http://usability.gnome.org GNOME Usability
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/ Gnome Human Interface Guidlines 1.0
http://usability.kde.org KDE Usability
http://usability.kde.org/activity/testing/firststeps/ KDE Usability First Steps
http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/aui/ Usability Testing of Athena User Interface
http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~daven/docs/oss-wp.html Usability and Open Source Software
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=103893727124382&w=2 kde-devel: $HOME == $DESKTOP Proposal
http://www.openusability.org/ Open Usability
http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html First Principles of Design, per Bruce Tognazzini.
http://www.flossusability.org/ FLOSS Usability
http://www.betterdesktop.org Better Desktop
- "The great efficiency breakthroughs in software are to be found in the fundamental architecture of the system, not in the surface design of the interface."
- "The importance of maintaining strict consistency varies. The following list is ordered from those interface elements demanding the most faithful consistency effort to those demanding the least. Paradoxically, many people assume that the order of items one through five should be exactly the reverse, leading to applications that look alike, but act completely different in unpredictable ways:
1. Interpretation of user behavior, e. g., shortcut keys maintain their meanings.
2. Invisible structures.
3. Small visible structures.
4. The overall "look" of a single application or service--splash screens, design elements.
5. A suite of products.
6. In-house consistency.
7. Platform-consistency."
A very interesting article (GNOME): http://evolvedoo.sourceforge.net/abstract/index.html Abstracting the Linux Desktop from the File-system
Some tought about "The Perfect Desktop ?". A list of wishes and needs by endusers. http://frimouvy.udev.org/wiki/wakka.php?wiki=ThePerfectDesktop