Re: UI Guidelines -- What I'm doing

[Joakim Ziegler <joakim ximian com>]

On Tue, May 01, 2001 at 03:26:15PM -0500, Dan Mueth wrote:

> I think this is generally the right approach, and while I think it is
> very long overdue, I wonder if it is a bit premature in just one
> regard...

> We really need to think about what our goals and roadmap are.  Creating
> and using a UI guideline will play a very key role.  However, we should
> try to frame the project in terms of scope and time frame so that it has a
> tangible effect on GNOME 2.0.  If the scope is too broad, if the time
> frame is too long, if the quality is not good enough, if we can't all
> agree to the extent that we can adopt the guidelines, if we are unable to
> get developers to implement the guidelines, etc., then all this work would
> be in vain and GNOME 2.0 will be as unusable as GNOME 1.4 or even more so.

> Of course this is not only true for the UI Guidelines, but also for the
> rest of the GNOME Usability Project (GUP).  In fact, I'd love to see Calum
> give us a roadmap for the broader GUP leading up to GNOME 2.0 <hint>
> <hint> which also includes user testing, application review,
> accessibility, etc. I think we will find that GNOME 2.0 is approaching
> very quickly and that (like the GNOME hackers) we will not have time to do
> more than about 20% of what we would like to accomplish for GNOME 2.0.

> I really hate to delay the UI Guidelines, but I think we have to address
> some of these issues and come up with a real plan of attack before we just
> jump in and start writing (which was our old, unsuccessful attack plan).  
> I would suggest (briefly) delaying the call for volunteers until we can
> better define the project.

Personally, I don't think we'll be able to have the UI guidelines ready for
GNOME 2.0. Isn't the freeze date some time in July? That's a very, very
short time for writing (essentially from scratch) something that's a
book-sized document.

Probably other parts of the GUP could interact more with the 2.0 release,
but I'm unconvinced that it's useful to try to sync the guidelines up with
it very much. In the best case, we'll ahve a small document that might help
a bit, in the worst case, we'll have something that's incomplete and
underdeveloped, and might be plain wrong in many respects. I'd like to see
the UI guidelines be pretty definitive and not change a huge amount after a
1.0 release.



> On Tue, 1 May 2001, Joakim Ziegler wrote:
 
>> Speaking of which, this is what I'm thinking about sending out to the
>> various relevant groups today (or tomorrow if there are largish concerns
>> that need to be addressed):
 
>> ---
 
>> Call For Writers
 
>            ^^^^^^^
>            User Interface Designers


I'm not so sure about this. Sure, the people who write the guidelines should
be UI designers or otherwise involved with/having expertise in UI, but this
is a writing project, first and foremost. If the participants are not able
to express themselves clearly (that is, if they're unable to be "writers"),
the document isn't going to be very useful.



>> guidelines. The idea is that these people form the initial authoring group,
>> coordinating on a dedicated mailing list, and producing and presenting
>> drafts of the finished document for review by the GNOME community frequently
>   ^^^^^^        xxxxxxxx
 
>   sections
 
> (It is important to work on the document in small pieces which can be
> reviewed and then approved as finished.  It will probably be eons before
> the entire document is finished, so we need to focus on the most important
> sections first - keybindings, menus, dialogs, ... - and get finished
> versions of these accepted and into use.)

Yes. This is what I meant. I'll try rephrasing a little here. "presenting
draft sections of the document", perhaps?


>> (once every couple of weeks or so).
 
>> This work will build on Colin Z Robertson's efforts to resurrect the GNOME
>> UI Guidelines, and people who have already agreed to take part in the group
>> of writers includes Colin, Anna Dirks from Ximian, Calum Benson from Sun,
>> and myself.
 
> I would nix this whole paragraph:

> The team should use whatever existing UI style guides they choose,
> provided the end product is of high quality and consistent with GNOME's
> style.  If we decide that certain style guides definitely should or should
> not be used, then let's discuss this before we announce it.

The idea with pointing out Colin's work was mainly to not give the
impression that this is yet *another* start from scratch. Although you might
be right.

> I don't think it is a good idea to state that the team is already
> (partially) pre-determined before people get a chance to apply to be on
> it.

Fair enough. I'll drop this paragraph.


>> If you have a keen interest in/experience with UI and GNOME, and are able to
>                      xxxxxxxxxxxx

> I hate to say this, because it is not as open sourcy as I like to be, but
> UI design takes years of experience to do properly.  People with lots of
> interest in UI design should definitely join the gnome-gui mailing list
> and learn and discuss as much as they can, and I'm sure their
> contributions will be valuable.  But for creating a first draft of the UI
> guidelines, I think we only want people with a pretty serious background
> in UI design.  (Well, we probably need to throw in somebody who is pretty
> good at writing and DocBook/SGML.)

And someone who knows the widget APIs and so on, of course. I agree. I was
trying to not be too excluding here, but you're probably right.


>> dedicate time to writing substantial parts of the UI Guidelines, you should
>> probably sign up for the writers' group. However, the intention of the core
>> group is to produce the document quickly, so if you're unable to dedicate
>> the time to being a member of the core group, you will probably be better
>> off providing feedback/patches on the biweekly drafts, which will be
>> published to the usability gnome org list (and other places, as relevant).
>                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>                    gnome-gui-list gnome org

Probably both.


>> The mailing list for the writers is not set up yet. Please respond to this
>> mail if you're interested in participating. Introducing yourself when doing
>> so is probably a good idea, too.

> Let's replace this paragraph with something like:
 
>   If you are interested in helping to create the first draft of the GNOME
>   UI Guidelines and have experience in UI design, please consider emailing
>   gnome-gui-list gnome org stating that you would be willing to serve on
>   this team and listing you UI design and style guide experience.

Sounds good to me.

-- 
   Joakim Ziegler - Ximian Web Monkey - joakim ximian com - Radagast IRC
 FIX sysop - Free Software Coder - Writer - FIDEL & Conglomerate developer
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