---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Matthew Jadud <[email protected]> Date: 25 August 2010 18:07 Subject: Re: MyPaint wants interaction designers! To: Jon Nordby <[email protected]>
Hi Jon, My apologies for the delay; I've been swamped by first-year advising, as the semester starts tomorrow. On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 15:52, Jon Nordby <[email protected]> wrote: > About (from www.mypaint.info): > "MyPaint is a fast and easy open-source graphics application for > digital painters. It lets you focus on the art instead of the program. > You work on your canvas with minimum distractions, bringing up the > interface only when you need it." MyPaint looks like a great addition to the list. I agree: MyPaint looks like the kind of projects the students would be able to relate to well, and get rapidly involved in. > As MyPaint is designed for use with a graphics tablet, we ask that the > students working on it have one available. A good tablet can be had > for about 50 USD, so hopefully that is not a deal-breaker. That should be doable. I have a small Wacom tablet I can lend, and I think we have a larger Intuos around the department. So you have a sense for what's going on at my end, we're going to be starting the semester tomorrow, and my rough plan is as follows: 1. The students will do a rapid pass through the design and testing process on a website project. 2. While rapidly touring the breadth of UI design and testing, we'll learn about interacting with communities via IRC, blogs, mailing lists, bug trackers, wikis, and the like. 3. My expectation is that they will look at the available projects and begin approaching the communities/projects they're most interested in working with by mid-to-late September, and we will then use the remainder of the semester to focus in on software UIs. While I have taught this kind of course before, it is the first time I've experimented with putting it in the context of a living, open source project. That said, I want to be clear: I'm well aware of how open source software development works, and the students will be, too. We do not believe our contributions will *necessarily* result in changes in your project. We only ask for the opportunity to work in a community context where the students' explorations will not come as a surprise, and their work will be given a bit of consideration along the way. And who knows: they might decide to keep working on the project past the end of the term, which I would consider a win for all involved! My most sincere thanks. I'll drop a note shortly pointing you at the (hopefully up-to-date) course website, and let you know how we're getting on. Cheers, Matt _______________________________________________ Mypaint-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/mypaint-discuss
