Open Source Software & Usability

I was unable to attend Fedora's Flock 2014 conference in Prague (August 6–9) but I applaud the conference organizers for streaking the presentations and making these videos available via their YouTube channel. So while I was not there in person, I got to attend the presentations that were most interesting to me.

One such presentation was Karen Tang's "UX 101: Practical usability methods anyone can use," a crash course in UX methods:


However, I would argue that Karen's presentation wasn't so much about User eXperience ("UX") as it was about Usability. The two are very closely related, but UX relates the emotional experience of a user interacting with a product, while Usability refers to how easily the user can navigate and use the product.

Karen does a good job of highlighting the Usability process, walking her audience through the different ways to do a Usability test, and how to conduct a Usability evaluation.