New Icon Set...[echo]...

[David Nielsen]

tir, 08 08 2006 kl. 09:57 -0400, skrev Paul W. Frields: 
> On Mon, 2006-08-07 at 23:58 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> > I'm one of two people with an @redhat.com email address who actively 
> > posts on this list, but: I do not work on the Red Hat Desktop team. I 
> > work on a systems management/provisioning platform called Red Hat 
> > Network.  The work I do on this list is on a volunteer-basis in my free 
> > time (note the time stamp on this email in EST.) My 'dibs' on calling 
> > the shots here are strictly as a community member.
> 
> I for one am getting a little tired of people assuming that anyone
> @redhat.com is being paid to work on this stuff, and that their opinion
> is somehow bubbling to the top because of corporate control.  AIUI,
> other than the hardcore development team (I think they're called
> Emerging Technologies inside Red Hat), almost no one in Red Hat is paid
> to work on Fedora.  They all put in their time on the side, forsaking
> friends, family and fun in the sun just like the rest of us.  Let's cut
> with the bashing and conspiracy theories already.

What bashing? I was not the one using the term troll to describe a
contributor. One who quite literally hasn't seen family or friends in
weeks either thank you very much. I'm getting quite sick of this, I
voice a well reasoned opinion and then I spend hours defending not the
merit of the opinion but rather defending myself from attacks on my
person and my qualifications. I don't quite get why I'm suddenly a vile
conspiracy nut. 

> [...snip...]
> > > One thing I'm very set on is testing of icons,
> > > like Jimmacs blur scripts, simulating red/green color blindness, etc,
> > > there are things that I don't think about either. No one person is
> > > perfect so it would be good to work hand in hand with the usability team
> > > and do real testing to see if we hit common pitfalls.
> > 
> > > I would love to help set up an icon test squad, I can take care of my
> > > own handicap and with a bit of wiggling I can send screenshots or my
> > > laptop around to my former collegues and get some real feedback from
> > > special needs users. But we need more, if anyone knows other special
> > > needs users we should welcome them here so that we can get the best
> > > compromise between a cool look and a usable look. 
> > 
> > This sounds exceptionally helpful and I sincerely hope you do start this 
> > endeavor. I would be willing to help out.
> 
> Now *that's* how to contribute.  Transparent and objective criteria are
> a must if you're going to start sampling users for data; see GNOME
> Usability or any of dozens of other well-known HIGish projects for ideas
> and guidelines.

And yet what does the established artwork team do, take me up on my
offer and try to work with me or insult me and basically imply that I'm
unqualified? 

Yes, this works ever so well and frankly if this is the kind of response
you get for giving feedback on a feature regression with the artwork and
offering help with testing then I honestly don't see why I should bother
in the future. However in the interest of stretching my patience further
today that what logic tells me is sane.

I have access to a bunch of very nice people with various handicaps, I
am unsure if any of them have vision deficiencies but if nobody at the
firm does I'm sure they can put us in contact with all the right people
we have a desire to talk to. I will do the legwork and do writeups to
any Fedora list of relevance summerizing what could be learned from such
real life studies and how the artwork and the general system can be
improved to accomidate this group of users.

The rationale for doing what we can within the default theme is simple,
there isn't another system out there that offers an out of the box
experience that works well for a multitude of mildly handicapped people,
most of the time expensive specialized software is required or none is
available.

This means we have a good shot at taking a market with a minimum of
effort and intrusion in the existing artwork. We have most of the tools
we need and the current artwork is well geared towards lesser vision
defiencies (Echo is currently moving away from that though).
Specifically I'm interested in color blindness and blurred vision,
something that is fairly easy to accomidate and test for using tools
already available. I will to the best of my ability try to write up a
simpe tool to aid designers in testing locally if there is interest,
however I will require some help with the math behind such image
transforms - any pointers to books or white papers would be
appreciated. 

Now will I be getting some feedback that doesn't involve words like
qualifications or troll this time - if not I'll take the hint and never
bother the artwork team again.

David