Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Frederic Muller]

On 06/10/2011 05:49 PM, Allan Day wrote:

Were there any UX testing report available that motivated this decision?

This kind of statement implies that if designers don't scientifically
prove the validity of their work they aren't allowed to do it at all.
More user testing would be great, but that's often not an option.



Thanks for the response. I'm not saying what you're implying but for 
controversial changes organizing a UX testing could prove useful. I 
remember Canonical/Ubuntu organizing one and publishing the results on 
Unity a few month back with mixed results (of course some would see the 
glass half full and some half empty).


I understand those take time and resources as we tried to organize one 
for GNOME.Asia in Bangalore and finally ruled against it because we had 
a lot of other things to deal with.


Anyway it's nice to know that GNOME designers are listening even if they 
don't show it ;-)


Fred
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Allan Day]

Frederic Muller wrote:
> On 06/07/2011 04:53 PM, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> > Also, while I'm not a designer, yesterday I wanted to propose some new
> > stuff, and it was easy to get the design team to find a solution for
> > proposals (https://live.gnome.org/Design/Proposals  ), so from my (short)
> > experience they seem to be open to listen to new ideas.
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I don't think the discussion is about the design team not being open but 
> more about the decision process and understanding how choices are being 
> made.
> 
> I'll take the example of the power off menu. From my discussion with 
> some members of the design team I have been told the disappearance of 
> the power off menu was pushed without much discussion just before a 
> freeze.

There was some discussion, but you don't always have the
luxury of having extended debate about every issue when you're about to
freeze a dot oh. :)

> The current bug has 67 comments 
> (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=643457 ) all asking for a 
> power off menu except 2.
> 
> As a foundation member and supporter of GNOME I don't even know myself 
> how to give a feedback that matters and join the hundreds unhappy 
> contributors with this decision (users spend hours looking at how they 
> can power off their machine, talk about good UX...), nor can I point 
> anyone to a method to give feedback that matters that would help to get 
> our voice heard.

I think you've got to the crux of the issue here Fred. Actually though,
I don't think the problem is listening as much as speaking. The people
who have made these decisions are fully aware of peoples' opinions and
feelings. All the feedback gets read. What is missing is a response
that communicates that that feedback has been taken seriously and which
evaluates the various options that are available to us.

> Were there any UX testing report available that motivated this decision?

This kind of statement implies that if designers don't scientifically
prove the validity of their work they aren't allowed to do it at all.
More user testing would be great, but that's often not an option.

> Was it really a minority decision? Why?

The decision was made by the shell design team (which is Jon and
Jimmac with Jon in charge), and then ratified (so to speak) by Owen in
his role as shell maintainer. That's pretty much as things should be
in my view, and it's largely in accordance with how things generally
get done in GNOME.

> Why can't it be reverted if so? 

There's no principle that says a design can't be changed (though the
practicality of that varies from issue to issue, of course.)

> What is the process?

People want to feel like they are a part of GNOME and they want to know
that the designers who are working on the project give a shit. I'm
honestly not sure whether bureaucracy is the best way to achieve that.
Again: we already know what the issues are and we know how people feel
about them. The part that is missing is the response.

> I am also someone that would be happy to see a trackable system 
> implemented which we could go back to, read and understand, and provide 
> meaningful feedback to.

I think I've answered what I think of that above.

I've expended all the energy I have on this thread. I won't be
participating any further, though I will continue to work to improve
things on the design side.

Allan
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[John Stowers]

> As a foundation member and supporter of GNOME I don't even know myself 
> how to give a feedback that matters and join the hundreds unhappy 
> contributors with this decision (users spend hours looking at how they 
> can power off their machine, talk about good UX...), nor can I point 
> anyone to a method to give feedback that matters that would help to get 
> our voice heard.

Yip, this is exactly my position and I face the same dilemma.

I decided to just minimize [1] all my public open-source contribution
[2]. I don't know how to make things better in this new design-driven
world, so I will just settle for not making things worse.

I guess this is progress; GNOME3 is, on balance, certainly very good.

This email is not intended to be rude, nor taken badly. It is a
reflection of private correspondence I have had with other hackers who
might abstain from these contentious discussion on d-d-l for the reasons
cited above.

John

[1] gnome-tweak-tool, user-theme not withstanding. Those were my bridge
building exercises between the hypothetical 'power user' and the
hypothetical 'GNOME3 architects'.
[2] I just put stuff on github and never mention it...


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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Frederic Muller]

On 06/07/2011 04:53 PM, Rodrigo Moya wrote:

Also, while I'm not a designer, yesterday I wanted to propose some new
stuff, and it was easy to get the design team to find a solution for
proposals (https://live.gnome.org/Design/Proposals  ), so from my (short)
experience they seem to be open to listen to new ideas.


Hi!

I don't think the discussion is about the design team not being open but 
more about the decision process and understanding how choices are being 
made.


I'll take the example of the power off menu. From my discussion with 
some members of the design team I have been told the disappearance of 
the power off menu was pushed without much discussion just before a 
freeze. The current bug has 67 comments 
(https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=643457 ) all asking for a 
power off menu except 2.


As a foundation member and supporter of GNOME I don't even know myself 
how to give a feedback that matters and join the hundreds unhappy 
contributors with this decision (users spend hours looking at how they 
can power off their machine, talk about good UX...), nor can I point 
anyone to a method to give feedback that matters that would help to get 
our voice heard.


Were there any UX testing report available that motivated this decision? 
Was it really a minority decision? Why? Why can't it be reverted if so? 
What is the process?


I am also someone that would be happy to see a trackable system 
implemented which we could go back to, read and understand, and provide 
meaningful feedback to.


Thank you.

Fred
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Johannes Schmid]

Hi!

(Just if people think I am discussing here because it makes me somehow
happier - no!)

> yesterday I asked the same question (where to follow design discussions,
> apart from IRC), and I was told to monitor https://live.gnome.org/Design
> and children pages, which is enough to get a peak of what they are doing
> indeed.
>
> Also, while I'm not a designer, yesterday I wanted to propose some new
> stuff, and it was easy to get the design team to find a solution for
> proposals (https://live.gnome.org/Design/Proposals ), so from my (short)
> experience they seem to be open to listen to new ideas.

So to come back to the first point of the discussion:

Would the designers be able to read some kind of gnome-design mailing list
and answer questions there? That doesn't mean that anybody will have to
change their workflow for designing, it's just that the designers would
join a discussion that arises on the mailing list while they are free to
use IRC or whatever they want for their internal discussions. Of course
summaries would be nice on the ML, too, but I know we are all busy.

Or is the usuability-list used for that? And if yes, are we sure we want
to mix usuability and design?

Thanks,
Johannes

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Lapo Calamandrei]

2011/6/7 Frederic Crozat :
[SNIP]
> My point is that GNOME OS is clearly driven by design (team), at least
> for people like me who are trying to get a overview of what is going
> on there.. If it isn't designed driven (which seems to contradict our
> new moto "we design and select features first"), then it is even more
> problematic.
>
There is no design team as a whole, there are designers. Speaking for
myself I don't really know or care atm about gnome os, I do care about
functionalities offered by gnome tho.

>>> As somebody who has been active for years as a GNOME "packager", it is
>>> becoming impossible to monitor what design changes are coming and
>>> bring feedback based on my experience from interacting with users.
>>
>> You'll need to be more specific. You want to be able to participate in
>> design work? How did you do this monitoring and feedback previously?
>
> I want to be able to give feedback at any level (including design). In
> the past, monitoring mailing lists (including usability,
> desktop-devel) and planet gnome was enough.
>
You usually hang on our channel, your feedback is appreciated, reading
the scrollback is not very different then followind discussions on the
mailing lists, anyway we need to improve in this field.
Different != Impossible tho

> --
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Lapo Calamandrei]

2011/6/7 Matthew Paul Thomas :
> Lapo Calamandrei wrote on 06/06/11 17:20:
>>...
>> 2011/6/6 Dave Neary :
>>...
>>> I feel that the current operation of the design team is hurting our
>>> relationship with Canonical, who also have designers who have, I
>>> believe, failed to influence design discussions in the same measure as
>>> the "core" members of the design team like Lapo, Allan, Jon.
>
> However good or bad Gnome's design processes are, I don't think those
> processes have anything to do with the relationship with Canonical. The
> reason Canonical designers have not influenced Gnome design discussions
> is that we are not instructed to take part, and most of us haven't even
> heard of #gnome-design. (To be clear, nobody's telling us *not* to take
> part, it's just not part of our jobs.)
>
> That may be a good thing or a bad thing. I can certainly see drawbacks:
> for example, I have lost count of the number of times one of my
> colleagues has sketched something that assumes the existence of
> gnome-about-me, and I've had to say "uh, that doesn't exist any more".
> Or when they've talked about having a unified settings panel for online
> accounts, oblivious to the Web Accounts panel being designed and
> implemented upstream as they speak.

That's the downfall of not working in close contact with upstream, or
you stick with a certain version of the software or you'll aim a
moving target. Even with everything documented or with some magic tool
to track what we're doing this won't be solved, the only way is to
design stuff diretcly upstream and influencing design decisions.

>
>>>                                                              I think
>>> the lack of documentation of the core design team makes it harder for
>>> new designers to get involved.
>
> I do agree with this. For most of the Gnome designs I come across, I
> think: What stage is this at? Is this supposed to be a draft, or the
> final design? What alternatives have been considered so far? What
> benefits and disadvantages have been predicted in each? Have any of the
> predictions been tested with users? How could I most productively
> suggest another alternative? Getting answers to those questions
> shouldn't require waiting for the right person to turn up on IRC.
>
We can certanly improove things in this area, but we're usually very
busy and we have no tools to do it. If I want to give feedback to some
design I see on our repositories I just leave a note there if the
right person is not online. Yeah it's not the best way possible, but
there are ways to do it, if you want to.


>>>                                To sum it all up, I believe the current
>>> dynamic of the design team is doing damage to GNOME as a community.
>>
>> Would you elaborate this? Adding some facts please?
>
> For example, I think a lot of the discontent with Gnome Shell could be
> calmed if the wireframes of alternatives that were considered were
> published, and if user testing results were published too.
There's planty of stuff around regarding Shell design, it just not
nicelly structured, but both the wiki and our repos are full of
material, old stuff included, anyway not my domain so I'll just pass
here.

>
>> Unfortunatelly IRC is the only tool which work fo us atm (since google
>> pulled wave which was nice), we're very open and responsive on the
>> channel, I listen to every suggestion I get and answer any question,
>> just hang on the channel and see.
>
> An XMPP chat room (as used for Inkscape developer discussion, for
> example) has the relevant advantage that history can be easily available
> even to people who weren't in the room at the time.
The same is true for irc with a log bot or something like that.

>
>>                                   Also the repositories we are using
>> are open and everybody can participate.
>
> Requiring designers to learn git limits the number and type of designers.
We actually don't require that, sparkleshare does all the magic. We
just ned to grant write access to people.

>
>>                                         I respect and esteem Matthew
>> Paul Thomas which is the only canonical designer I ever interacted
>> with on the channel and I think I have zero issues with him, while I'd
>> like to see him more activelly involved.
>>...
>
> Thank you. The main reason I'm not more actively involved is that when I
> get home from work I try to focus on things that aren't software.
Fair enough, you should use your work time then :-)

>
> --
> mpt
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Frederic Crozat]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 1:25 PM, Allan Day  wrote:
> Frederic Crozat wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 2:42 PM, Allan Day  wrote:

>> I'm sorry but "GNOME OS" is a very good example of how "interaction
>> between design team and GNOME community" is failing :
>> - there has been no communication with the community since William
>> presentation at latest GUADEC and the associated blog post (
>> http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/2010/08/01/shell-yes/ )
>> - it seems people working on "GNOME OS" have a different definition of
>> what is "an OS", "a distribution", etc.., which has not been discussed
>> nor even published somewhere publicly (and if you don't even agree on
>> definitions, cooperation is even more difficult).
>
> You are missing my point - GNOME OS is *not* a design initiative. There
> is some work going on under the design banner, but GNOME OS did not
> originate in GNOME design. Most of the design team don't know any more
> about GNOME OS than you do (or if they do, they're not telling me ;) ).
>
> I agree that it would be good to have more communications about GNOME
> OS, but that isn't the responsibility of the design team. You'll need to
> complain to someone else about this one, I'm afraid.

My point is that GNOME OS is clearly driven by design (team), at least
for people like me who are trying to get a overview of what is going
on there.. If it isn't designed driven (which seems to contradict our
new moto "we design and select features first"), then it is even more
problematic.

>> As somebody who has been active for years as a GNOME "packager", it is
>> becoming impossible to monitor what design changes are coming and
>> bring feedback based on my experience from interacting with users.
>
> You'll need to be more specific. You want to be able to participate in
> design work? How did you do this monitoring and feedback previously?

I want to be able to give feedback at any level (including design). In
the past, monitoring mailing lists (including usability,
desktop-devel) and planet gnome was enough.

-- 
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Lapo Calamandrei wrote on 06/06/11 17:20:
>...
> 2011/6/6 Dave Neary :
>...
>> I feel that the current operation of the design team is hurting our
>> relationship with Canonical, who also have designers who have, I
>> believe, failed to influence design discussions in the same measure as
>> the "core" members of the design team like Lapo, Allan, Jon.

However good or bad Gnome's design processes are, I don't think those
processes have anything to do with the relationship with Canonical. The
reason Canonical designers have not influenced Gnome design discussions
is that we are not instructed to take part, and most of us haven't even
heard of #gnome-design. (To be clear, nobody's telling us *not* to take
part, it's just not part of our jobs.)

That may be a good thing or a bad thing. I can certainly see drawbacks:
for example, I have lost count of the number of times one of my
colleagues has sketched something that assumes the existence of
gnome-about-me, and I've had to say "uh, that doesn't exist any more".
Or when they've talked about having a unified settings panel for online
accounts, oblivious to the Web Accounts panel being designed and
implemented upstream as they speak.

>>  I think
>> the lack of documentation of the core design team makes it harder for
>> new designers to get involved.

I do agree with this. For most of the Gnome designs I come across, I
think: What stage is this at? Is this supposed to be a draft, or the
final design? What alternatives have been considered so far? What
benefits and disadvantages have been predicted in each? Have any of the
predictions been tested with users? How could I most productively
suggest another alternative? Getting answers to those questions
shouldn't require waiting for the right person to turn up on IRC.

>>To sum it all up, I believe the current
>> dynamic of the design team is doing damage to GNOME as a community.
>
> Would you elaborate this? Adding some facts please?

For example, I think a lot of the discontent with Gnome Shell could be
calmed if the wireframes of alternatives that were considered were
published, and if user testing results were published too.

> Unfortunatelly IRC is the only tool which work fo us atm (since google
> pulled wave which was nice), we're very open and responsive on the
> channel, I listen to every suggestion I get and answer any question,
> just hang on the channel and see.

An XMPP chat room (as used for Inkscape developer discussion, for
example) has the relevant advantage that history can be easily available
even to people who weren't in the room at the time.

>   Also the repositories we are using
> are open and everybody can participate.

Requiring designers to learn git limits the number and type of designers.

> I respect and esteem Matthew
> Paul Thomas which is the only canonical designer I ever interacted
> with on the channel and I think I have zero issues with him, while I'd
> like to see him more activelly involved.
>...

Thank you. The main reason I'm not more actively involved is that when I
get home from work I try to focus on things that aren't software.

-- 
mpt
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Christophe Fergeau]

2011/6/7 Emmanuele Bassi :
> On 2011-06-07 at 11:42, Christophe Fergeau wrote:
>> So what about some kind of FAQ about the design team so that everyone
>> is on the same line, and to make sure everyone has the same level of
>> information?
>
> and where should we put this FAQ? on the wiki, which clearly is not
> enough, since a page about the design effort called "Design" is not
> being found?

Well, once you have such a page (I see that Allan and Rodrigo have
improved it recently, thanks!), then you have to advertise it, eg at
the beginning of this discussion. Then hopefully it will get into
people's mind and be easy to find from google, so in the long run you
won't have to point people at it over and over. If people can't find
it, you have 2 options, either you blame people for not even being
able to find it, or you ask yourself why people didn't find it, and
how you could make sure they find it next time. I think for now the
latter must be done so that the design team no longer appears as such
a mysterious entity :)

Christophe
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Allan Day]

Frederic Crozat wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 2:42 PM, Allan Day  wrote:
> > Dave Neary wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> >> > can you please explain to me, in a short sentence, what do you want to
> >> > achieve? not how, but precisely what.
> >>
> >> I have said that already: I want to enable the design team to work
> >> productively with the entire GNOME development community.
> >>
> >> Right now a small number of designers are working effectively with a
> >> small number of developers, and I've observed increasing discontent
> >> among developers not on the inside.
> >
> > This is something that we're all committed to improving. I honestly
> > think it's largely a problem of perception, but it's still a problem.
> >
> >> > do you have *specific* issues related to you (sorry, no "the community
> >> > might feel" or "there have been rumors" or "people can misunderstand")?
> >>
> >> Yes. *I* was annoyed by the recent Deja Dup discussion, and felt that
> >> the developer got short-changed at the end of the day. I was very
> >> annoyed at the "systemd as external dependency" discussion, and the
> >> message that some people following along the "GNOME OS" meme sent to
> >> developers on other platforms.
> >
> > There seems to be some confusion here. Frankly, I have no idea what the
> > design team has to do with either the Deja Dup or systemd discussions. I
> > only ever received positive comments about having GNOME Backup from our
> > designers. As for GNOME OS, though members of our designers are involved
> > in some related work (all in the open: see [1]), I wouldn't say that the
> > team is a driving force behind that initiative (though I'm pretty sure
> > they all think it's a good idea).
> 
> I'm sorry but "GNOME OS" is a very good example of how "interaction
> between design team and GNOME community" is failing :
> - there has been no communication with the community since William
> presentation at latest GUADEC and the associated blog post (
> http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/2010/08/01/shell-yes/ )
> - it seems people working on "GNOME OS" have a different definition of
> what is "an OS", "a distribution", etc.., which has not been discussed
> nor even published somewhere publicly (and if you don't even agree on
> definitions, cooperation is even more difficult).

You are missing my point - GNOME OS is *not* a design initiative. There
is some work going on under the design banner, but GNOME OS did not
originate in GNOME design. Most of the design team don't know any more
about GNOME OS than you do (or if they do, they're not telling me ;) ).

I agree that it would be good to have more communications about GNOME
OS, but that isn't the responsibility of the design team. You'll need to
complain to someone else about this one, I'm afraid.

> - saying "design is done in the open" by just giving the 7
> "whiteboards" list is not what I call "open design". Moreover, some of
> those pages can be extremely incomplete ( see
> -- https://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS/Design/Whiteboards/SoftwareUpdates
> for instance which lacks any rationale and doesn't seem to leverage
> user experience from people on other OS).

Fair point. We need to document more. Don't think anyone disagrees with
that.

> As somebody who has been active for years as a GNOME "packager", it is
> becoming impossible to monitor what design changes are coming and
> bring feedback based on my experience from interacting with users.

You'll need to be more specific. You want to be able to participate in
design work? How did you do this monitoring and feedback previously?

Allan
-- 
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Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Emmanuele Bassi]

On 2011-06-07 at 11:42, Christophe Fergeau wrote:
> So what about some kind of FAQ about the design team so that everyone
> is on the same line, and to make sure everyone has the same level of
> information?

and where should we put this FAQ? on the wiki, which clearly is not
enough, since a page about the design effort called "Design" is not
being found?

