>  Sure. We definitely did expect discussions to take place. Wider set of 
>  announcements depend on fedora-announce list mails being moderated and 
>  we need to make sure we dont end up announcing things without the right 
>  ideas in place. When a new sub project is being announced, it gets a lot 
>  of attention and we would do better to explain things properly and give 
>  plenty of room for potential contributors to work their magic. 
Yes, and part of that magic includes having answers to the real
questions, such as "What measurable objectives can you reach?"  We're in
agreement here, I'm pretty sure.

>  > My final comment was intended to point out that I hadn't
> seen any of
>  > this discussion, although there was a possibility they were being held
>  > somewhere that I hadn't seen them.  Those should be community
>  > discussions like RFCs where interested parties can hash them out before
>  > bringing them to the proper venue for backing.
>  > 
>  > I haven't missed your comments in board meetings, but they don't
>  > constitute public discussion either, AFAICT.
>  
>  They arent public discussions as such but I wasnt expressing a 
>  fundamentally new idea. See the problem is not that we dont know the 
>  issues involved but that our priorities have been elsewhere and arguably 
>  misaligned but unless there is more people going to contribute and fix 
>  the issues announcing a new project isnt going to change things. The 
>  immediate reactions I see to a new project discussion involve is people 
>  listing their favorite alleged issues and that wont get us very far. 
Also agreed.  Again, discussion before announcement is the key.  No one
should be hesitant to bring out new ideas, but as you say, it has to be
more than saying, "We're going to solve this with a new project," or
simply listing complaints (valid sa they might be).  Having a set of
goals, objectives, and methodologies is key.  I would say the
methodologies part is incredibly important when you talk about issues as
potentially divisive as usability.  Without clear unbiased standards and
methodologies that can pretty much dissolve into a lot of disagreement
over trivial details.

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
       Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
    Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject

[Damien Durand]

Please, migrate your discussions about Fedora Usability on the
Fedora-Desktop-List

Thanks in advance

Damien

2006/8/9, Paul W. Frields <stickster(a)gmail.com&gt;:
>  On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 18:31 +0530, Rahul wrote:
>  > > It's possible that you're missing the point of this particular
>  > > discussion.  It wasn't that I don't understand the potential goals of
>  a
>  > > Usability initiative (I do), nor that I don't understand a need for it
>  > > (I do), nor that I didn't understand Nicolas' comments (I did).  The
>  > > entire problem -- and you will see the threads on
>  fedora-advisory-board
>  > > to this effect -- is that announcements are being made about
>  "official"
>  > > Feodra projects without any prior discussion about those needs,
>  setting
>  > > concrete goals and objectives, and so forth.  I came back with some
>  > > comments intended to raise issues about possible duplication of effort
>  > > and get people talking about it.  I don't mind being wrong, but the
>  > > discussion needs to take place.
>  >
>  > Sure. We definitely did expect discussions to take place. Wider set of
>  > announcements depend on fedora-announce list mails being moderated and
>  > we need to make sure we dont end up announcing things without the right
>  > ideas in place. When a new sub project is being announced, it gets a lot
>  > of attention and we would do better to explain things properly and give
>  > plenty of room for potential contributors to work their magic.
>
>  Yes, and part of that magic includes having answers to the real
>  questions, such as "What measurable objectives can you reach?"  We're in
>  agreement here, I'm pretty sure.
>
>  > > My final comment was intended to point out that I hadn't seen any of
>  > > this discussion, although there was a possibility they were being held
>  > > somewhere that I hadn't seen them.  Those should be community
>  > > discussions like RFCs where interested parties can hash them out
>  before
>  > > bringing them to the proper venue for backing.
>  > >
>  > > I haven't missed your comments in board meetings, but they don't
>  > > constitute public discussion either, AFAICT.
>  >
>  > They arent public discussions as such but I wasnt expressing a
>  > fundamentally new idea. See the problem is not that we dont know the
>  > issues involved but that our priorities have been elsewhere and arguably
>  > misaligned but unless there is more people going to contribute and fix
>  > the issues announcing a new project isnt going to change things. The
>  > immediate reactions I see to a new project discussion involve is people
>  > listing their favorite alleged issues and that wont get us very far.
>
>  Also agreed.  Again, discussion before announcement is the key.  No one
>  should be hesitant to bring out new ideas, but as you say, it has to be
>  more than saying, "We're going to solve this with a new project," or
>  simply listing complaints (valid sa they might be).  Having a set of
>  goals, objectives, and methodologies is key.  I would say the
>  methodologies part is incredibly important when you talk about issues as
>  potentially divisive as usability.  Without clear unbiased standards and
>  methodologies that can pretty much dissolve into a lot of disagreement
>  over trivial details.
>
>  --
>  Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
>    gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
>         Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
>      Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
>
>
>  --
>  Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
>  Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
>
>
>

