[ Date Index ][
Thread Index ]
[ <= Previous by date /
thread ]
[ Next by date /
thread => ]
On Thursday 08 January 2004 13:18, Keith Abraham wrote:
I know it's only "Microsoft Jack" but I think the following deserves a knowledgeable reply. http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1117835,00.html
Draft for my contribution to a reply.
It is not obvious to {me} that usability testing cannot be done with Open
Source software (initial inspection shows such a suggestion to be false),
nor that the reuslts of usability testing cannot be fed back into
improvements in the interface.
It is also, if one follows the writings of Jakob Nielsen of
www.alertbox.com fame, clear that closed source software still suffers
from a dearth of usability testing and improvement.
It is correct to identify this area as a challenge for the Open Source
community, and, given that all previous challenges have been met with
serial success, it is reasonable to anticipate advances in it.
Innovation
---------------
Most of programming and development effort, regardless of where it is
done, falls into two large areas of work:-
- Mundane: on the one hand there is the routine solving of well-understood
problems in similar, identical, or slightly different circumstances to
those in whcih they have been solved before. Closed source development
has, for instance, solved some of the the problems of local government IT
support in such a way as to give "Approximately 16,000 justice and public
safety-related data elements were collected from various local and state
government sources. These were analyzed and reduced to around 2,000 unique
data elements that were then incorporated into about 300 data objects or
reusable components"
(Adelman: http://consultingtimes.com/osgov.html )
- Particular: on the other there is the solving of a problem specific to a
time and palce, a company or project, using what is to hand. THis may
involve inventing something new or achieving an insight, but this comes
from the exact circumstances, and clearly is not made less likely by the
source code's being visible elsewhere.
Of the remainder, some is speculative, some academic.
Contrary to the assertion in the article, in the field of medical records
software and medical ontology, the innovative projects are more likely to
be Open Source (eg OpenGalen at Manchester University, Open-EHR in
Australia). Each is very specifically engaged in developing "an
independent software architecture" to support doing well things that are
impossible or done badly at present.
--
Dr Adrian Midgley I use Free software because it is better
http://www.defoam.net/ They carefully didn't ask.
--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the
message body to unsubscribe.