Improving the usability of open source software: Novell has launched a website containing tips for usability studies and tons of videos showing users actually trying to do common tasks on a computer. This should be a big eye-opener to developers of OSS desktop software and hopefully a catalyst to improving the user interface of many common projects. The first few videos I’ve watched were related to image editing and so far none of the users have completed their task.

I can tell you from personal experience that it is amazing to watch users fumble around with your program trying to figure out how to do tasks that you feel are painfully obvious. During training sessions of Elite CMS, I have sat in the back and watched users try to follow along with the presenter. What an eye-opener it is!

The only two problems I’ve found with this website is that the content is not categorized by application, which would help OSS developers, and the volume of information there is a little bit overwhelming. There must be gigs of data. Still, good work on Novell’s part for raising the awareness of this important subject. By the way, Theora is a video format similar to Windows Media or Quick Time – download a plugin to view these movies here.

What would be interesting is if Novell published usability videos of users trying to do common tasks in the Gimp – my favorite example of a program that is ridiculously difficult to use.