Interested in HELPING Developers
 

I am making a move more towards UI development and interaction design in my career and thought the open source community might be a good place to help as much as possible (not sure if you guys/gals are always looking for an extra set of eyes attached to a fairly sharp brain).

I was curious as to the best way to help out in this respect. I am not looking to code a program from the ground up, but assist in making the program more usable for the owners of Nokia's devices.

Again, I am starting out, so I know I can't offer a TON of help, but I am in front of a computer (and hopefully soon an internet tablet) 16 hours of the day, I am a quick learner, and have past experience in the development process with a short stint as a QA analyst.

Re: Interested in HELPING Developers
 

So do you own a tablet yet? Just asking because I would like someone to give me feedback but you need a tablet (770 or 800) to help :)

-Tom

Re: Interested in HELPING Developers
 

I should be getting one shortly, I felt an introduction was at least necessary. I would love to help as much as possible

Re: Interested in HELPING Developers
 

Have my internet tablet 770. What can I help with!?!??!?!

Re: Interested in HELPING Developers
 

Probably depends on what you're interested in. If you like Kagu Media Player, for example, you should get involved in those threads and post ideas and bug reports.

If you prefer Maemo Mapper or some other application, do the same there.

Feedback is always valuable. Just make sure you give the feedback in a respectful and courteous manner. Developers are sensitive and most OSS developers do it for free, so don't be rude.

If you've got an idea for a new application, push your idea here on the forums. Repetition and discussion are your friends for polishing software ideas. And who knows, you might get a developer interested and your idea might become a real application.

If you want to take it a step further, you could always learn Python and write your own apps. Python is probably one of the easiest languages to learn (no need to compile code or use scratchbox. you can develop right on the tablet if you want to) and support for python is very good on these tablets.

Re: Interested in HELPING Developers
 

thanks for the hints, I have already found some python tutorials, looked at web.py and some other programs mentioned in another developers thread, and, yeah, I do have some of my own ideas. I know, though, help is (usually) appreciated, so I guess i will starg poking around the individual software threads / boards.

If anyone need (or knows of someone) that needs testing / documentation help, let me know. Those are skills I already have, and would love to help in exchange for some UI dev guidance.

Re: Interested in HELPING Developers
 

Well, I don't know if you're interested, but we're always looking for people to help out with Kagu's wiki documentation. http://kagumedia.com We'd be happy to give you whatever dev help we can on our IRC channel, #kagu on FreeNode. Also, the folks on the #maemo channel are usually pretty great about offering dev advice. Realtime chat is usually pretty good for things like that.

And if you need more general (i.e. non-maemo) dev help, the #python channel is excellent.

Re: Interested in HELPING Developers
 

Great to hear you finally got your Tablet, welcome to the "club" ;)

I would love some active response on my Python keyboard.
If you want, and think my project is interesting enough you could give me some ideas on
how to improve it.

here is the thread:

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=10615

Check it out and tell me what you think.

-Tom

Re: Interested in HELPING Developers
 

Maybe you could start a usability blog where you review various applications and talk about what works and what doesn't work well. That could be very instructive as long as you are diplomatic and give specific points for improvement. ;) I would also be interested in an evaluation of different usage settings. One way that the tablet is different from both cell phones and from desktop devices is that it could be used either "on the go" or sitting down more so than any other device on the market.