Re: [HIG] Mini-Guidelines content

[Adam Elman <aelman users sourceforge net>]

At 1:33 PM +0100 8/7/01, Calum Benson wrote:
> colin z robertson wrote:
>
> >  If we have time to fit it in then I wouldn't have any objections. It
> >  looks like it could easily get quite big though. Should we perhaps
> >  have a list of essential and optional topics for the mini-guidelines?

I agree.  I really only have one suggestion on the below list, and 
it's my problem anyway, so if nobody else has any objections, shall 
we simply adopt Calum's prioritized outline and go from there?

BTW, I'm going out of town tomorrow, but I will be back online on 
Tuesday (from Seattle).  If nobody objects, let's say that the 
outline we have on Wednesday afternoon (Pacific time, so say 00:00 
UTC Thursday 16 Aug :) is the one we go with.

> [...]
> So, by my reckoning, the current topic list, in no particular order,
> looks something like this.  (I've added Os and Es to suggest my opinion
> of what's Optional and Essential, although High Priority and Low
> Priority might be more accurate...)
>
> (O) Introduction: "Why we care about usability (and so should you)"
>
> (O) Usability Principles

I think we need at least a one-page intro that basically says 
"Following these guidelines will not automatically make your software 
'usable'; you need to design your software from the user's 
perspective".  Maybe just a couple of paragraphs.  I just want to 
make it clear that the guidelines are not a panacea. :)

I think we also need an explanation of why these are 
"mini-guidelines" and not the full set.  I'm happy to write these.



>     Menus + Toolbars
[..]
>     Dialogs
[...]
>  Layout and Aesthetics / Controls and Layout
[...]
> (O) Terminology
[...]
>     Keyboard and Mouse Input basics
[...]
> (O) Reality Checks (aka Doing Simple Usability Testing)

All the above sounds fine to me.  I'd be happy to take on any one or 
two of these, including editing/rewriting the ones that already exist 
in some form.

> Have I missed anything?  It sounds like a reasonable list to me, so as
> well as starting to think about who writes what, another couple of
> things to consider are:
>
> - at which point we want to circulate things (including the draft
> contents list) to the wider usability team for comments, and

I would guess that since we have a decent number of people on this 
list, and the archives are public, the best thing to do would be to 
wait to circulate explicitly to the wider list until we have a draft; 
otherwise we're going to be overwhelmed by comments on the outline 
before we've even made an attempt to fill it out.  (Folks who are not 
on the core team: please do feel free to comment on these 
proposals!!!)

> - the guidleines format we want to produce-- a styleguide for the
> styleguide, in other words, so the bits we all write end up looking like
> part of the same document.

This is important, but I think we should keep it fairly simple; we 
don't want that to overshadow the guidelines content itself.

I'll send a separate note with a proposal for this.

Adam
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