As somebody coming from the HCI side, rather than the software engineering / programming language side, I too value usability. But, it seems to me that you first do the major changes and then slowly hone to get usability right. I find lots of small little usability bugs in Pharo 3.0 but I assume that those are mainly due to the tools getting majorly upgraded right now. I'm not sure how to report these tiny usability bugs. If someone can chime in on the correct way to report these, I'd be willing to report them. For instance, I notice that when I am writing code in the browser and click to another method, I am no longer warned that my code will be lost. It is simply lost. That's a basic usability thing: Prevent costly errors. But, I assume that this is just a matter of Nautilus still getting refined. So, it may not even be worth mentioning.

My main contribution right now is being an early adopter of Athens and sending any weaknesses I find to the list. Athens is new and still has lots of little bugs. At the same time, it is ambitious and a major step forward for Pharo if it can be fully integrated. Of course, these little bugs will get taken care of as Athens is more widely used but part of the excitement of Pharo is that it is evolving. There are some areas where usability honing can be useful but others were the software engineering has to settle down before the honing can start.

Cheers,

Jeff


On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:
Thanks for bringing this up.

Yes, we should care about usability.�

And I agree that usability is attainable as long as you approach it with consistent discipline. It's similar to designing code: you start asking questions, figure out what the right questions are, and then stick to it.

I like Steve Krug's Don't make me think book. However, please keep in mind that the lessons in the book apply specifically to the web. An environment like Pharo should not obey exactly the same things.

But, as Esteban says, let's focus on the future, and keep usability high in our list of concerns. Even if we might not know how to do it now, simply sticking with it will make us better in the long run.

Cheers,
Doru




On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 10:38 AM, Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Sebastian,

I feel your pain :)

we are aiming to focus Pharo 4 in �modularisation and tools�, to enhance what we have currently.�
Now� one of the biggest problems we have is that people is so used to the old tools that they don�t even realise that we can do a lot better. And most possible some people will react violently to any change� but well, we will do it anyway, with your help.�
Let�s all together build a better IDE for the future :)

Esteban

On 03 Jan 2014, at 01:13, Sebastian Sastre <sebastian@flowingconcept.com> wrote:

Guys is no mystery that we have some issues with UI.

It's not so bad either, we have many things that are light years ahead of other but we consistently miss some really basic stuff from the Human-Computer-Interactcion point of view.

The community is biased towards engineering and unbalanced regarding to design so this is no surprise (why this happens is another interesting conversation).

UI is not that hard when you know what to pay attention to but we need first to decide if we care about usability and the developer experience at all.

This fantastic talk from Steve Krug exposes what's the least you can do for the usability of any software.







--

"Every thing has its own flow"



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Jochen "Jeff" Rick, Ph.D.
http://www.je77.com/
Skype ID: jochenrick