I'm glad you raised this issue, Simon. I found myself agreeing
with the article on most points. I have thought about this some
and have a few suggestions:
- Create a slightly customized version of ticket-tracker intended
to implement Jakob Neilsen's heuristic usability
methods. These are relatively easy to learn for all and lend
themselves well to a community-based approach. Add some
help or coaching text to enable people to learn this approach
through the tool itself.
- Create a (group-scoped) footer that turns on a link to the
heuristic-usability ticket-tracker. This way, any portion of any
OACS-based site can be put into a usability testing mode fairly
easily.
- Develop user-interface guidelines (such as the
ones that Lars developed for ACS-Java) for the entire
project. (In fact, somebody who is authorized to do so ought to
attempt to contact RedHat and get permission from them for us
to use these guidelines. AFAIK, the only reason we haven't
thought seriously about adopting them here is conflicts with the
ADPL.)
- Pair non-programming UI volunteers with volunteer
programmers. In fact, such a pair should be appointed to
coordinate usability development on this project.
That's a start, anyway.
