FLOSS Usability Sprint

Last weekend Aspiration co-hosted a Usuability Sprint at Google in Silicon Valley. The purpose of this sprint was to bring together designers of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) software with "usability experts", with the hope that some good design work could be done to make the products more user-friendly. Google provided most of the usability experts, and the open source projects represented were Drupal, Sustainable Civil Society, SocialText, HyperScope, and of course, Social Source Commons (represented by Gunner and me).

First off, I need to say that Google is awesome. They provided the meeting space and food for the weekend completely free of charge to anyone. We had constant access to snacks and drinks, and even got a "shwag bag" of free stuff. Aside from that, Google seems to really go out of their way to make their employees happy, from the free snacks and drinks to the kitchens on every floor, to the free laundry service there. Needless to say, I was very impressed.

We also got a lot of work done for Social Source Commons. We are in the process of adding "COmmunity Toolboxes" as a feature, and we spent the weekend designing the relevent pages for this new feature in order to ensure that we have all the functionality covered. We did a lot of good work, and developed some nice wireframes that we sent to our developers to integrated into the website. Hopefully we should have those up and running soon, because the value added by having "Community Toolboxes" will really help SSC to provide value to nonprofits and those providing them with technical assistance. I'll blog more about Community Toolboxes later, when we incorporate them into the website.

Comment from cheryl jerozal on November 3, 2006 - 4:05pm

did you get one of the google pins that lights up with different colors? that was my favorite piece of swag from them.

Comment from gariet cowin on November 9, 2006 - 3:01pm

For those of you interested, which is probably nobody, I would like to point out that "shwag" and "swag" are not the same thing.

"Shwag" is free promotional crap given out by companies.

"Swag" is an Aussie term for a rolled bundle of belongings, carried by a foot traveler. It can also refer to "loot", such as that plundered by pirates.

The only exception to this is if you happen to be at a trade show for a pirate startup company, and you steal some of their promotional items. In that case, either word is acceptable.

Comment from lauren bratslavsky on November 14, 2006 - 11:22am

well garriet you'ld be surprised to know that this is relevant at our office. We have been talking about schwag and calling it pirate booty. Thanks to your clarification, I informed my coworkers and set the record straight, though there are still some rebels who say schwag is the pirate booty of conferences.

Comment from cheryl jerozal on November 16, 2006 - 12:54pm

swag and shwag are the same thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swag_%28disambiguation%29 , except that shwag has one additional meaning of low grade marijuana. i chose the spelling i did as an attempt at a joke (sometimes i feel like a pirate looting companies, especially at job fairs where they have things like pens that light up in multiple colors...hmm maybe i just like things with flashing colors)...but i guess that attempt failed.