[Steven James Drinnan]

On Tue, 2006-08-08 at 14:53 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
>  Le Mar 8 août 2006 13:14, Paul W. Frields a écrit :
>  
>  >> We have a great product. That needs promoting and user feed back.
>  >
>  > The first is what Marketing is for.  The second is what Bugzilla is for.
>  
>  I strongly disagree.
>  
>  1. The weight of a Fedora bugzilla report is pretty low,
>  
>  2. A lot of Fedora packagers consider it's not their job to push user
>  reports upstream.
>  
>  3. Using upstream bugzilla is asking to be ignored - any feature evolution
>  (and usability fixes are always considered feature evolutions) will be
>  discussed in mailing lists/irc channels by developpers between themselves.
>  Not in the bugzilla where the reporter can follow the discussion. Then
>  when the user complains after a few months he'll be informed the decision
>  was taken somewhere else without leaving him any opportunity to make his
>  case or asking seriously fo his input. (and you and I know old bugzilla
>  bugs will be ignored forever, since if they were important, someone would
>  have acted on them before)
>  
>  Which means any problematic interaction between app A, B and C (typical
>  usability problem) requires users:
>  
>  1. to be able to locate the A, B, C forums where usability is discussed
>  
>  2. to join them, learn the mood and discussion conventions
>  
>  3. to convince A, B, C to work together (with zero credentials "just basic
>  user report"), probably at an inconvenient date for upstream
>  
>  ie requires a *lot* of time, communication skills, mastery of technical
>  english, etc
>  
>  Practically that means that without any group support a user report will
>  go nowhere. Even if he found a perfectly valid problem.
>  
>  Distributions which create usability SIGs are able to influence upstream
>  evolution the way their users need. They help formalise user reports in
>  clean technical english. They are able to gather data and numbers that can
>  not be waved away like an individual user-level report often is if
>  upstream deems it inconvenient.
>  
>  Distributions which don't are only represented by their developpers, who
>  are supposed to represent distro users but in practice only push their
>  personal agenda (which may be good or bad but has often little in common
>  with the wishes of users)
>  
>  No usability group gave us most of the UI gems of early GNOME 2, and an
>  awful lot of the bad reputation GNOME and Fedora still suffer from (GNOME
>  is not Fedora but Fedora/Red Hat people were certainly major players in
>  the decision making process then).
>  
>  Till Fedora developpers/maintainers consider usability problems bugs (to
>  be fixed) and not "enhancements" (to be ignored at will), someone else
>  needs to mediate between Fedora users and all the upstreams Fedora
>  distributes.
>  
>  Lastly this kind of group is a major generator of user goodwill - "let the
>  users engage upstream alone" leads to the kind of Fedora-bashing articles
>  we've seen lately.
>  
>  Regards,
>   
My thoughts exactly, bugzilla is great to fix a particular problem but
it does not address what users needs are.

Steven

[Jeremy Hogan]

On 8/8/06, Steven James Drinnan <steven(a)easytec.com.hk&gt; wrote:
>  My thoughts exactly, bugzilla is great to fix a particular problem but
>  it does not address what users needs are. 

What about Featurezilla?

--jeremy

[Rahul Sundaram]

Jeremy Hogan wrote:
>  On 8/8/06, *Steven James Drinnan* <steven(a)easytec.com.hk 
>  <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>  
>  
>      My thoughts exactly, bugzilla is great to fix a particular problem but
>      it does not address what users needs are.
>  
>  
>  What about Featurezilla?
>   
Thanks but no thanks.

Rahul

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le Mer 9 août 2006 07:09, Jeremy Hogan a écrit :
>  On 8/8/06, Steven James Drinnan <steven(a)easytec.com.hk&gt; wrote:
> >
> >
> > My thoughts exactly, bugzilla is great to fix a particular problem but
> > it does not address what users needs are.
>
>
>  What about Featurezilla? 
You'd still need a team to process the user reports.
The problem now is not bugzilla or insert-favorite-tool-there. The problem
is there is no team at the Fedora level trying to analyse our user
usability feedback.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot