Re: UI Guidelines -- What I'm doing

[Kenny Graunke <kenny whitecape org>]

On Tuesday 01 May 2001 03:46 pm, Joakim Ziegler wrote:
> On Tue, May 01, 2001 at 03:26:15PM -0500, Dan Mueth wrote:

[Snip comments from Dan, which I totally agree with...]

> 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.

We may not have time to write a complete document, but we can at least finish 
some basic smaller sections to make the UI nicer, such as dialog placement. 
If we can come up with some good sections, it's still better than nothing.

> 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.

I believe we should release parts as they're ready - like dialog button 
layouts, menus, and other small sections instead of aiming for a huge 1.0 
release. This way we at least get something out in the meantime that will 
help improve the usability of our system, little by little.

> > On Tue, 1 May 2001, Joakim Ziegler wrote:

> 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.

I know lots of people who can write, but have absolutely no clue how to 
design a good User Interface. Conversly, I imagine some people can design 
good Interfaces but cannot write very well. (I suspect there are less of the 
latter, as part of good UI requires good language and wording.) Either way 
though, we can have some good writers and editors who work with the usability 
experts if needbe - but certainly not the other way around.

[snip]

> >> 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.

Using some of Colin's work would be fine, also the collective #interface 
work, Jim Cape's work, Matthew Thomas's work - but we should not feel as if 
we must use any of this - we must examine things rationally and with a 
critical eye to make a good, well reasoned decision. We also must provide 
this reasoning in our documents. Rules are much more likely to be obeyed and 
accepted when the authors can clearly back their reasoning, rather than just 
picking something "because it is 'the right way'."

[snip]

--Kenny