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Frederic Crozat]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 2:42 PM, Allan Day  wrote:
> Dave Neary wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
>> > can you please explain to me, in a short sentence, what do you want to
>> > achieve? not how, but precisely what.
>>
>> I have said that already: I want to enable the design team to work
>> productively with the entire GNOME development community.
>>
>> Right now a small number of designers are working effectively with a
>> small number of developers, and I've observed increasing discontent
>> among developers not on the inside.
>
> This is something that we're all committed to improving. I honestly
> think it's largely a problem of perception, but it's still a problem.
>
>> > do you have *specific* issues related to you (sorry, no "the community
>> > might feel" or "there have been rumors" or "people can misunderstand")?
>>
>> Yes. *I* was annoyed by the recent Deja Dup discussion, and felt that
>> the developer got short-changed at the end of the day. I was very
>> annoyed at the "systemd as external dependency" discussion, and the
>> message that some people following along the "GNOME OS" meme sent to
>> developers on other platforms.
>
> There seems to be some confusion here. Frankly, I have no idea what the
> design team has to do with either the Deja Dup or systemd discussions. I
> only ever received positive comments about having GNOME Backup from our
> designers. As for GNOME OS, though members of our designers are involved
> in some related work (all in the open: see [1]), I wouldn't say that the
> team is a driving force behind that initiative (though I'm pretty sure
> they all think it's a good idea).

I'm sorry but "GNOME OS" is a very good example of how "interaction
between design team and GNOME community" is failing :
- there has been no communication with the community since William
presentation at latest GUADEC and the associated blog post (
http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/2010/08/01/shell-yes/ )
- it seems people working on "GNOME OS" have a different definition of
what is "an OS", "a distribution", etc.., which has not been discussed
nor even published somewhere publicly (and if you don't even agree on
definitions, cooperation is even more difficult).
- saying "design is done in the open" by just giving the 7
"whiteboards" list is not what I call "open design". Moreover, some of
those pages can be extremely incomplete ( see
-- https://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS/Design/Whiteboards/SoftwareUpdates
for instance which lacks any rationale and doesn't seem to leverage
user experience from people on other OS).

As somebody who has been active for years as a GNOME "packager", it is
becoming impossible to monitor what design changes are coming and
bring feedback based on my experience from interacting with users.
-- 
Frederic Crozat
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Christophe Fergeau]

2011/6/7 Rodrigo Moya :
> yesterday I asked the same question (where to follow design discussions,
> apart from IRC), and I was told to monitor https://live.gnome.org/Design
> and children pages, which is enough to get a peak of what they are doing
> indeed.

And this only comes up after dozens of emails, and only because you
thought it was worthwhile to mention it here? I think this is the kind
of questions several people are seeking answers for, and most mails
are about "what are you asking for, things are already great!",
wouldn't it save a lot of time to start with this kind of information
that few people seem to know about?
I think a good first step to solve the the misconceptions about the
design team would be to explicitly write down on some wiki page how it
works, how to interact with it,... so that we can point people at this
page when they seem not to understand these interactions.
Fwiw, when I've also been told about some public IRC meetings every
week where people can come and ask design questions (that was my
understanding, correct me if that's a wrong interpretation of what I
was told), and I don't think this has been mentioned a lot during this
thread (some things unfortunately need to be repeated over and over to
get into people's mind)
So what about some kind of FAQ about the design team so that everyone
is on the same line, and to make sure everyone has the same level of
information? It seems there are some things about the design team that
are implicitly assumed as known, and when people don't know these
implicit things, we end up with miscommunication and information
failure.

Cheers,

Christophe
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Rodrigo Moya]

On Tue, 2011-06-07 at 07:24 +1200, John Stowers wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 13:42 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
> > Dave Neary wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > 
> > > So, in short, I would like the design team to act like the gnome-utils 
> > > team.
> > 
> > GNOME design has all the equivalent facilities [1, 2, 3] excluding the
> > mailing list.
> > 
> > Again, I agree (and have never disagreed) that we need to do better. The
> > only question has been around the appropriateness of a mailing list.
> 
> Does this mean an IRC log/bot is back off the table?
> 
> I would be happy to read such logs not for accountability but because
> it allows one to learn how the design process operates (like how reading
> code can be useful as a programmer). It can also be more convenient for
> people in stupid timezones (me).
> 
yesterday I asked the same question (where to follow design discussions,
apart from IRC), and I was told to monitor https://live.gnome.org/Design
and children pages, which is enough to get a peak of what they are doing
indeed.

Also, while I'm not a designer, yesterday I wanted to propose some new
stuff, and it was easy to get the design team to find a solution for
proposals (https://live.gnome.org/Design/Proposals ), so from my (short)
experience they seem to be open to listen to new ideas.

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

Xan Lopez wrote:
> I think what is really doing damage to the community is this kind of
> hyperbolic accusation around the design team that seems to be in vogue
> lately, to be honest.

My apologies.

This is very far from tone and target from when I first got involved in
this thread (and started this discussion). I just asked whether the
design team were considering a mailing list. I have been frustrated
because much of the reaction I have seen here & on IRC has given me the
impression that some key people just don't recognise there's a problem
or want to change.


One thing has been made clear, though - and I think Allan agrees with me
on this - there's confusion about who is in the design team, who speaks
for them, and what they do.

Among the many conflations that are happening, we have developers
talking as if they're speaking for the designers, we have members of the
design team saying things that are being interpreted as "design
decisions" when they're just personal opinions, we have release team
positions about Core & Apps which seem, on the surface, to be related to
design concerns like a unified user experience and deep integration with
the system, and we have no comon understanding (as you point out) of the
scope & authority of the design team.

I've been pushing for some change because I think that a lot of these
issues can be resolved by being very clear about the inner workings of
the design team, the developers working most closely with them, and the
power which has been bestowed on them by those developers.


Once again, I apologise for letting frustration get the better of me. I
know Allan is working on evolving the way the design team works to bring
some more transparency of operation, and I hope that this thread hasn't
made it harder for him to bring about positive change.


Dave.


-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dne...@gnome.org
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Olav Vitters]

On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 11:37:17PM +0200, Johannes Schmid wrote:
> > The confusion was cleared up pretty quickly once we moved off
> > desktop-devel-list.
> 
> May I ask why these things move off desktop-devel-list? Maybe I missed
> the mail that said that discussion is taking place elsewhere but I don't
> think there was one.

Because:
1) the answer was relevant to the question he asked a question on
another mailing list and I explained there
2) desktop-devel-list typically results in huge threads where the answer
is lost in a lot of other messages (IIRC I tried to explain the Core
requirements in one of the initial messages on d-d-l)
3) there will be 'official' feedback written in such a way nobody can
re-interpret things, but (correctly) expected at that time that it would
take a lot of time and didn't want to leave this lingering
-- 
Regards,
Olav
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Johannes Schmid]

Hi Olav!

> The confusion was cleared up pretty quickly once we moved off
> desktop-devel-list.

May I ask why these things move off desktop-devel-list? Maybe I missed
the mail that said that discussion is taking place elsewhere but I don't
think there was one.

Regards,
Johannes


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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[John Stowers]

On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 13:42 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
> Dave Neary wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > 
> > So, in short, I would like the design team to act like the gnome-utils team.
> 
> GNOME design has all the equivalent facilities [1, 2, 3] excluding the
> mailing list.
> 
> Again, I agree (and have never disagreed) that we need to do better. The
> only question has been around the appropriateness of a mailing list.

Does this mean an IRC log/bot is back off the table?

I would be happy to read such logs not for accountability but because
it allows one to learn how the design process operates (like how reading
code can be useful as a programmer). It can also be more convenient for
people in stupid timezones (me).

John

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Sriram Ramkrishna]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 7:59 AM, Joanmarie Diggs  wrote:

> Hey Allan.
>
> > > But past interactions have (in my
> > > personal experience) been negative.
> >
> > Can you elaborate?
>
> Yes, but I was (and am) somewhat hesitant to because I honestly don't
> wish to stir pots. I'd rather just move forward in a positive direction.
> And perhaps you read my mind in that regard since you then pinged me via
> IRC. (Thanks!)
>
> So I think we've clarified some areas of difficulty and gotten more on
> the same page about what are -- and are not -- "design team interaction
> issues." Hopefully we can continue this dialog and get our teams working
> more closely together.
>
> Thanks so much for your time today! Take care.
>


Feel free to send  Allan private mail discussing it.  You don't have to make
it a public discussion.  It's more important that they get the feedback.
I'd be hesitant as well.  Allan doesn't bite. :-)

sri
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Xan Lopez]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 10:59 AM, Dave Neary  wrote:
> To sum it all up, I believe the current dynamic of the design team is doing 
> damage to GNOME
> as a community.

I think what is really doing damage to the community is this kind of
hyperbolic accusation around the design team that seems to be in vogue
lately, to be honest. Not burning bridges with existing or potential
contributors is surely a noble goal, but not alienating your core
developers telling them that the fruit of their passion is damaging
the community certainly should be a no-brainer?

And my 2 cents: if GNOME 3.0 is the kind of result we get from this
"damage" I want more of it, not less.

> While the design team shouldn't have to "involved everyone" (and that's
> not what I'm asking for), they *should* involved everyone affected by
> design team decisions - and not to communicate the decisions, but to be
> sure that they've got the right question. And in the same way as a
> module maintainer can ask the release team to make decisions about the
> module, I'd like to see maintainers be able to approach the design team
> for help with their module.

I maintain a module and I haven't had any particular problem in
approaching the design team in the past when I felt the need to do so.

There's a difficult debate to be had about what powers a design team
can have in an environment like GNOME where nobody can force anybody
to do anything, and I'm sure having people concerned with transparency
and accountability will prove to be useful. What I don't think is
useful is to wildly exaggerate the current situation as some kind of
nightmare-ish design-driven gulag and blame all real and perceived
problems on a bunch of people meeting on an IRC channel who in the end
have no more power than the suggestions they can make to the module
developers.

It's fine to feel that the "those who show up and do the work get to
decide" cavalier attitude some gnome people have is not very fair, but
I think this problem is neither new nor constrained to design. We have
worked like this for decades, we have shipped our best and worst
working like that. If you want to improve things be my guest, but
let's start by not alienating the people that "show up and do the
work" because we need them the most.

