Google recently sponsored the GNOME Usability Hackfest, which took place in London. With over 30 GNOME design and usability experts attending on some days, it was an unusually large, exciting and dynamic event. As GNOME 3.0 is just around the corner, people took advantage of the opportunity to build bridges within the GNOME usability community, and re-think the desktop paradigm.Highlights for me included:
- Talking accessibility with Willie Walker
- Charline Poirier's Empathy Usability Report and Icon Usability Study
- Card sorting exercises to get a better understanding of how to organize applications and settings
- Usability improvements for GTK+.
- Discussions about how to improve Nautilus usability
In the last few days at the event, I spent a fair amount of time cleaning up the GNOME Usability Project Wiki so it is more clear and straightforward. I also did a lot of coordination with the Dev8D conference organizers to arrange for GNOME speakers at their event, and made arrangements for Antonio Roberts from the Dev8D community to attend the GNOME Usability Hackfest and participate on Thursday the 25th.
The GNOME Usability team has posted a great deal of blog posts, articles, and photos highlights about the work done at this hackfest and as more attendees post their notes, they will be updated onto the GNOME Planet blog aggregator. You can see my blog for more photos and a full report on the event. Many thanks to Google for sponsoring this event.
