[haiku] Re: Master's thesis possibility with Haiku
- From: Eddy Groen <eddyspeeder@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:49:21 +0200
Danke Stephan :-)
Some people have already created Trac enhencement tickets for various
> aspects of the Haiku GUI and some Forum entries/proposals have been created
> as well.
It's great that there are several (isolated) initiatives. But do I
understand correctly that at this point, there is not someone (or a separate
task force) specifically involved to do the design part? I remember that at
yellowTAB, Alan's wife was the UI guru. "Make it beautiful, we do, hrm?"
One could also give a group of people the task to customize the system.
> [This] input could then be [used for] a second group of people where the
> real deterministic tests are performed. This way, one may arrive at a more
> realistic list of tasks someone may have/wish to perform.
>
I agree. This would, especially for such things as a menu layout, be an
excellent way to go, since it will point us exactly at the tasks which are
performed most frequently.
Another interesting aspect of the research could be whether it will be
> possible to come up how exactly to improve the current interface, *before*
> the new version is written.
This is very well possible, but a research I conduct will always need to
involve changing something and testing afterward whether things have
improved. Okay, let's say we go down this road, now the question is: what
goal do we wish to attain? What would be the purpose of the study?
> Unfortunately, that doesn't say at all that you arrived at the perfect
> solution.
>
And that, unfortunately, is exactly the problem with this field :-( This is
why it gets dismissed so very often because it's costly and does not seem to
amount to very much. However, it *is* the fine distinction between "good"
and "bad" usability (Phillips vs. Samsung; Nokia vs. Siemens). "Improvement"
is always better, and "the perfect solution" often comes through
"improvement upon improvement." Arriving at the perfect solution will not be
achieved through doing nothing, but *th*rough *th*oroughly *th*inking *th*ings
*th*rough.
Eddy
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