enabling the developers to make Their Drupal project more usable. Video: http://www.archive.org/details/contrib_module Downloads and PDFs: http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/contrib-module-usability Long description: http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/program/sessions/enable-community-improve-usability

1. Another Usability Proposal (let' s not care about users; let's care about developers)

2. Usability for Drupal

4. Usability and Open Source.

5. Nature - most projets - distributed - democratic - anarchistic

6. Hence - no coordination - successes mostly backend: apache, PHP, Linux etc.

7. Important is the nature of dev teams. Firefox and OpenOffice come from classic dev-teams.

8. Not Open Source is the problem, the nature of the project is.

9. Some of the issues and problems are...

10. Every UI improvement gets huge discussions. result: hardly any, frustrated UI developers and inconsistent solutions.

11. Volunteers take only one piece to improve. Result: inconsistent UI;

12. Human Interface Guidelines (HIG): too hard to maintain. Improssible to enforce. Result: unfinished, old and unused HIG.

13. Usability experts don't feel at home in development environments.

14. Nor should they.

15. Usability happens in a different ecosystem .

16. Give usability improvement its own environment .

18. Ubuntu can afford to focus on home-users, disregard corporate, heavy server and/or embedded apllications.

19. No need to consider " but what about running ubuntu on TomTom navigation devices ".

20. Drupal has the same problem: lacks focus.

21. you, on the other hand, have that focus. ( for your own/clients sites )

23. As a developer reward is negative for improving usability.

24. However: I do care .

25. Not For John Doe Anonymous Blogger to Use Drupal,

26. but for Wendy my Wealthy Client to use my configuration.

27. Drupal can do this. Distros. But...

28. Distros help, but solve only one problem in usability area: Installation and configuration.

29. important, but not important in daily use. Ditro's only help John Doe Anonymous Blogger to get going .

30. Joe Shmoe must be able to use a site. And be happy when doing so.

31. Proposal:

32. Make it easy to develop good usability (for Developers).

33. Developers make it easy to use for users .

34. Give usability improvement its focus .

36. Off course solution that solves issue for both is possible.

37. But that only adds complexity, makes a really simple issue a complex, hard one.

38. Looses focus : maintaining two types of UI often means having two imperfect UIs.

39. Proposal: The developer (or distro maintainer) implements extra, focused module (bookmenu.module).

40. That way, Drupal book module becomes general outliner/hierarchical content system.

41. Implementors create exactly the UI they need in their specific case.

42. When the case is covered for Wendy the Wealthy Client, John the Anonymous blogger his case might be covered too.

43. OpenSource at the Rescue.

44. How?

45. Enabling developers to develop better interfaces for their specific cases.

46. Enabling you to create a usable site for your clients, sites or users!

48. How? and Where?

49. Here I would like some of your feedback.

51. In Distro's?

52. On a subsite?

53. On Several offsites?

54. Let us try to find out how to:

55. enable contribution and improvement of widgets?

56. allow people to focus.

57. ...you to build a perfect site for your case.