User Experience Engineering

[Linda Seltzer]

Dear Friends,

Having previously worked at AT&T Labs, where I was a member of the User
Experience Forum, I would like to make a few comments as a relative
outsider seeing the Lilypond project for the first time.  This is a great
endeavor and the software output is beautiful.

I would greatly encourage the project to focus on the user interface and
the user experience if this is to catch on in a large way.

Having to install separate editors (and who knows what bugs that will
bring and what other mailing lists one will have to subscribe to...) or
get into the system with DOS commands, and to understand what is wrong if
the flags are wrong, etc. does not constitute user interface engineering.

A smooth user interface employing the standard already-debugged platforms,
such as Notepad and Word on Windows, with everything bug free, is more
important than more and more detailed features, which can be added later.

Every 10 minues spent system administrating and installing things is 10
minutes that real work doesn't get accomplished.

User experience engineering is just as important as other areas of
software development.

Sincerely,
Linda Seltzer