[BayCHI Discussions] Open source design: a correction

At last night's BayCHI meeting, I apparently gave the false impression 
that Netscape does not follow any regular design process.  In fact I was 
rather carelessly speaking with my 'Mozilla hat' on when I talked about 
a lack of any process for requirements, designs or other non-code 
specifications.  In fact, Netscape itself has always had an excellent 
User Experience group staffed with design and usability professionals 
who ensure that any new work Netscape does for the Netscape product is 
properly designed, reviewed and tested for usability.  The problem I was 
alluding to still exists for us though, in that much of the original 
implementation of the Mozilla application was done without going through 
this process (although Netscape had specifications for the Communicator 
product that served as a model, and released them via Mozilla.org).  New 
work done by Mozillians is still not required to to go through any such 
process other than code review and approval.  Naturally, Netscape's UE 
team could not be expected to provide design and usability testing for 
all of the changes made by hundreds, let alone thousands of Mozilla 
developers, so many such changes are contentious, with no clear 
specification to guide them.  Even then, Netscape's UE team is part of 
the solution, working with an informal group of accepted UI stakeholders 
to help make the right thing happen in as many cases as possible.

I'm sorry I wasn't clear about this last night, and regret creating a 
bad false impression of Netscape's UE group, for whom I have a great 
deal of respect, admiration and gratitude.

Peter


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