tl;dr:
> Actually seeing how people react to designs is one of the best tools for going above and beyond in designs simply guessing how they might react and having the presence or absence of complaints be the only feedback in regard to how effective a design is. The ultimate aim is establishing processees and tools for integrating actual people into the before-hitting-market design process rather than our idea of what actual people are like, that are accessible to people without needing a degree in psychology or the ability to convince the e.V. for funds for a professional and the ability thereafter to plan what the heck to do with those funds.
=Motivation=
Usability is one of the most important parts of any interface, to the extent that it has very strong repercussions on almost everything involved, ranging from as far as engagement and sales rates to the ability of disabled people to make use of an interface to longevity to public opinion to business adoption. Yet, the vast majority of people, including in KDE, don't really have a deep understanding of what usability is, what it does and doesn't impact, how to apply best practices to keep interfaces usable, the basics and importance of what usability research does for an interfacemore importantly, and other thingsthey aren't equipped with the tools to tackle it beyond their common sense and user complaints they hear.
One of the most important concepts in usability is to keep the focus on the humans actually using the interface (human-centred design)The tools needed for a deeper understanding and handling of usability are often inaccessible to those without corporations willing to throw money at them for professional products or those without an exceptional abundance of personal free time and resources (and location), which makes integrating usability processes into a do-ocracy like KDE problematic, since there are only so many people with the latter, rather than getting bogged down in technical engineering and losing sight of //why// you're doing all that engineeringand fewer for the former, hence the name of the goaland yet still fewer with either that are able to put it to use for improving what we make in KDE.
This is ultimately the core thing this goal aims to tackle with help of the community: the inaccessibility of usability processes that can dramatically improve software to most of the KDE community.
=Plan=
The plan for improving KDE's overall maturity in usability stands on two pillars: organisational infrastructure and community.
The infrastructure here is both infrastructure in the technical and the human sense of the word: on one hand, yes, there is tech to be had, but there is also organisational infrastructure too.
On the technical side of things, this largely revolves around establishing tools for usability research. Many existing solutions for usability research are proprietary, making them a non-starter for communities established on ideals of openness, such as KDE.
> **Side Note For What "Usability Research" Means**
> "Research" in the context of usability or human-centered design isn't the hyper-formal concept of "research" in academia, at least not exclusively. The core concept of usability "research" is to see how something fares on actual people in a context that can provide more meaningful insights than displeased users in a forum, social media, or bug reporting sites, and can be anything from "simply sit and watch someone try and use something, taking notes on what's good and what's bad" to "use a type of specialised survey for seeing how people react to a particular thing" to actual academic-style research.
KDE is an ideal garden plot for cultivating new, open tools for usability (such as [[ https://invent.kde.org/cblack/polinpin | Polinpin ]]), due to having both projects that have many low-hanging fruit for large improvements from even simple usability research techniques, and the established technical base that can create, maintain, and host (if needed) such tools to try them out on large projects. Flagship KDE products like Plasma and Krita have many opportunities for a mutually beneficial relationship between themselves and usability tools that can improve and be improved by experience gained from usage on real products.
=Community=
On the communal side of things, many segments of the overall KDE community are capable of directly contributing to the overall cause of usability with their unique skill sets; it is not simply limited to people who know how to get into end-user application code and make changes. The following is a list of examples of how:
==Promo==
As one of the few segments of KDE already directly and actively engaging with end users and forging communications with other communities, as well as spreading news far and wide, Promo plays a particularly important role in usability: their skill sets allow for developing in-house recruiting of people for usability studies, which is substantially more cost-effective than diverting e.V. funds to third-party recruiters, and substantially more effective at recruiting than "guerilla" techniques, letting usability studies become a tool in the community's toolbox, pushing overall software quality up, rather than an occasional splurge of luxury for something that we really want to be good.
==Web==
Like Promo, KDE's web folks are uniquely outward facing, and can help cast the recruitment net wider. Additionally, they can also help develop and maintain web-based research tools for usability, which make doing research that much easier.
Given the inherently dynamic natures of such applications, this is also a great opportunity to use non-static frameworks, which can attract new developers or give already-attracted-but-nothing-to-work-on developers an opportunity to come under the KDE umbrella with their uniquely web skill sets that may not be able to put them to use in our more standard fare native software or static sites.
==Developers==
On the end-user app side, developers are particularly empowered with the ability to make changes to the software based on guidelines and research to actually reap the benefits they can bring. They can also help to the cause of developing and maintaining native tools for usability, such as research-focused note-taking tools.
==Other Communities==
KDE doesn't exist in isolation, and the initiative of usability provides many concrete and tangible opportunities for KDE and other communities to come together and mutually improve each others' projects.
Some examples:
- Comparative studies: Collaborate in joint with communities like GNOME, and kill two (or more!) birds with one stone to figure out how each other's software excels and where it can grow compared to the other, and how to exchange lessons learned to improve both
- Cultivation of open source UX tools: One of the biggest blockers for many communities and organisations to improving their usability is the fact that many tools for the field are proprietary and expensive. The creation and promotion of these tools under the KDE umbrella will lift the ecosystem up at large, and not just KDE
=Risks and needs=
One of the biggest potential challenges is simply: old habits die hard. People will need to get used to thinking about the end user and usability in more tangible waysUsability processes are new to many people, and there's often a lot of misunderstanding of what they do and don't do (speaking from personal experience, where I've struggled to understand what something does and how to use it a lot, the same way they can look at a UI and determine if it's beautiful or uglyand subsequently I see others struggle in the exact same way I did when I try to share that knowledge with them), or the same way they can look at bugs and see what needs to be doneand any new tools and processes will need to get integrated into existing development habits.
As far as needs go, one of the biggest aims of this goal is to be self-sustainable: cultivating long-term infrastructure over using a temporary pile of e.V. funds to let third party organisations do a handful of things now, and then not mature as an organisation in any ways. All the things described in the goal can be achieved solely through already-established community labour and infrastructure. That being said, being able to pay professional organisations to do a few tasks could go into the scope of this goal, but I don't count it as an important or even a cherry-on-top thing.
=Champion=
Hi, I'm Janet. I've been contributing to KDE for a few years. I really like people, so I like making and improving stuff meant to be used by them. As a disabled person, I'm particularly aware of how bad usability can be a minor inconvenience for abled people but become huge issues for some when compounded with various disabilities.
=Interest=
This section is intended for people other than the Champion to sign up and show support for the Goal.
If you are interested to actively join the effort and do the work, add your name below (this does not count as voting for the Goal):
Niccolò Venerandi