Hi everyone,

One of the areas where Squeak is currently lacking is Usability. Both
the language and the environment can offer amazing possibilities in term
of productivity, ease of use, tinkering, discovering and learning. But
my feeling is that a large part of this potential is hindered and
blocked by inconsistant tools, more-complex-than-necessary interfaces,
conflicting metaphors.

So, as a mean to solve some of Squeak's usability problems, I propose
the creation of a Usability Team.

The Usability Team should:

- analyze the usability of the current Squeak releases, identifying the
usability problems and proposing solutions for that problems either as
fixes or as suggestions.
- as a byproduct of the analysis and solving process, create some Squeak
Interface Guidelines which would help the Squeak developers create
better tools.
- work in close contact with the other teams and the Squeak developers'
community.

Please note that this is not (yet) a formal team proposal. It is more
than a call for everyone who is interested in this topic to come out and
join this project.
I can act as an interim team leader while the team is forming, but I
have no problem in stepping down if someone else wants the job.

So, if you are interested in this topic, and want to give your two
cents, please reply to this message. As soon as I have feedback from at
least a couple of person, I'll ask the coordinators to create a
usability mailing list, so that we can start draft a formal team
proposal.

	Giovanni