2009/2/18 Aaron J. Seigo <ase...@kde.org>: > On Tuesday 17 February 2009, Michael Rudolph wrote: >> So we could just be happy that everybody likes us (well, besides >> ourselves, designers seem to like us :-), but we could also think >> about some kind of outreach program, with which we try to bring both >> cultures closer together. Basically what the user council does for >> users and developers.
Hello everyone, first of all I should perhaps note, that openusability has of course also been mentioned in that IxDA thread. So although you seem to be a little sobered regarding your involvement with KDE Celeste, a lot of what you do is on the map of a lot of people. And I think the only thing that's missing is, just as you noted yourself: we need to make these efforts sustainable, make it so designers can come and go without impacting a project too much, just as programmers can come and go. > what would such an outreach program look like in your mind? Puh, tough question. One thing I had thought about is My Dream App (http://mydreamapp.com/). A competition run by a bunch of Mac developers. They invited people to share ideas for their dream applications and over many rounds had the "best design" crowd-sourced, with corrections and refinements happening along the way. During the final stages the developers sided with the remaining designers (perhaps to bring some sense of technical feasibility to the designs :-) and in a final round a winner was awarded. First prize being having your dream app developed. I didn't keep too close an eye on the developments there, but I think they failed. (they started shortly before Leopard came out, so they wanted to wait for all the cool new features and start development only after it was released, but in the process of waiting lost all the momentum they had picked up) (by the way, just looking at all the initial entries might be a nice inspiration, especially now that SoC is around the corner: http://mydreamapp.com/contestants/ :-) I'm not sure that we can or should copy them, but a couple of aspects of My Dream App seem to be at least noteworthy. (1) A competition is not an ideal format, because of its one off nature, but it's an excellent way to get some attention. (2) Furthermore doing iterative development in the open fits nicely with what we do with code already. They used blogs to publish mockups and the comment-feature to discuss those mockups. They also posted questions and design problems to "the community" to ask for help. Looking at the progress some of the dream apps made, this procedure can work. (3) Using blogs as communication tools imposes some form of hierarchy, that we are not used to in traditional open source development. Or so it may seem. So far talk is cheap in OSS land, because all that counts is code (talk to the ML, the VCS won't listen anymore :-). For design "mere talk" is much more important, so having the tools to not let "talk" get out of hand, like it can happen on mailing lists, might even be an asset. > honestly, we're lacking a couple of critical tools to really start bringing > designers in en masse; plasmate is a step towards addressing that, but > certainly can't/won't be the whole answer. I agree with you. Although I'm not really sure what tools exactly would be needed. Should I just try to create a stencil set for inkscape with all (or many) of the common widgets? Or wouldn't a simplified version of Qt Designer be better suited? Or would actually both solutions be detrimental? Since I agree with Aza Raskin, that there can be such a thing as a "toolkit straitjacket", a "controlled nothingness" might be the best starting point, because it allows you to design more in terms of the problem you try to solve than in terms of the tools you have. Another thing that might be important: we should have a "My Dream Designer" competition first, so we together have a clearer understanding of what we actually expect from a designer :-) So clearly no definitive answers here, but perhaps some ideas to keep the ball rolling. What do you think? michael _______________________________________________ Plasma-devel mailing list Plasma-devel@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel
