Season of Usability - Invitation to participate

Season of Usability - Invitation to participate

If you are a student in the fields of Usability, UX, Interaction Design,
Information Architecture or similar areas, the Season of Usability
provides a great opportunity for you to learn and to improve your skills
and knowledge, and to get involved with Free/Libre/Open-Source Software
(FLOSS).
During a 3-6 month colaboration, you will work together with a usability
mentor and a key developer of a project to improve the user experience
of a FLOSS application.

The applications for this year are:
Calligra, GIMP, LibreOffice and ownCloud. The colaboration will focus on
a specific topic that is outlined in the project description. For more
information about the projects and the specific tasks, please have a
look at http://season.openusability.org .

You will receive an incentive of 1000 US$ after completing the project.

If you want to participate, please select a project and send a small
application to 
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
  .

Projects

We have four great projects for the Season 2011:

Calligra, GIMP, LibreOffice and ownCloud

Calligra

Calligra Suite is an office suite created from KOffice in 2010. It is available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Haiku (more on their website).

The overall task for the SoU2011 is to create an interaction design for the creation and manipulation of objects.

_Introduction_

Calligra uses some specific terminology to describe the components that make up a document:

* a document is made up of shapes that are placed on a canvas
* shapes are objects, like text boxes, lines or images
* a shape is created from a set of default values, for instance the width of a line or the font for text.
* the default values are used whenever a new shape is created.

_Creating Shapes_

Currently, there are two ways to create objects in Calligra:

* from the "Add Shapes" docker
* using a tool that can create shapes

Originally, adding shapes from a docker with a collection of shapes was intended to make it easy to create and save new default settings for a particular type of shape. Then the new shape would show up in the docker. We do not have a suitable interaction for actually creating the new shape defaults, sorting, ordering and tagging them, although the basic code does exist to create shapes from saved parameters.
Creating shapes with the a tool was intended to be used only for vector shapes like lines and calligraphic lines where a user would create many shapes by drawing on the canvas.

After creation, the settings of a shape can be manipulated in two ways:

* by selecting the shape and changing some settings in one or more shape option dockers
* by selecting a tool that can manipulate the shape. Some tools come with option widgets that set properties on shapes directly.

By now, more and more option widgets are migrating to tools.

_Problems we face_

* Selecting a shape is quite difficult. Depending on the active tool, a click can select a shape, manipulate a shape or do nothing. One proposal is to show a border on hover that when clicked will always select the shape and that will allow basic manipulation such as dragging and changing geometry.

However:

Tt's not as easy as it sounds. If I edit a control point of a path shape which happens to be on top of another shape, I don't want to accidentally hit that magic border of the other shape and select that.

Or the case where there are several shapes on top of each other, editing one of them would show all selection borders of all these shapes?

So we have to keep in mind, that shapes are not always nicely separated from each other but can overlap.

* Creating new default settings for creating new shapes. We don't have anything for this, with the result that the Add Shapes docker always shows a set of rather boring defaults and cannot be customized.

* When working, it's useful to be able to set values and have those values carried over to the next object you create. We do not support that either.

_Goal_

The goal of this project is to create an interaction design for creating and manipulating shapes. The start should be http://community.kde.org/Calligra/Usability_and_UX/Common/Dockers_vs_ToolOptions.

The project is mentored by Boudewijn Rempt (Developer) and Celeste Lyn Paul (Usability).

If you think this is the right project for you, please send your application to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can also use this address if you have more questions.

GIMP

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring (more on their Website).

The project is about creating a Mental Model for professional users of GIMP.

Project Description

MMG (Mental Models for GIMP) is a user research project for GIMP, the
free software image manipulation program.
It aims at better understanding professionals and aficionados in this
field by eliciting their context, tasks and philosophies in order to
improve the overall usability of GIMP.
Research will be carried out following Mental Models, combining
qualitative interviews with content analysis and a graphical format
for reporting, as proposed by Indy Young, creater of this method.
Results will provide guidance for interaction architecture and
software development.

The projects is mentored by Tobias Ehni (Usability) and Peter Sikking (UI, IA), with support from Mitch (Developer).

If you think this is the right project for you, please send your application to  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

LibreOffice

LibreOffice is the power-packed free, libre and open source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs (more on their website).

The task for the SoU 2011 will be to create artificats based on user reasearch.

Project Description:

In LibreOffice we would like know who our users are and what they are doing
with our product. Your task will be to explore ways to get in touch with the
users. You will use web-based tools to get feedback and informations from
them. The final goal is to create artifacts guiding the further development,
like personas and scenarios - built on real data.

The project will be mentored by Björn Balazs (usability) and Christoph Noack (UX).

