Great article and comic from usability guy, Tom Chi.
Brilliant comments too and so many quotables you should just read through them yourself. In an optimistic mood, I like to think there’s some way this could be solved:
OSS programmers are often just hacking in their free time because their day-jobs aren’t satisfying their desire to write strong code. So for those people, they’re coding as a hobby, not as a job, which makes it difficult to impose un-fun constraints on them like listening to a non-programmer (oh the humiliation) as to why their software isn’t usable. The trick here is to find a way that good HCI can mesh with the OSS mentality and development model. Any suggestions?
Like most things done “in their spare time”, things are far from perfect. When was the last time you cut the hedge so it was exactly straight, or washed and polished the car until it gleamed so much you could see your reflection in it – from 10 feet away? We need the hedge cutting and car washing professionals to join us in our spare time hobbies. Such a collaboration can only benefit both groups!
And if that site had permalinks to the comments I’d probably be linking to several of them. oh well, more usability work to be done! 🙂
