Longtime GNOME Contributor & Oracle Principal UX Designer Leaves The Company

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Longtime GNOME Contributor & Oracle Principal UX Designer Leaves The Company

The latest talent to have departed Oracle is a longtime GNOME contributor who has at Oracle/Sun Microsystems for nearly the past two decades...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Calum-Solaris-GNOME-Gone

[caligula]

So which way will GNOME go now? More or less features in the future? How to remove constant sources of confusion from software?

[starshipeleven]

So which way will GNOME go now? More or less features in the future? How to remove constant sources of confusion from software?

Considering the way it went in the last decade, the loss of this guy isn't an issue for GNOME.

It's not like this guy has done anything noteworthy to GNOME 3 usability.

[DMJC]

Fools, GNOME 2 was built according to Sun's UX research. GNOME 3 went full retard when they threw out the UX research information and pursued the tablet market. The loss of an engineer who worked on GNOME 2 is a tragedy. From LWN.net in 2014: "GNOME's last formal usability testing was conducted by Sun Microsystems in 2001—before the release of GNOME 2. Since then, any usability testing that has occurred has been informal, usually carried out by individual developers with a variety of methods." I was at Linux.conf.au 2004 when Sun presented Project Looking Glass. They specifically went through all the GNOME 2 UX information they had. It was extremely professional and they had obviously put resources into it. Sadly GNOME 2 was thrown out by developers chasing tablet market glory.

[starshipeleven]

Fools, GNOME 2 was built according to Sun's UX research. GNOME 3 went full retard when they threw out the UX research information and pursued the tablet market. The loss of an engineer who worked on GNOME 2 is a tragedy.

The real tragedy is that GNOME 3 showed loud and clear that they didn't need him or any UX research.

[Guest]

I am sure some other company will pick him up based on his expertise.

[garegin]

What research? Gnome 2 is a windows rip off. Piestar even wrote about this. Sadly his website is gone

[cl333r]

I'm not sure this is bad news

[awesz]

What research? Gnome 2 is a windows rip off. Piestar even wrote about this. Sadly his website is gone

It is a "rip off" of what people know and love for decades. His valuable work for the FOSS desktop shall be continued by MATE.

[caligula]

Fools, GNOME 2 was built according to Sun's UX research. GNOME 3 went full retard when they threw out the UX research information and pursued the tablet market. The loss of an engineer who worked on GNOME 2 is a tragedy. From LWN.net in 2014: "GNOME's last formal usability testing was conducted by Sun Microsystems in 2001—before the release of GNOME 2. Since then, any usability testing that has occurred has been informal, usually carried out by individual developers with a variety of methods." I was at Linux.conf.au 2004 when Sun presented Project Looking Glass. They specifically went through all the GNOME 2 UX information they had. It was extremely professional and they had obviously put resources into it. Sadly GNOME 2 was thrown out by developers chasing tablet market glory.

Looking at Sun's AWT and Swing, it doesn't look like they knew much about usability.