KTp/Usability

Introduction

Usability is often simplified as ease of use. But not every simple application makes users happy, and not all efficient products are well-designed for the target group. Software has to be efficient and effective, a task has to be done with a defined time, precision, effort or the like. But as well it should be engaging, make fun to use it, is has to be error tolerant and easy to learn. Often very different people use the product with more or less expertise, users have various goals, come from different cultures, and so on. Usability is a continuous process with building a hypothesis and evaluating it. Users are satisfied when their goals, mental models, tasks and requirements are all met. The combination of analysis, design and evaluation all approached starting from the user’s point of view creates usable products.

Vision

The first step of user-centred development is the definition of a straight, easy to understand vision. A vision is a concise leitmotif which describes why the world gets better with the product. It shows the future of development to users and pools the team together.

• Have you ever wondered how to contact a particular person, desperately searching for his or her contact information?
• Do you get confused by chatting with someone in one application and with another in a second tool?
• Are you annoyed by protocol restrictions of your messenger, e.g. in case you want to share pictures or documents?
• Did you ever get disturbed by incoming chat messages because you forgot to set busy state on starting a video conference?
• Your instant messenger does not satisfies your requirements? Does it lacks on integration with other programs like address book?

We present the solution to all those questions: KDE-telepathy - The umbrella of instant messaging.

Persona

A persona represents the target group of users. It is neither a lead user in terms of an expert nor an abstract stereotype without specific features. A persona acts in scenarios and allows empathic decision. With a persona it becomes easier to argue if a feature is good or not. For example, "Alice wouldn't agree with it" does not only sounds better than "I don't like it in that way" but it also generates a common picture for the developer about users and their requirements.