Re: UI Guidelines -- What I'm doing

[Dan Mueth <dan eazel com>]

On Wed, 2 May 2001, Joakim Ziegler wrote:

> On Wed, May 02, 2001 at 07:21:41AM -0700, Seth Nickell wrote:
> >> I don't really know what effect this has on your call for volunteers,
> >> but bear in mind that if you can't find the experts that you want, you
> >> still have to find _someone_, and experts with time on their hands are
> >> often in rather short supply.
>  
> > 1) Calum Benson. a usability engineer at Sun Ireland. Calum is both
> > involved in the GNOME community heavily, and posseses requisite
> > experience and talent. Calum's level of involvement with the project is
> > still contingent on whether his manager's give him permission to throw
> > lots of time at this. If Calum gets permission to run with the project
> > full steam he would make an excellent lead, we should know pretty soon.
>  
> > 2) Matthew Thomas. owner of the Mozilla UI component. Matthew actually
> > began work on a preliminary UI guide about two weeks ago. From what I
> > have read thus far it is very competetent (though only about 6000 words
> > of it have been written). I'm working with him to run through some
> > revisions, and then we can post a link for people to peruse.
>  
> > 3) Dan Mueth. Inspite of his self-deprecating comments, Dan is a
> > top-notch writer. This is an asset in the composition of a style guide
> > even if Dan has no formal UI experience. Arlo, for example, was
> > originally going to collaborate with one of Eazel's technical writer's
> > (Vera) in writing the style guide.

I'm not sure if this is a nomination of sorts or if I was interpreted as
volunteering myself.  Just to clarify, I have not yet thrown my hat into
the ring for writing the UI guidelines, and I'm not sure if I will.  I
would really like to see other technical writers volunteer to work on the
Guidelines.

I am, of course, keenly interested in seeing the Usability Project and the
GNOME UI Guidelines succeed and lead to dramatic improvements in GNOME 2.0
over previous GNOME releases.  Writing the UI Guidelines is just one piece
of the work, albeit a very important one.

> > 4) John Sullivan. macintosh finder hi lead for several years, now at
> > Eazel. John can't commit to anything right now, particularly because of
> > Eazel's shakey state, but he's interested in providing at least advice
> > and guidance. Because he helped with the creation of the Macintosh HI
> > guidelines, John's experience will be invaluable.
> 
> > 5) Arlo Rose. another person with enormous experience writing Macintosh
> > HI guidelines. Arlo's work has been seriously sidetracked with Eazel
> > problems, so I wouldn't count on him being involved (don't hold up the
> > show, I agree with Colin), but he's still planning to do work on the
> > guidelines. Right now we have him working too hard though ;-)
> 
> 
> I also humbly submit myself:
> 
> Joakim Ziegler. Just starting to work UI at Ximian. Previous UI experience
> over a few years, as well as older experience doing actual user testing and
> the like of (web site) user interfaces. Also consider myself a decent writer,
> having done my share of technical and documentation writing.

Great.  It looks like we have an impressive list already :)

> Perhaps not quite up to the standard of the others, but then again, I don't
> see all that many "This person can dedicate to writing substantial amounts of
> the style guide for sure" up there, while I'm ready to make that dedication
> right now.

Yes - time is also a very important attribute.

> For the record, I think Colin Robertson belongs in the group, just from the
> virtue of actually having produced something. That is indeed a valuable trait.

Yes.

Dan