Xan
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Lapo Calamandrei]

Hi Dave,

2011/6/6 Dave Neary :
> Hi,
>
> Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
>> can you please explain to me, in a short sentence, what do you want to
>> achieve? not how, but precisely what.
>
> I have said that already: I want to enable the design team to work
> productively with the entire GNOME development community.
>
> Right now a small number of designers are working effectively with a
> small number of developers, and I've observed increasing discontent
> among developers not on the inside.
>
>> Dave, Johannes: do you want to participate in the design decisions?
>
> No - I think that designers should be making design decisions, after
> collaborating with the developers affected.
>
>> do you want some history and/or accountability?
>
> Yes. But this is a side-effect, rather than a primary goal.
>
>> do you have *specific* issues related to you (sorry, no "the community
>> might feel" or "there have been rumors" or "people can misunderstand")?
>
> Yes. *I* was annoyed by the recent Deja Dup discussion, and felt that
> the developer got short-changed at the end of the day. I was very
> annoyed at the "systemd as external dependency" discussion, and the
> message that some people following along the "GNOME OS" meme sent to
> developers on other platforms. I feel that the current operation of the
> design team is hurting our relationship with Canonical, who also have
> designers who have, I believe, failed to influence design discussions in
> the same measure as the "core" members of the design team like Lapo,
> Allan, Jon. I think the lack of documentation of the core design team
> makes it harder for new designers to get involved. To sum it all up, I
> believe the current dynamic of the design team is doing damage to GNOME
> as a community.
>
Would you elaborate this? Adding some facts please?
Unfortunatelly IRC is the only tool which work fo us atm (since google
pulled wave which was nice), we're very open and responsive on the
channel, I listen to every suggestion I get and answer any question,
just hang on the channel and see. Also the repositories we are using
are open and everybody can participate. I respect and esteem Matthew
Paul Thomas which is the only canonical designer I ever interacted
with on the channel and I think I have zero issues with him, while I'd
like to see him more activelly involved. If the canonical designers
feel being pushed away in the design process they should just voice
their opinions on the channel as everybody else does, their opinions
and suggestion would be appreciated.
Anyway the canonical guys are on our channel all the time, why do I
learn from you we are hurting the relationship with canonical?

[SNIP]
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Joanmarie Diggs]

Hey Allan.

> > But past interactions have (in my
> > personal experience) been negative. 
> 
> Can you elaborate?

Yes, but I was (and am) somewhat hesitant to because I honestly don't
wish to stir pots. I'd rather just move forward in a positive direction.
And perhaps you read my mind in that regard since you then pinged me via
IRC. (Thanks!)

So I think we've clarified some areas of difficulty and gotten more on
the same page about what are -- and are not -- "design team interaction
issues." Hopefully we can continue this dialog and get our teams working
more closely together.

Thanks so much for your time today! Take care.
--joanie

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Allan Day]

Johannes Schmid wrote:
> Hi Allan!
> 
> >> Yes. *I* was annoyed by the recent Deja Dup discussion, and felt that
> >> the developer got short-changed at the end of the day. I was very
> >> annoyed at the "systemd as external dependency" discussion, and the
> >> message that some people following along the "GNOME OS" meme sent to
> >> developers on other platforms.
> >
> > There seems to be some confusion here. Frankly, I have no idea what the
> > design team has to do with either the Deja Dup or systemd discussions. I
> > only ever received positive comments about having GNOME Backup from our
> > designers. As for GNOME OS, though members of our designers are involved
> > in some related work (all in the open: see [1]), I wouldn't say that the
> > team is a driving force behind that initiative (though I'm pretty sure
> > they all think it's a good idea).
> >
> > It feels like our design team is being blamed for every controversial
> > decision or discussion here. It might come as a shock to some, but we're
> > generally just busy designing UI. :)
> 
> Actually yes, it would be a bit unfair to blame the design-team (or only
> the design-team) here. But at least from what I remember from the
> discussion about Deja-Dup it was not a pleasant experience for somebody
> wanting to integrate with GNOME. The points I remember:
> 
> * GNOME designers decide how that feature should look - not you as a
> maintainer

We'd want to work with the maintainer to develop the design. That's the
way it usually happens.

> * You need to give up your brand "Deja Dup" if you want to be part of GNOME
> * Deja-Dup isn't allowed to exist in parallel as a application
> (+ a lot of technical stuff about control-center and external capplets)

I only ever raised that as a potential issue (I thought I'd been quite
explicit about that).

This has nothing to do with design. They were issues that I raised
independently, and there was never any discussion about them within the
design team. I actually felt that I was operating within a marketing
role, not design.

So you're doing it again - picking up on something and assuming it is
coming from the design team when it's not.

> I am pretty sure that things were not entirely meant that way but if you
> read the discussion on d-d-l the impression stays pretty much.

If that's the impression you got then I apologise - it was never the
intent.

> I guess Dave used the systemd discussion as a example for a possible bad
> attitude in GNOME but it is clearly unrelated from design things.

Right.

Allan
-- 
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Olav Vitters]

On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 03:44:06PM +0200, Johannes Schmid wrote:
> * You need to give up your brand "Deja Dup" if you want to be part of GNOME
> * Deja-Dup isn't allowed to exist in parallel as a application

Those requirements are only due to the proposed switch from GNOME Apps
suite to GNOME Core, as per the maintainers proposal. The primary
difference between Core and Apps being than Apps is very open, Core is
more restricted.

To be explicit: Deja Dup is called Deja Dup in GNOME Apps suite.

The confusion was cleared up pretty quickly once we moved off
desktop-devel-list.

We've discussed the Core vs Apps since in release-team but we still
haven't finished all the features discussions, so although you can read
the minutes, we haven't done any announcements (on purpose as we want to
have someone write the announcements in a clear way -- minutes tend to
get misinterpreted).
-- 
Regards,
Olav
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Johannes Schmid]

Hi Allan!

>> Yes. *I* was annoyed by the recent Deja Dup discussion, and felt that
>> the developer got short-changed at the end of the day. I was very
>> annoyed at the "systemd as external dependency" discussion, and the
>> message that some people following along the "GNOME OS" meme sent to
>> developers on other platforms.
>
> There seems to be some confusion here. Frankly, I have no idea what the
> design team has to do with either the Deja Dup or systemd discussions. I
> only ever received positive comments about having GNOME Backup from our
> designers. As for GNOME OS, though members of our designers are involved
> in some related work (all in the open: see [1]), I wouldn't say that the
> team is a driving force behind that initiative (though I'm pretty sure
> they all think it's a good idea).
>
> It feels like our design team is being blamed for every controversial
> decision or discussion here. It might come as a shock to some, but we're
> generally just busy designing UI. :)

Actually yes, it would be a bit unfair to blame the design-team (or only
the design-team) here. But at least from what I remember from the
discussion about Deja-Dup it was not a pleasant experience for somebody
wanting to integrate with GNOME. The points I remember:

* GNOME designers decide how that feature should look - not you as a
maintainer
* You need to give up your brand "Deja Dup" if you want to be part of GNOME
* Deja-Dup isn't allowed to exist in parallel as a application
(+ a lot of technical stuff about control-center and external capplets)

I am pretty sure that things were not entirely meant that way but if you
read the discussion on d-d-l the impression stays pretty much.

I guess Dave used the systemd discussion as a example for a possible bad
attitude in GNOME but it is clearly unrelated from design things.

Regards,
Johannes

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Allan Day]

Hi Joanie,

Joanmarie Diggs wrote:
> Hey all.
> 
> I was planning on staying out of this one, conflict-avoidant creature
> that I tend to be. But I'm with Dave:
> 
> > To sum it all up, I
> > believe the current dynamic of the design team is doing damage to GNOME
> > as a community.
> 
> I would love to find ways for the design team and the accessibility team
> to work better together. Surely we must have some common ground, and
> there has to be some happy medium between ATs that are visually pleasing
> and look like they belong within GNOME 3 and yet still address the needs
> of users with disabilities. The designers bring the former to the table,
> I think our team brings the latter.

I don't think any of our design crew would disagree with that.

> But past interactions have (in my
> personal experience) been negative. 

Can you elaborate?

> Part of me believes that I should just suck it up and get thicker skin.
> But most of me concludes that contributing to GNOME is something I
> (supposedly) do "for fun." So seeing some way to improve this situation
> would be a great step forward I think.
> 
> FWIW.
> --joanie

Allan
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Allan Day]

Dave Neary wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> > can you please explain to me, in a short sentence, what do you want to
> > achieve? not how, but precisely what.
> 
> I have said that already: I want to enable the design team to work
> productively with the entire GNOME development community.
> 
> Right now a small number of designers are working effectively with a
> small number of developers, and I've observed increasing discontent
> among developers not on the inside.

This is something that we're all committed to improving. I honestly
think it's largely a problem of perception, but it's still a problem.

> > do you have *specific* issues related to you (sorry, no "the community
> > might feel" or "there have been rumors" or "people can misunderstand")?
> 
> Yes. *I* was annoyed by the recent Deja Dup discussion, and felt that
> the developer got short-changed at the end of the day. I was very
> annoyed at the "systemd as external dependency" discussion, and the
> message that some people following along the "GNOME OS" meme sent to
> developers on other platforms. 

There seems to be some confusion here. Frankly, I have no idea what the
design team has to do with either the Deja Dup or systemd discussions. I
only ever received positive comments about having GNOME Backup from our
designers. As for GNOME OS, though members of our designers are involved
in some related work (all in the open: see [1]), I wouldn't say that the
team is a driving force behind that initiative (though I'm pretty sure
they all think it's a good idea).

It feels like our design team is being blamed for every controversial
decision or discussion here. It might come as a shock to some, but we're
generally just busy designing UI. :)

> I feel that the current operation of the
> design team is hurting our relationship with Canonical, who also have
> designers who have, I believe, failed to influence design discussions in
> the same measure as the "core" members of the design team like Lapo,
> Allan, Jon.

The only Canonical designer that I have ever known to try and get
involved in GNOME design was Calum Pringle. I spent a good deal of time
bringing him up to speed, as did Jimmac, but he disappeared off the
scene pretty quickly. My impression was that he was pulled away to work
on Unity.

