Hi all, I just joined this ML after the kind invitation from Thomas. As he mentioned I will not be very active on this list - but I will try to follow anything that picks up the topic of task centric design, which I think is an extremely interesting topic, esp. for Free Software.
For those who do not know me: I am one of the founders of OpenUsabilty.org (and currently trying to re-animate it again). For a living I run a small consultancy named 'user prompt', where we help our customers with our psychologic IT expertise to work better together with their users. For KDE I do / did little bits and pieces here and there - I have been in the Kontact Touch team and visited some sprints, ran some icon tests,... Looking forward to interesting discussions with you! Cheers, Björn Am Montag, 8. Oktober 2012, 14:58:41 schrieb Thomas Pfeiffer: > On 08.10.2012 11:23, Aaron J. Seigo wrote: > > On Monday, October 8, 2012 11:07:12 Marco Martin wrote: > >> I think that is mostly a design problem, the two things are not really > >> against each other, in the end apps should either reuse the file browser > >> as > >> a component (still figuring out how to do that) or be able to provide > >> custom components (and artwork) for the file browser when browsing the > >> files of type x. > > > > very good points we need to work out in more detail. > > > > my suggestion is that we table these discussions for the next release. the > > file browser is a great start, and i think we polish up the existing > > feature set in a number of ways. but let's focus right now on getting > > this out as it is .. > Absolutely! I didn't want to bother you guys with this before the release, > but since it's on the table now anyway: > I've already thought about application integration as a future topic a bit. > What came to my mind was Björn Balasz' presentation at the KDE UX sprint > April 2011 about task-centered interfaces. The general idea current > application-centric desktop shells are not really compatible with users' > mental models. A user doesn't think "I want to start Kmail touch", but > instead "I want to write an email to Grandma". However currently she first > has to think "Okay, what application do I have to start to write an > email?". > The task-centered approach focuses on tasks and views applications only as > tools for those tasks and does not bother users with them. > By intentionally pushing Okular Active as an application to the background > and just letting users open their PDFs and ebooks without having to care > about which application is used to display them, we already did the first > step in that direction. > However, the approach goes far beyond that, as a more complex task workflow > can also transition seamlessly between different "applications", and this > is where it gets really exciting and this is where Free Software, with its > collaborative nature, can really shine! > I already asked Björn if he wanted to work with us on this and even though > he currently does not have enough time to work on detailed designs, he > agreed to join us in general discussions while we bring his ideas to life. > > Marco's points are important to consider in this discussion, and I think we > can create something pretty revolutionary here which only a Free Software > community is capable of. At the UX sprint we started thinking about > "Lego-like" systems, where each "application" becomes an exchangeable > component in a task workflow. > > After the release we should start thinking about the big picture here, > together with Björn. > > > it's already pretty sexy; hard to believe it's a "1.0" application. > > Absolutely. I'm glad that Marco is such a talented UI designer/developer, > and I'm glad that I kept pushing him to improve in the details (such as > drag & drop visibility or tag representation). Marco, it's always a > pleasure working with you ;) > > Thomas -- Dipl.-Psych. Björn Balazs Business Management & Research T +49 30 6098548-21 | M +49 179 4541949 User Prompt GmbH | Psychologic IT Expertise Grünberger Str. 49, 10245 Berlin | www.user-prompt.com HRB 142277 | AG Berlin Charlottenburg | Geschäftsführer Björn Balazs _______________________________________________ Active mailing list Active@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/active