This week’s edition of the IET magazine is The Open Source Issue. The arrival of my weekly magazine seemed to coincide beautifully with @leisa tweeting the question: “Why does open source matter?” In the magazine we have: open source biotechnology, open source cars, open source phones and the story of how AQA (a UK examination board) went open source. “Open source biotech...
Seriously though, why would anyone do this?
I tweeted (twittered? Will I never know?) a link to this article on how to run Ubuntu on a mac. Within moments I got a direct tweet back from a former colleague who is a UX/Design person: Seriously with OSx as good as it is… Why would anyone do this? I don’t get it. Why run Ubuntu on a mac? The article I linked to provides some suggestions but here are a few of my own: Because a basic...
Living beauty
Reading Roger Scruton’s essay in The Times made me think. I like that. The title of the article is ‘What has art got to do with beauty?’ – in a time of Turner prizes – a very interesting question I am sure you will agree. The article raises many interesting points and rather than dilute, I shall only address one of them at this time. This search for aesthetic order...
First 10 Papercuts are healed!
OK, so my headline isn’t strictly true but it is cheering on a Monday morning 🙂 Thank you to everyone for their efforts. David Siegel has the full details on his blog. In addition to the people David mentions – who have put in a sterling effort – I would also like to thank all the UX people who are building up the courage to get publicly involved but who were happy to...
What is a browser?
The lovely people at Google took to the streets with a video camera and asked passers-by three questions: What is a browser? What is the difference between a search engine and a browser? Which browser do you use? Less than 8% of people interviewed on that day knew what a browser was. Less than 8% of people interviewed on that day knew what a browser was. Are you surprised? I wasn’t. These...
Do design? Do open source?
One evening a few months ago, Leisa and I had dinner and were chatting – as one does – about work and the challenges of design in the open source community. One outcome of the evening was Leisa going home and registering . It sat for a while. Then, last week, as we were chatting about my last blog post Leisa set up the ning thing, I cut and pasted my blog post in, few bits and pieces...
Zip, archive, package or compress? Help!
As part of the 100 paper cuts project that we are running for the next Ubuntu release we are focussing on small usability problems that, if fixed, will make the Ubuntu desktop experience feel smoother, safer, better. The developers are helping us fix them but we could do with usability and design input to help suggest the fixes. Here is an example: A new user thinks “I need to create a zip...
My new job
I have the most exciting job in design right now! What’s my job? I lead a team of designers who follow user-centred design methodologies to help inform the design of Ubuntu; we lend our skills to a huge range of Open Source applications. It is our job to add our skills, knowledge of user behaviour and user data we gather to the ‘re-use and improve’ ethos of Free and Open Source Software. Of...
Moderating in a virtual world
I was lucky enough to be invited to moderate a Drupal 7 Online Summit last Sunday evening. Background: I have never used Drupal. I know approximately what it is. I have experience of IRC meetings and moderating offline discussions with members of the Open Source community. I have run many offline workshops with different audiences. Preparation: This Virtual Summit was planned for 2 hours and was...
Users Rule
Over the years I have toyed with the idea of writing a book aimed at consumers. I would love to redefine what it means that something works and I would love to get to a stage where people can walk into a shop and return something simply because the people who designed it weren’t thinking hard enough. “Hello, I’d like to return this radio.” “I’m sorry to hear...