> I think the lack of documentation of the core design team
> makes it harder for new designers to get involved. To sum it all up, I
> believe the current dynamic of the design team is doing damage to GNOME
> as a community.
> 
> And since I care about GNOME as a project and as a community, I was
> hoping to help change things to address that.

Again, I think this is more perception than reality (which is still a
problem). There is already a pretty decent amount of documentation,
though some kind of archived records of progress and decisions would
certainly help.

The challenges that GNOME design faces are the same as any other part of
GNOME. Writing documentation and communicating your activities is always
difficult when you're busy and focused on other things. This isn't to
say that we don't need to do better, of course.

> > do you want to manage expectations? is this some community management
> > direction?
> 
> Is this an effort to say that it's unimportant? For me, since this is a
> community issue, and I would like to see us manage it, that makes it
> "some community management thing", yes.
> 
> > because I honestly don't understand what's the point of all this.
> > 
> > if we did a pass of sed and changed gnome-design team to gnome-utils
> > maintainers, would you expect the gnome-utils maintainers to use
> > a mailing list and document every decisions made in the project and
> > involve everyone (and yes: it's a serious question)?
> 
> First: http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-utils-list - so, in
> short, if there's anything controversial in gnome-dictionary, I know
> where to get you.
> 
> Second: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeUtils - so I know who the right
> person to talk to is/who makes final decisions.
> 
> Third: http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-utils/log/ - documents every
> decision that was made (in principle).
> 
> So, in short, I would like the design team to act like the gnome-utils team.

GNOME design has all the equivalent facilities [1, 2, 3] excluding the
mailing list.

Again, I agree (and have never disagreed) that we need to do better. The
only question has been around the appropriateness of a mailing list.

Allan

[1] https://live.gnome.org/GnomeOS/Design/Whiteboards
[2] https://live.gnome.org/Design/
[3] http://gitorious.org/gnome-design
[4] http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-design/
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Joanmarie Diggs]

Hey all.

I was planning on staying out of this one, conflict-avoidant creature
that I tend to be. But I'm with Dave:

> To sum it all up, I
> believe the current dynamic of the design team is doing damage to GNOME
> as a community.

I would love to find ways for the design team and the accessibility team
to work better together. Surely we must have some common ground, and
there has to be some happy medium between ATs that are visually pleasing
and look like they belong within GNOME 3 and yet still address the needs
of users with disabilities. The designers bring the former to the table,
I think our team brings the latter. But past interactions have (in my
personal experience) been negative. 

Part of me believes that I should just suck it up and get thicker skin.
But most of me concludes that contributing to GNOME is something I
(supposedly) do "for fun." So seeing some way to improve this situation
would be a great step forward I think.

FWIW.
--joanie

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Juanjo Marín]

- Mensaje original -
> De: Dave Neary 
> Para: Emmanuele Bassi 
> CC: desktop-devel-list@gnome.org
> Enviado: lunes 6 de junio de 2011 10:59
> Asunto: Re: On the Interaction with the design team
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
>>  can you please explain to me, in a short sentence, what do you want to
>>  achieve? not how, but precisely what.
> 
> I have said that already: I want to enable the design team to work
> productively with the entire GNOME development community.
> 
> Right now a small number of designers are working effectively with a
> small number of developers, and I've observed increasing discontent
> among developers not on the inside.
> 
>>  Dave, Johannes: do you want to participate in the design decisions?
> 
> No - I think that designers should be making design decisions, after
> collaborating with the developers affected.
> 



I agree with Dave. It is true that the design team has worked for GNOME 3.0, 
but I think
there is room for improvement, specially to help people to figure out how to 
deal with
usability problems in GNOME and trying to be more informative ( for DIY 
solutions ) and 
even easier to approach for developers, even those who are don't see any 
usabiliy problems on 
his apps ;).

Just my 2 cents,


  -- Juanjo Marin
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> can you please explain to me, in a short sentence, what do you want to
> achieve? not how, but precisely what.

I have said that already: I want to enable the design team to work
productively with the entire GNOME development community.

Right now a small number of designers are working effectively with a
small number of developers, and I've observed increasing discontent
among developers not on the inside.

> Dave, Johannes: do you want to participate in the design decisions?

No - I think that designers should be making design decisions, after
collaborating with the developers affected.

> do you want some history and/or accountability?

Yes. But this is a side-effect, rather than a primary goal.

> do you have *specific* issues related to you (sorry, no "the community
> might feel" or "there have been rumors" or "people can misunderstand")?

Yes. *I* was annoyed by the recent Deja Dup discussion, and felt that
the developer got short-changed at the end of the day. I was very
annoyed at the "systemd as external dependency" discussion, and the
message that some people following along the "GNOME OS" meme sent to
developers on other platforms. I feel that the current operation of the
design team is hurting our relationship with Canonical, who also have
designers who have, I believe, failed to influence design discussions in
the same measure as the "core" members of the design team like Lapo,
Allan, Jon. I think the lack of documentation of the core design team
makes it harder for new designers to get involved. To sum it all up, I
believe the current dynamic of the design team is doing damage to GNOME
as a community.

And since I care about GNOME as a project and as a community, I was
hoping to help change things to address that.

> do you want to manage expectations? is this some community management
> direction?

Is this an effort to say that it's unimportant? For me, since this is a
community issue, and I would like to see us manage it, that makes it
"some community management thing", yes.

> because I honestly don't understand what's the point of all this.
> 
> if we did a pass of sed and changed gnome-design team to gnome-utils
> maintainers, would you expect the gnome-utils maintainers to use
> a mailing list and document every decisions made in the project and
> involve everyone (and yes: it's a serious question)?

First: http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-utils-list - so, in
short, if there's anything controversial in gnome-dictionary, I know
where to get you.

Second: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeUtils - so I know who the right
person to talk to is/who makes final decisions.

Third: http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-utils/log/ - documents every
decision that was made (in principle).

So, in short, I would like the design team to act like the gnome-utils team.

There is one other parameter which doesn't map exactly onto gnome-utils:
design doesn't produce code, so designers need to work with developers
to make their designs happen. In this sense, it's more like the release
team - who make decisions, but the things they decide on are proposed
and discussed in a project-wide public forum.

While the design team shouldn't have to "involved everyone" (and that's
not what I'm asking for), they *should* involved everyone affected by
design team decisions - and not to communicate the decisions, but to be
sure that they've got the right question. And in the same way as a
module maintainer can ask the release team to make decisions about the
module, I'd like to see maintainers be able to approach the design team
for help with their module.

Has this cleared things up for you?

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dne...@gnome.org
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Johannes Schmid]

Hi!

> can you please explain to me, in a short sentence, what do you want to
> achieve? not how, but precisely what.

Have a good way to get in touch with the design team/other core gnome
teams that is not real-time and be able to participate in discussions
about desktop-wide design topics.

> Dave, Johannes: do you want to participate in the design decisions?

For desktop-wide design decision, e.g. what is discussed as "Proposed
features" on d-d-l: yes.

> do you want some history and/or accountability?

History isn't really that much of interest to me as it is over anyway.
Accountability is only interesting if someone wants to tell me that he
is right on a design and many people disagree. There should be some
record available of why that design was choosen and why it *is* better.

> do you have *specific* issues related to you (sorry, no "the community
> might feel" or "there have been rumors" or "people can misunderstand")?

See the links in my other mail.

> do you want to manage expectations? is this some community management
> direction?

I don't understand that question, sorry.

> if we did a pass of sed and changed gnome-design team to gnome-utils
> maintainers, would you expect the gnome-utils maintainers to use
> a mailing list and document every decisions made in the project and
> involve everyone (and yes: it's a serious question)?

No! But for some central desktop design decisions it would be nice to
have at least some way to get involved that is not IRC. For many other
projects I can join the mailing list, follow it and comment on things.
But for example on gnome-shell-list I didn't have the impression that
developers are actually participating on the discussion on the mailing
list or use it for development but instead just use IRC (ok, and
bugzilla which isn't a good platform for discussions either).

Regards,
Johannes

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Emmanuele Bassi]

hi;

sorry, I'm attaching this to the latest email on the thread, but it's
really a request to both Johannes and Dave.

can you please explain to me, in a short sentence, what do you want to
achieve? not how, but precisely what.

I've seen people going round in circles and I still haven't understood
what is the endgame of this discussion.

Dave, Johannes: do you want to participate in the design decisions?

do you want some history and/or accountability?

do you have *specific* issues related to you (sorry, no "the community
might feel" or "there have been rumors" or "people can misunderstand")?

do you want to manage expectations? is this some community management
direction?

because I honestly don't understand what's the point of all this.

if we did a pass of sed and changed gnome-design team to gnome-utils
maintainers, would you expect the gnome-utils maintainers to use
a mailing list and document every decisions made in the project and
involve everyone (and yes: it's a serious question)?

ciao,
 Emmanuele, who's trying to understand.

-- 
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Øyvind Kolås]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Shaun McCance  wrote:
> Here are two reasons I could see for people wanting their IRC
> conversations to be unlogged, along with my solution:
>
> * Sharing sensitive information.
> - Don't do that on IRC. Use a private chat if you have to.
>  But if it's really sensitive, you should know that even
>  a private IRC chat is totally unsecure.
>
> * Being a total asshat.
> - Stop being a total asshat.

A brainstorming session that is logged and distributed and archived is
likely to be more constrained and have a smaller scope of ideas than
one that is not; this is about reducing the barrier of entry and
potential embarassment. Some people are comfortable with doing any
discussion on the record or approach any topic as if they were on the
record in a panel at a conference; others with valuable opinions might
be more shy.

Another reason not to log _all_ the time, is the amount of
information, as well as potential noise/social banter that is less
likely to occur while logging is enabled. This would likely make it
more feasible to skim these daily logs than both high traffic mailing
lists full of noise/opinions; as well as more feasible than reading
the full backlog of high volume irc channels.

/Øyvind K.
-- 
«The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed»
                                                 -- William Gibson
http://pippin.gimp.org/                            http://ffii.org/
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Shaun McCance]

On Fri, 2011-06-03 at 13:05 +, Øyvind Kolås wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 11:38 AM, Sam Thursfield  wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Dave Neary  wrote:
> >> On 06/02/11 02:02, Robert Ancell wrote:
> >>>
> >>> A huge +1 on this.  IRC is much more productive, but it's crucial that
> >>> it's logged for people who can't attend.  (I'm always hitting this
> >> I really don't think IRC logs are a good way of communicating anything. 
> >> It's
> >> better than unlogged, but really only marginally.
> >
> > this is an excellent point, you've just made me reconsider my thoughts
> > on IRC logging.
> 
> Logging all communication of spontaneous conversation and interactions
> in IRC has the potential of destroying the culture and freedom to make
> and share mistakes that is essential when collaboratively designing.

I don't get it. Why are you afraid of having mistakes logged?
I make mistakes all the time. I make them on IRC, I make them
in person, and I make them on mailing lists. My mistakes are
a matter of public record.

Here are two reasons I could see for people wanting their IRC
conversations to be unlogged, along with my solution:

* Sharing sensitive information.
- Don't do that on IRC. Use a private chat if you have to.
  But if it's really sensitive, you should know that even
  a private IRC chat is totally unsecure.

* Being a total asshat.
- Stop being a total asshat.

--
Shaun


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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Johannes Schmid]

Hi!

>   This discussion reminds me of the one we had about switching to DVCS
> some years back. At that time, most of the core developers wanted to
> use git but most of the rest were opposed to that. While I don't claim
> this situation is the same, this discussion is also about which tools
> to use/not use and when it comes to that, IMO the people doing the
> actual world should be the ones deciding. The rest should simply
> 'adapt'.

No, this is a different discussion. Back then we were discussing a tool
that could be easily (or maybe not that easily but with some learning)
adapted by anybody. 

Requesting the use of real-time communication is different as it isn't
possible to join there for everyone even if they are willing because
they might simply need some sleep.

If you remember the DVCS discussion, there were some technical problems
but some people stood up to solve them (thanks Owen) and a survey was
held that clearly showed that most people actually affected agreed.

And overall, we are not discussing if IRC is bad or good or if mailing
lists are good or bad but we are searching for a solution everybody can
participate that is acceptable by those people doing most of the work.

Regards,
Johannes



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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

Allan Day wrote:
> Dave Neary wrote:
>> There is no transparency about what the design team is, who has
>> what skills, etc.
>>
>> Many stakeholders and developers who have design problems do not have
>> any relationship with the design team at all.
>>
>> This is the problem I think we need to solve.
> 
> We're a small team - we can't solve every design problem in GNOME all at
> once. :) (Just saying.)

Are you suggesting that's also a problem we need to solve? :)

I could about 10 people with design skills who are contributing, or have
contributed, to GNOME:
Allan Day, Matthew Thomas, Calum Pringle, Mairin Duffy, Garrett LeSage,
Jakub Steiner, Felippe Contreras, Lapo Calamandrei, Jeremy Perry, Hylke
Bons, David Siegel, Andreas Nilsson, Evangeline McGlynn, and Jon McCann

and I'm certainly missing some (I left Ivanka off because she's on
honeymoon, and I debated adding Nick Richards from Intel to the list
too, since I'm not sure). Maybe the absence of a central place to talk
(like, say, a list of some sort) is keeping the size of the design team
down?

> Design in the open is a new challenge, of course...

Do you think so? I'm not so sure. Every time I hear someone say "this is
a new problem, the rules don't apply", I feel like people might be
ignoring the past.

>> We do need to create an environment where designers can feel free to
>> brainstorm, create, and design. We also need a way to have a feedback
>> cycle with developers.
> 
> Feedback is a separate problem to enabling participation, no?

Really? Isn't that semantics? Aren't they both different ways of saying
"creating a dialog between developer and designer"? How do you define
feedback, and how do you define participation? I don't understand why
one would be different from the other.

>> The compromise solution which I proposed last year (off-list), and which
>> a number of people did not think was a good idea, was to have a mailing
>> list whose membership was moderated. Archives would be public, but only
>> designers & some key developers would be members - all other email to
>> the list would be moderated.
>>
>> This addresses part of your concern - the argumentative, confrontational
>> nature of GNOME mailing lists - while also allowing an area where people
>> outside the design team can see who is who, who does what, and get a
>> feel for the culture of the team.
> 
> A moderated list might be a good way of allowing people to make contact
> with our designers (not a massive problem, but it's a problem). It might
> also be useful for passing the odd message around. I'm not convinced
> that a list would provide a good way to enable people to participate
> more easily, however - and isn't that the most important requirement?
> 
> So I'm not thoroughly opposed to your idea, but I'm not massively
> enthusiastic about it either. But it's not me you've got to convince -
> it's the others you expect to use this list. There's no point in setting
> up a design list if there aren't any designers subscribed to it.

Let me be clear (I just saw some IRC chatter that leads me to believe
that I wasn't): my proposal was an idea, a compromise between open list
and no list.

The main complaint of designers (common since Dan Winship's famous
slab-related "Stop energy/bike shed" rant 5 years ago:
http://lwn.net/Articles/171157/) has always been that it's impossible to
do design work on a public mailing list because there's too much noise,
some people get bogged down in details while you're still working on
over-arching design principles, etc.

If the moderated (note: not closed, moderated) nature of the list is a
problem, do away with it & have an open gnome-design list.

When Seth Nickell designed and coded Yarrr a few years ago, it was a
recognition that design work includes three types of communication:
real-time chat, archived discussions and versioned documents. As others
have said, I think the design team needs all 3 too. However you choose
to have your archived discussions is up to you, but a mailing list seems
to me the best option available.

But you tell me - if I'm trying to solve the wrong problem here, what
*is* the problem? Or do you think that there isn't one?

> And really: is writing a message to ddl the best way to make this
> happen?

Well, maybe :) At least we're having an open discussion. Hopefully we
can generate an idea or two which will help.

> Well, designers don't make changes to GNOME on their own. ;)

This is exactly right.

The dangerous scenario here is if the design team continues to grow in
scope, but does not convince more developers to buy into their vision.
What happens then is either the design team changes the way they work to
co-exist with the developers who disagree with them, or rely on the
developers who agree with them to make the changes, even in modules
where they have traditionally not been maintainers. This has already
happened in a few control-center related modules, as the concerns of
traditional maintainers 

Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)]

Hi,
On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 12:55 PM, Dave Neary  wrote:
> I really don't think IRC logs are a good way of communicating anything. It's
> better than unlogged, but really only marginally.

  This discussion reminds me of the one we had about switching to DVCS
some years back. At that time, most of the core developers wanted to
use git but most of the rest were opposed to that. While I don't claim
this situation is the same, this discussion is also about which tools
to use/not use and when it comes to that, IMO the people doing the
actual world should be the ones deciding. The rest should simply
'adapt'.

-- 
Regards,

Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)
FSF member#5124
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Øyvind Kolås]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 11:38 AM, Sam Thursfield  wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Dave Neary  wrote:
>> On 06/02/11 02:02, Robert Ancell wrote:
>>>
>>> A huge +1 on this.  IRC is much more productive, but it's crucial that
>>> it's logged for people who can't attend.  (I'm always hitting this
>> I really don't think IRC logs are a good way of communicating anything. It's
>> better than unlogged, but really only marginally.
>
> this is an excellent point, you've just made me reconsider my thoughts
> on IRC logging.

Logging all communication of spontaneous conversation and interactions
in IRC has the potential of destroying the culture and freedom to make
and share mistakes that is essential when collaboratively designing.
One possible idea is to have a bot log at specific pre-determined
intervals and announce that logging. For instance conversations
between 17:00 and 18:00 UTC are automatically logged, and weekly or
bi-weekly meetings could be made to coincide with this logging.

Doing it in this manner would provide both on-record periods that can
be reviewed and used for bringing up issues,. as well as off-record
time for freer brainstorming and other more freeform activities. With
such times stated in topic/on a website with the logs, these times
could be the core times one expects many of the active people to be
present as well as for more peripheral people to bring up issues.

/Øyvind K.
-- 
«The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed»
                                                 -- William Gibson
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Robert Ancell]

On 3 June 2011 19:55, Dave Neary  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 06/02/11 02:02, Robert Ancell wrote:
>>
>> A huge +1 on this.  IRC is much more productive, but it's crucial that
>> it's logged for people who can't attend.  (I'm always hitting this
>> problem in GNOME trying to work out what happened while I was sleeping
>> in Australia).
>> This works really well in Ubuntu where everything is automatically
>> logged: http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/
>
> Out of interest, how long after an IRC conversation that concerns you do you
> typically find out about it? Do you read the entire IRC log of the relevant
> channels every morning?
>
> How often do you actually go looking in the logs?

It's either something that happened in the last day or two, or
something much later that I want to check for accuracy.

I don't read entire logs, though I do review meetings that occur in
the logs from time to time.  I'd say I look up something in the Ubuntu
logs a few times per month.

> I really don't think IRC logs are a good way of communicating anything. It's
> better than unlogged, but really only marginally.

Sure, and they shouldn't be used as a replacement for communicating
any formal information.

What I miss in GNOME is not being able to read what happened in a
meeting, or reading up the context of a decision.  People copy
snippets from IRC conversations into bug reports, and I want to read
more about the decisions that were made.  Also being out of sync with
a lot of people means I can't just ask someone a question the next
day, and it would be nice to just be able to check it in the logs.
You potentially miss out a lot if your not in a common timezone, or a
part time contributor (e.g. the design process).
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Sam Thursfield]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Dave Neary  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 06/02/11 02:02, Robert Ancell wrote:
>>
>> A huge +1 on this.  IRC is much more productive, but it's crucial that
>> it's logged for people who can't attend.  (I'm always hitting this
>> problem in GNOME trying to work out what happened while I was sleeping
>> in Australia).
>> This works really well in Ubuntu where everything is automatically
>> logged: http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/
>
> Out of interest, how long after an IRC conversation that concerns you do you
> typically find out about it? Do you read the entire IRC log of the relevant
> channels every morning?
>
> How often do you actually go looking in the logs?
>
> I really don't think IRC logs are a good way of communicating anything. It's
> better than unlogged, but really only marginally.

this is an excellent point, you've just made me reconsider my thoughts
on IRC logging.

