On Tue, 2010-04-27 at 17:22 -0400, Martin Owens wrote: > > A few of my community circles react to Design Team news with a *sigh* > and "Oh god what have they done now". The teams reputation is low and > it's over shadowing the really great work that's going on. How can I > convince people to trust decisions or even get involved if they don't > trust that the discussions are fair, balanced and considered? So I'd > like to be able to build up social relations so that we're not just on > par with other teams, but surpass their ability to bring people in and > form their world view into solid multi-consideration design.
(Perceived) honesty is important, and it may be even more jarring if the design team's communication stresses the importance of feedback and a willingness to consider it, if the actual reality of the development cycle rightfully or not appears to counteract that. In my experience as a an Ubuntu user with an interest in UI design, much of the ire I see on the various discussion boards seems to stem from the fact that during most of the cycle the design team's changes are invisible if you don't follow this list or http://design.canonical.com (both of which I found only recently despite my interest). The blueprints, which are better known, usually do not offer much insight into the planned UI changes. The experience is that as an interested user you are running the development version for months during the alphas with great expectations but nothing much to see UI-wise, and suddenly sweeping and often problematic changes land late in the cycle. This, I think, gives the impression that the design team is not really interested in user discussion/feedback. It also seems to me that this way of doing things gives very little time for users to get used to the changes, form a considered opinion and give feedback. It also gives developers little time to consider the feedback or identify problems in other ways, and to implement appropriate iterations to fix them. To give a recent example, I was open to the question of having the window buttons on the left, but it's only now - a few days before release - that I feel I have used them enough to get somewhat used to them and really decide if I like them or not. On the other hand it's understandable, if you stop to think about it (often neglected on discussion boards), that the development cycle is actually used for development, and it's impossible to include some changes very early in the cycle for the simple fact that they are not done yet. There would also be the danger that earlier inclusion would just drag out the public discussions and with time let them deteriorate into senseless trolling even more. Maybe it would help to provide explanations, links to feedback options, etc. along with the changes. Currently users need to seek out the information on their own - and often the first thing they read is an inaccurate Slashdot summary that spawns a misguided discussion based on wrong assumptions. The information could be given during the upgrade process. E.g., I have installed apt-listchanges to email me news, but there scarcely are any, and certainly not about the design changes. Same if you use the GUI update-manager. _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
