Re: GNOME design principles: It's not that they're disliked by critics, it's that there are missing principles

[Calum Benson <calum benson oracle com>]

On 7 Apr 2011, at 12:39, Rob Walker wrote:

> Although I do appreciate many of the enhancements to GNOME 3, I believe
> there are a few grievous mistakes that seem to be due to missing principles
> in the Design Principles list. Here is a principle that is essential that I
> believe the current Design Principles is lacking:
> 
> Stated several ways along similar themes (take them as a whole, not
> individually):
> 
> 1. "Forcing revolutionary interfaces on users is not as good as being able
> to use old and new in tandem."
> 2  "Two words: READILY ACCESSIBLE"
>    "Don't make the user have to remember."
>    "Don't assume the user has expertise and prior knowledge."
>    "A good UI makes it easy for the user to educate herself/himself to make
> future work easier, but without requring users to remember that education in
> order to work."

We're in the process of documenting GNOME's (not just the shell's) high level design principles along (some of) these lines as part of the new HIG. Stay tuned.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Interaction Designer     Oracle Corporation Ireland Ltd.
mailto:calum benson oracle com         Solaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Oracle Corp.