One thing that does work is the gtk+ team meeting minutes. It would be
great if once an important discussion has occured in #gnome-design,
someone could provide 'digests' of these to a mailing list. Or, if the
discussions are spread out over a longer time period, a two-line
summary could be posted to a wiki when something important is decided.

I recognise that's a non-trivial amount of extra work.

Sam
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

On 06/02/11 02:02, Robert Ancell wrote:

A huge +1 on this.  IRC is much more productive, but it's crucial that
it's logged for people who can't attend.  (I'm always hitting this
problem in GNOME trying to work out what happened while I was sleeping
in Australia).
This works really well in Ubuntu where everything is automatically
logged: http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/


Out of interest, how long after an IRC conversation that concerns you do 
you typically find out about it? Do you read the entire IRC log of the 
relevant channels every morning?


How often do you actually go looking in the logs?

I really don't think IRC logs are a good way of communicating anything. 
It's better than unlogged, but really only marginally.


Cheers,
Dave.

--
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GNOME Foundation member
dne...@gnome.org
Jabber: nea...@gmail.com
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Calum Benson]

On 1 Jun 2011, at 22:19, Olav Vitters wrote:

> A lot of these requests seem to conflict. So suggest before asking for
> something to really think what the requirements are for doing design.
> 
> I'm thinking of something where:
> * you can come with some need
> * people can post screenshots, visible immediately
> * comments can be given immediately, visible immediately
> * based on comments:
>* new screenshots, more comments, repeat
> * everything is logged
> * system can close discussion
> * system shows newest screenshot at top
> * system allows searching/exporting to wiki or something

This sounds somewhat similar to what was initially discussed at the UX hackfest 
last year, which Máirín blogged about:


SparkleShare was one of the things that came out of that discussion -- but 
awesome as SparkleShare is, it's really only one component of a more complete 
solution.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
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mailto:calum.ben...@oracle.com Solaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Oracle Corp.

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Dodji Seketeli]

Colin Walters  a écrit:

> I would really love to see someone set up official logging of GNOME
> IRC, like MeetBot or whatever.  Several people run private loggers,
> but we'd just need to make clear to participants that it is being
> publicly logged.

If IRC logs are posted somewhere, then there should be a communication
channel available for people who couldn't attend the IRC session to
raise comments and expect answers from the stakeholders.  I believe a
mailing list, shadowing the IRC channel would be a good enough way for
this.  Subsequently, the IRC logs could then be automatically posted to
the mailing list, allowing people to chime in raise comments.

Just my 2 cents.

-- 
Dodji
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Shaun McCance]

On Wed, 2011-06-01 at 16:10 -0400, Colin Walters wrote:
> Hi Johannes,
> 
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Johannes Schmid  wrote:
> 
> > I think you miss the original point of the discussion: Even people that
> > would want to join the discussion have a hard time doing it if
> > everything is discussion on IRC (at a certain time) only.
> 
> I would really love to see someone set up official logging of GNOME
> IRC, like MeetBot or whatever.  Several people run private loggers,
> but we'd just need to make clear to participants that it is being
> publicly logged.

Someone set up a logging bot in February. Jon asked him to take it
down, in part because of the lack of a clear message to participants
that they're being logged. [1]

So who's able to make such a statement? What kind of publicity does
it need to be acceptable? A statement in the topic of each channel?
Put it on the wiki? Nobody's going to go read the wiki before joining.
Without clear requirements, this apparent need for notification is
just stop energy on somebody who JF did it four months ago.

Personally, I don't think anybody has any right to privacy on any
public IRC channel. Assume you're being logged. If not by a bot,
then by others in the channel. Because you probably are.

[1] And yes, I realize that bot wasn't "official". But you don't
get things done in a community like ours by demanding that only
approved people make something official from the get-go. You get
things done by letting people do stuff, then saying "Hell yeah,
that rocks. Now let's put it on our infrastructure."

--
Shaun


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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Sriram Ramkrishna]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 7:22 AM, Tomeu Vizoso  wrote:

> Something that has worked well in Sugar has been to start discussion
> on the mailing list and then schedule a meeting on IRC. Afterwards
> minutes are sent back to the ml where discussion can continue and the
> feature champion adds mockups/etc to the wiki.
>
>
This seems like a pretty sane process  and allows people interested to
participate as necessary.  As long as there are minutes I think this is
great.  The problem I see here is that the same topics tend to show up.
We'll need to make sure that duplicate topics are handled correctly and if
there are follow up questions that are pertinent we could discuss those.
But endlessly discussing the same topics is just wearingly.

Not to concern troll, but log bots and what not still require some kind of
discipline to communicate it to the rest of the community.  You need to have
a couple of people who will volunteer to communicate those discussions.

One method would be to automatically email IRC discussions to a list of
volunteers whose job is to filter and then post a summary on a weekly or
daily basis.  The idea is to spread the load to as many volunteers willing
to do this.  This could be people who are interested in keeping track of
design.

That way there is some method to keep the communication going for those who
can't attend.

My two cents.

sri
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Robert Ancell]

On 2 June 2011 06:10, Colin Walters  wrote:
> Hi Johannes,
>
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Johannes Schmid  wrote:
>
>> I think you miss the original point of the discussion: Even people that
>> would want to join the discussion have a hard time doing it if
>> everything is discussion on IRC (at a certain time) only.
>
> I would really love to see someone set up official logging of GNOME
> IRC, like MeetBot or whatever.  Several people run private loggers,
> but we'd just need to make clear to participants that it is being
> publicly logged.

A huge +1 on this.  IRC is much more productive, but it's crucial that
it's logged for people who can't attend.  (I'm always hitting this
problem in GNOME trying to work out what happened while I was sleeping
in Australia).
This works really well in Ubuntu where everything is automatically
logged: http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Olav Vitters]

On Wed, Jun 01, 2011 at 04:10:46PM -0400, Colin Walters wrote:
> Both of these things require changes on the GNOME servers though, so
> it's hard to just Make Happen =/

If people have something concrete and workable, then propose it.

Things I've noticed:
 * interactive is needed
   e.g. mailing list turnaround speed is not good enough
 * logging is needed
 * summary of decisions is needed
   meaning: not just a log of a conversation. seems to conflict with
   interactive
 * people should be able to join irrespective or their timezones
   seems to conflict with interactive need
 * some form of moderation should be possible
   to avoid bike sheds
 * should be very easy for anyone to join
   usually results in bike shedding IMO

A lot of these requests seem to conflict. So suggest before asking for
something to really think what the requirements are for doing design.

I'm thinking of something where:
 * you can come with some need
 * people can post screenshots, visible immediately
 * comments can be given immediately, visible immediately
 * based on comments:
* new screenshots, more comments, repeat
 * everything is logged
 * system can close discussion
 * system shows newest screenshot at top
 * system allows searching/exporting to wiki or something


But that is from my very limited idea that the design team works on the
design of one app interactively with the maintainer... 
-- 
Regards,
Olav
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Paul Cutler]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Colin Walters  wrote:
> I would really love to see someone set up official logging of GNOME
> IRC, like MeetBot or whatever.  Several people run private loggers,
> but we'd just need to make clear to participants that it is being
> publicly logged.

Please file a bug against Sysadmin, and we can look into it.  I'm not
sure if it's been looked into in the past or what it would take from
an installation / maintenance perspective, but this isn't the first
time this request has come up.

Paul
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Colin Walters]

Hi Johannes,

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Johannes Schmid  wrote:

> I think you miss the original point of the discussion: Even people that
> would want to join the discussion have a hard time doing it if
> everything is discussion on IRC (at a certain time) only.

I would really love to see someone set up official logging of GNOME
IRC, like MeetBot or whatever.  Several people run private loggers,
but we'd just need to make clear to participants that it is being
publicly logged.

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 3:54 PM, Johannes Schmid  wrote:
>
> Second, I have followed the discussion on gnome-shell-list for quite
> some time where design was of course often pretty controverse. I took
> the time to understand most of this but at the few times I complained
> ([1] and [2]) the design team didn't really explain their reasoning in a
> broad way.

I'll say this again - if the biggest problem we have is that some
people have to read the user docs to figure out how to shut down,
we're doing AWESOME (but we're not actually doing AWESOME; there are
bigger problems).

That said as far as design feedback, I think we need some sort of
better mechanism than Bugzilla and IRC; it's basically unsustainable
for everyone in the world to be able to comment directly; we get those
bigger problems mixed in with someone's personal ideas (which may or
may not be good).  Something like a web forum where people can discuss
issues, flame etc., and moderators can bring issues to the attention
of designers and engineers.  I guess gnome-shell-list is sort of
evolving into this, but it's not great for it.

Both of these things require changes on the GNOME servers though, so
it's hard to just Make Happen =/

Practically speaking, friendly reminders to update the design wiki
pages are going to be appreciated I think, and that would help a fair
bit.
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Johannes Schmid]

Hi!

> To *who* does it feel that way? If you're going to insinuate that
> people have tried to get involved and been rebuffed, then I think the
> responsibility here falls to you to provide an example. Please don't
> talk around the accusation by inferring that it's some kind of RH
> conspiracy. It's not.

First, I hope that people who know me wouldn't ever think that I would
be searching for a RH conspiracy especially as I have met quite a couple
of the people working for RH on those projects.

Second, I have followed the discussion on gnome-shell-list for quite
some time where design was of course often pretty controverse. I took
the time to understand most of this but at the few times I complained
([1] and [2]) the design team didn't really explain their reasoning in a
broad way.

Third, I don't want to complain against anybody in person and I think
that all the people involved do their best but still I think that there
are communication issues with our design process especially with
end-user feedback. My aim is to improve that.

At some of the hackfests, I talked to some people about those things and
there are quite a few that feel the same way but I don't want to speak
for others.

