Gooeys
I love GUI’s or Graphical User Interfaces (which I usually pronounce as “gooey”, probably like most other people). I’m a GUI type of person. Don’t get me wrong. Like any other geek (There! I admitted it!), I love the command line as well, appreciate its power, and take advantage of its flexibility and efficiency in some tasks (grep ftw!). But I tend to look first to graphical tools and use those if they are good enough. My fascination with GUI’s seem to be inspired by science fiction shows (no, not so much Star Trek) and probably the initial “wow” factor experience that I had when I saw Windows 3.1. as a child.
What this means is that I may have found an area of specialization or contribution that I want to focus on in my life as a (future) FOSS developer. Namely, I want to focus my attention towards Human Computer Interaction (HCI), specifically on GUI design. Of course, this would probably mean that I will delve on some aspects of Usability as well. I have noticed, at least from my end, that there are not so many usability experts who are programmers as well, or few programmers who are usability experts. I’ve been told that it’s hard to specialize on both areas, unless I become a sort of jack of all trades, master of none. I think I can handle that. Of course, I’m more inclined towards the programming aspects of GUI design. Actually, I have no idea if there’s a field of HCI study that relates to this area or what its name is. So far I’ve only come up with the term “HCI”, “interface design”, and “usability”. If anyone knows, please do inform me. I’m a bit clueless as of the moment, so any help is very much appreciated.
But more than just complying to standard usability “norms” and laws, I’m particularly interested in sort of pushing those norms to the limit. Trying to think of new, innovative, refreshing interfaces, without sacrificing usability too much. Of course, there will be need of theories/laws (Fitts’ anyone?) and probably surveys (I suck at statistics, though…), but the practical/technical side of the development. That’s why I’m interested in watching the development of GUI toolkits like Qt (of course) and wxWidgets, the development of desktop environments like KDE, Mezzo (of Symphony OS), and Enlightenment, and new ideas and implementations about the desktop like KDE 4’s Plasma. Of course, I’m also interested in seeing Kubuntu’s own homegrown apps (System Settings and Adept) grow with better usability.
I just can’t wait to finish my C++ book and get on with Qt!
P.S. Has anyone been able to access OpenUsability.org lately?
