gnome desktop

Desktop Accessibility (Start Menu and Notification Tray)
Role: Product Design Manager, User Experience Researcher
As Novell acquired additional Linux desktop resources, the number of applications, opinions and styles vying to be chosen for the company’s enterprise desktop product multiplied. As the manager of the Product Design team for the Linux Desktop Department, it fell to me to find the best solutions for all of our new users’ needs. In order to provide them with the most comfortable and enabling experience, we conducted scores of usability tests on the desktop’s most basic components. Figuring out the desktop’s default appearance and behavior was no small task – through building up a community of test subjects, many of whom had specific accessibility needs, we were able to thoroughly investigate everything from pointing device configuration and behavior to all the finer details of how windows should come in and out of focus. The desktop which we released was a leader in terms of accessibility – especially accessibility in the free and open source software world.