QGIS » QGIS Application

I don't really like that this ticket creates a tone that we don't care about usability. We are always happen to improve the UX of the application however we can't just magic it up, it takes time and resources, which most of the time people don't have. With more people on board in the project it does become easier to create "teams" however we can't always tell people you can only focus on this area when they want/need to work on another. If you know people who are willing to help from a UX side of things we are happy to have them on board, or if you have people you know that can do testing with feedback that would also help.

I have no issue with some of the proposals, and I understand how things like creating users stories helps to drive a application. If we had somewhere for people/devs to write stories on where they are and where they want to get to that could also help, rather then just a "we need X feature"

Listing out things in a single ticket normally isn't going to help because it's hard to make them into targets. Things like "tools don't share the same behaviour" you really need to create a ticket that say "tool A works this way but tool B is different" that is a easier way for us to target things and keep a tab on progress. Things like "bad abstraction (for QGIS working should the storage doesn't matter and to be seperated from the layer aspects)" are vague so we need to know, by using a single ticket, where this isn't working for you.

I'm sorry if I missed the tone. Maybe this is due because I really expected more things to be done on UX on a major update :(
Don't get me wrong. I know that creating good usability is a big task, esp. if it has to be embedded in an existing application.

Time ago there was www.openusability.org as a shared space for UX experts and open source projectes that need advice. Another startingpoint is www.openhatch.org.
Over at Navit I work also on usability: http://wiki.navit-project.org/index.php/Category:Usability
Sadly I don't have the time and skills to help you tecnical, but of course I'm happy to provide you feedback. Unfortunatly I didn't found a location where I can post written userstories or recorded screen sessions that explain why I fail.

My points are abstract, as I wanted to point out why I think UX is bad and that it's not only just single features. IMHO what is missed is a central cooperate design/design guide that investigates what endusers like to do with QGIS and which steps they need to pass. With that design goals, a cooperate design can be applied to the whole app and not just single features. ATM I don't see a starting point for Usability, so maybe it's wise to create a dedicated wikipage?

Maybe the tone is not there, but the spirit is. At some point some time should be invested to improve UI/UX. For example not having right click actions in QGIS is something I miss.

Antonio Locandro wrote:

invest

that is the key word. Invest in QGIS and good thing happens. Don't invest, then you must wait and hope.

I see, but as IMHO the most users lack also of time to track mailinglist discussions (they have also to work and create results), I highly recommend to create an landing page where they can submit reports, on why they fail to work as they expect with QGIS. There they can get in contact with the right devs, submit GUI mockups etc.
I'm not sure if setting the ticket to invalid is a good way to deal with the problem itself.

noone noone wrote:

I see, but as IMHO the most users lack also of time to track mailinglist discussions (they have also to work and create results), I highly recommend to create an landing page where they can submit reports, on why they fail to work as they expect with QGIS. There they can get in contact with the right devs, submit GUI mockups etc.
I'm not sure if setting the ticket to invalid is a good way to deal with the problem itself.

The main thing here is that most users won't do that. Getting people to tell you what went wrong is hard without probing people for information. We have this ticket system which is used to action stuff like that. If you see something that is bad UX you/or anyone needs to create a ticket or else we will never know and you will continue to be frustrated. We can't fix it if we don't know about it.

This ticket is closed as invaild simply because of it's over arching nature. It's hard to action it because there isn't really a single goal and usability is something that we try and do normally so saying we need to do better without telling us where isn't going to help.

The best point forward from here is to create tickets for each item in the list that you think needs attention, if you have UI mockup share them, if not leave some hints on what you think will work and someone might be able to fix it.

No release is ever perfect and 2.0 is no exception. There is only so much we can do and it is ever improving. 2.2 should be out at the start of the new year so there will be some improved stuff in that.

There is heaps of UX stuff that I, and other, would love to tackle but simple don't have time. So it's not that we don't care, because we do, it's mostly because it's a volunteer based project for the most part and time is lacking.

FYI: I started the usability page as a central startingpoint for the community.