If you think this is the right project for you, please send your application to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can also use this address if you have more questions.

ownCloud

ownCloud is a web platform to sync your data to
every device and also make it available online. It is intended to be
easily installable by everyone even on commodity hosting or their own
computer (more on their website).
Currently it enables managing files online, access them via WebDAV,
sharing files, streaming music, managing users & groups and more. There
are basic apps for contacts, calendars and bookrmarks. Also in development
are applications for desktop and Android.

ownCloud is still very young so there are a variety of things you can work
on. We already use distributed user testing to get feedback on
installation and file management. Next we would like to improve the web
applications for calendar, contacts and bookmarks. As they are still in
early stages, we can explore different designs and try out experimental
paradigms for managing those. Ideally you can code JavaScript, HTML+CSS
(and maybe PHP) so we can do fast iterations on design improvements and
directly test them with people who try out the latest development version.

The project will be mentored by Jan-Christoph Borchardt (design, user
experience), assisted by Robin Appelman (development).

If you think this is the right project for you, please send your application to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can also use this address if you have more questions.

Past

soon more.

Time Line 2011

• Until August 30, 2011: Call for Projects
• Until August 30, 2011: Call for Mentors
• Until September 15, 2011: Call for Students (and Decision)

Sponsors

Currently, we are in contact with several organizations and companies, that would like to contribute to the Season of Usability financially, thus enabling students to work on FLOSS projects.

We would like to thank  Google, Open Society Institute, Canonical, Nokia and relevantive for their sponsoring in the past.

If you want to contribute to the Season of Usability 2011, please write to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

As soon as the Season has started (after the anouncment of the participating projects), we will put the sponsors with their logo on the start page and mention them in any communication where it makes sense.

 

Contribute

You can contribute and participate to the Season of Usability in 4 ways:

1. As a student: Work for 3-6 months on usability topics for a FLOSS project, guided by a project developer and a usability mentor. You can apply as soon as we have selected the projects and mentors (after Setptember 15) by writing to " This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ". The student fee will be 1000US$.
2. As a project: Get significant usability help by having a student work on your usability topics, supported by a usability mentor. To submit your FLOSS project, please apply here.
3. As a mentor: If you are a specialist in the field of usability, UX, IA, Human Factors or related, if you are willing to support a student over 3-6 months remotely, in close coordination with the project developer / maintainer, if you think that FLOSS is a great opportunity to demonstrate you skills, the please write to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
4. As a sponsor: Support the Season of Usability by donating money - as many great companies and organizations in the past did. You may suggest a certain topic or project that is of special interest of you. However, the Season of Usability is independent and may decide against a certain project if other seem more fit.

Success Stories

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Season Of Usability

*** Four great projects taking part in the SoU 2011: Calligra, GIMP, LibreOffice and ownCloud. ***

More info here.

What is the Season of Usability?

Season of Usability is a series of sponsored student projects to encourage students of usability, user-interface design, and interaction design to get involved with Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS). During a 3 to 6 month collaboration, students work together with an experienced usability mentor and key developers of the project to improve the user experience of a FLOSS application. The next Season of Usability with 8-10 student projects will start in late Summer 2011. FLOSS Projects who would like to benefit from a usability student are encouraged to fill in our Call for Projects: >> Season of Usability 2011 - Call for Projects (available until End of July)

How does Season of Usability work?

After the Call for Projects is finished, the usability mentors will get back to the FLOSS projects and start the selection process. Each mentor will decide for one project - based on the need for usability and the availability of a technical mentor in the project, and if a good task can be defined. Examples of successful Season of Usability tasks can be found on the Season of Usability website. The selected projects are published and students start to apply for them. Together with the technical mentor, a student is selected. In a kickoff meeting, the task scope is further defined and a road map is developed. Then, the actual project work begins (also see the time frame below).

How can I register a project?

We prepared a short questionnaire to register a project. We ask a few questions - about the project, - about the acceptance of usability among project members, - about the availability of developer resources - and lastly, we'll ask for possible student project tasks. >> Season of Usability 2011 - Call for Projects (available till July 30) People who register projects should know a project well enough to name a key developer who is willing to function as a technical mentor in the Season of Usability.

What's the timeframe for Season of Usability 2011?

See more at Season 2011 Time Line.

Season of Usability 2008 Mid-term Reports Available

The Season of Usability 2008 makes good progress - as students and mentors have stated by the end of July, most of the projects have reached 50% or more of their initial project goals.

Drupal Student Project Kicked Off

In the scope of our Season of Usability programme, another student project has just been kicked off: Bevan Rudge, a student of computer science at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, is going to support the content management platform Drupal usability-wise.