Regards,
Johannes

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=643457
[2] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647442


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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Jason D. Clinton]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 14:31, Frederic Peters  wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:38, Johannes Schmid  wrote:
>> > Pretty good list of examples. All of these projects are mostly driven by
>> > Red Hat full-time employees (which isn't a bad thing in general). It
>> > happens to be the same company employing big parts of the core design
>> > team.
>> >
>> > While this doesn't mean it is a "closed group" of people, for an outside
>> > developer or volunteer it pretty much feels like that even if the
>> > individuals of that group are totally open to external
>> > contribution/envolvement.
>>
>> To *who* does it feel that way? If you're going to insinuate that
>> people have tried to get involved and been rebuffed, then I think the
>> responsibility here falls to you to provide an example. Please don't
>> talk around the accusation by inferring that it's some kind of RH
>> conspiracy. It's not.
>
> Johannes is definitely a active member of the GNOME community, and in
> my opinion the work he has been doing to make it possible for new
> developers to come and use our platform is underestimated (Anjuta,
> the dev doc tools hackfest, the continued work on platform demos,
> etc.).
>
> Therefore I don't think you should dismiss what he wrote, as if he had
> just a vague knowledge of our community, mimicking his message as
> "there's a Red Hat conspiracy".

I know who Johannes is. Let me be more clear: Johannes, do you fear
that the design team is exclusionary or have you actually seen it
happen? If the later, let's see if there is something from that
experience that informs about a way we can improve things.
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Frederic Peters]

Jason D. Clinton wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:38, Johannes Schmid  wrote:
> > Pretty good list of examples. All of these projects are mostly driven by
> > Red Hat full-time employees (which isn't a bad thing in general). It
> > happens to be the same company employing big parts of the core design
> > team.
> >
> > While this doesn't mean it is a "closed group" of people, for an outside
> > developer or volunteer it pretty much feels like that even if the
> > individuals of that group are totally open to external
> > contribution/envolvement.
> 
> To *who* does it feel that way? If you're going to insinuate that
> people have tried to get involved and been rebuffed, then I think the
> responsibility here falls to you to provide an example. Please don't
> talk around the accusation by inferring that it's some kind of RH
> conspiracy. It's not.

Johannes is definitely a active member of the GNOME community, and in
my opinion the work he has been doing to make it possible for new
developers to come and use our platform is underestimated (Anjuta,
the dev doc tools hackfest, the continued work on platform demos,
etc.).

Therefore I don't think you should dismiss what he wrote, as if he had
just a vague knowledge of our community, mimicking his message as
"there's a Red Hat conspiracy".


And a second point is that it may not be easy to give examples, not
because they do not exist but because we may hesitate to bring the
involved persons in the discussion without their consent. (I don't
know if it's the case for Johannes, it's certainly my case).



Fred
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Allan Day]

Dave Neary wrote:
> By working real-time, you are preventing a relationship from being built
> beyond a small group of people. Those people work closely together, but
> have the appearance of a closed tight-knit clique from outside the
> group. There is no transparency about what the design team is, who has
> what skills, etc.
> 
> Many stakeholders and developers who have design problems do not have
> any relationship with the design team at all.
> 
> This is the problem I think we need to solve.

We're a small team - we can't solve every design problem in GNOME all at
once. :) (Just saying.)

> > But relationships are hard to do online. Hard to do
> > long distance - more difficult the farther you are from that
> > reassuring touch.
> 
> This is a pretty good problem statement for free software development in
> general. I think we can agree that the key challenge that most free
> software projects have had to overcome is how to build durable
> relationships online. And we haven't always done it perfectly. But we
> have at least 20 years of experience to fall back on when considering
> how we might do so.

Design in the open is a new challenge, of course...

> > Is IRC perfect for this? Certainly not. I didn't use IRC at all until
> > just 4 years ago - and I still curse at it.  However, it is still much
> > closer to a conversation than is email. The architecture of email
> > encourages argument not agreement. Exchanges are volleys. Too much
> > tactics and too little strategy. It still has a place in the world,
> > obviously, but not in the tender stages of a design process.
> 
> Let me be clear: real-time communication has a role. But it fails in
> three key points:
> * There is no record of the culture for newcomers and other members of
> the community to consult 

I wrote a contribution guide which was intended to help with this issue
[1]. Let me know if you think it could be improved in any way.

> * There is no clear way for a newcomer to contact the team, or to know
> who the individuals in the team are (related to the lack of a record)

We have a list of which designers are involved in which projects on the
wiki [2]. It's not up to date or complete, but it's something.

> * If you're not in the room, you completely miss out on any opportunity
> to influence the conversation

I would expect the relevant people to be in the room or be informed
afterwards if a significant decision is made. That's the way it works on
the design projects that I'm involved in.

> We do need to create an environment where designers can feel free to
> brainstorm, create, and design. We also need a way to have a feedback
> cycle with developers.

Feedback is a separate problem to enabling participation, no?

Doing more in terms of community relations is something that I'd love to
do more of and I have some ideas about it. Time is always the limiting
factor, though.

> The compromise solution which I proposed last year (off-list), and which
> a number of people did not think was a good idea, was to have a mailing
> list whose membership was moderated. Archives would be public, but only
> designers & some key developers would be members - all other email to
> the list would be moderated.
> 
> This addresses part of your concern - the argumentative, confrontational
> nature of GNOME mailing lists - while also allowing an area where people
> outside the design team can see who is who, who does what, and get a
> feel for the culture of the team.

A moderated list might be a good way of allowing people to make contact
with our designers (not a massive problem, but it's a problem). It might
also be useful for passing the odd message around. I'm not convinced
that a list would provide a good way to enable people to participate
more easily, however - and isn't that the most important requirement?

So I'm not thoroughly opposed to your idea, but I'm not massively
enthusiastic about it either. But it's not me you've got to convince -
it's the others you expect to use this list. There's no point in setting
up a design list if there aren't any designers subscribed to it.

And really: is writing a message to ddl the best way to make this
happen?

> > We don't have the perfect solution but I think there is now sufficient
> > proof that GNOME design is flourishing despite it.  At some point, I'm
> > sure, this want will motivate an inventor and we'll be even better off
> > for it.
> 
> I am sure that I am not alone (because others have told me, and said so
> right here) when I say that I don't think the current situation is
> sustainable. A small group of people are making profound changes to the
> project on an unarchived IRC channel.

Well, designers don't make changes to GNOME on their own. ;)

This issue is largely one of perception and the need for better
community engagement, in my opinion. We need to take the time to talk to
people in the community and explain what's happening. That takes time
and resources, of course.

> Several 

Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Jason D. Clinton]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:38, Johannes Schmid  wrote:
> Pretty good list of examples. All of these projects are mostly driven by
> Red Hat full-time employees (which isn't a bad thing in general). It
> happens to be the same company employing big parts of the core design
> team.
>
> While this doesn't mean it is a "closed group" of people, for an outside
> developer or volunteer it pretty much feels like that even if the
> individuals of that group are totally open to external
> contribution/envolvement.

To *who* does it feel that way? If you're going to insinuate that
people have tried to get involved and been rebuffed, then I think the
responsibility here falls to you to provide an example. Please don't
talk around the accusation by inferring that it's some kind of RH
conspiracy. It's not.

Allan Day is certainly a counter example.

Another counter example is that I have only been able to do the
marketing work that I have done by *listening* to the design process
so that I could articulate it to others. At no point have I felt like
the design team was inaccessible.
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Johannes Schmid]

Hi!

> Everyone may have an opinion and they are free to express it. However,
> not everyone can be consulted before the fact - it is just practically
> impossible. Those opinions, however, should be carefully gathered and
> analyzed. There are careers for this.

I think you miss the original point of the discussion: Even people that
would want to join the discussion have a hard time doing it if
everything is discussion on IRC (at a certain time) only.

> Obvious examples of very close relationships between design and
> development: GNOME Shell, System Settings, Nautilus, and everything
> that will be in 3.2. :)

Pretty good list of examples. All of these projects are mostly driven by
Red Hat full-time employees (which isn't a bad thing in general). It
happens to be the same company employing big parts of the core design
team.

While this doesn't mean it is a "closed group" of people, for an outside
developer or volunteer it pretty much feels like that even if the
individuals of that group are totally open to external
contribution/envolvement.

Regards,
Johannes


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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[William Jon McCann]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 11:06 AM, Johannes Schmid  wrote:
> Hi Jon!
>
>> Are they listening or participating? Transparency and reporting is
>> pretty simple to solve. Publish logs, document (wiki), and blog and
>> you're pretty much there.  Participation and engagement is much
>> harder. Basically you need to find a way to build a relationship with
>> a designer.  It doesn't have to be on IRC. IRC is just one of the ways
>> people actively working on the design of the GNOME core are
>> communicating. Google docs, git, sparkleshare, and IM are others.
>
> Well, currently many people are just listening (logs, wiki blog) because
> they cannot participate. And it is pretty hard to raise a point once the
> "closed group" came to an agreement.
> What happens is that bugs are filed against certain products which stall
> after some amount of discussion. Sometimes even ending in something that
> *can* be interpreted as "Sorry, you are not a designer, your argument
> doesn't count".

This is completely untrue. First of all, we are an open group - with a
very low bar for entry (show up and do good work), that works entirely
in the open. Secondly, no decision is ever made based on authority due
to some silly label. Many/most of the best designers I know are not
*only* designers.

Agreement is reached in various ways. I think it may be useful to
think about decision making using the terminology in something like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_assignment_matrix

Basically:
 * someone must be responsible
 * someone must be accountable
 * many should be consulted
 * and everyone may be informed

Everyone may have an opinion and they are free to express it. However,
not everyone can be consulted before the fact - it is just practically
impossible. Those opinions, however, should be carefully gathered and
analyzed. There are careers for this.

> I think by seperating developers (and other stakeholders) from designers
> we make a big mistake. Design isn't right just because it is done by
> designers especially when we don't talk about classical design art but
> about user-interface design and usability.

This is simply not true. We do not separate developers and designers at all.

Obvious examples of very close relationships between design and
development: GNOME Shell, System Settings, Nautilus, and everything
that will be in 3.2. :)

> Don't get me wrong, I think the overall design of GNOME 3 is pretty good
> but there are certain corners where it would be good if input from
> non-designers and users would have been considered.

I can't claim that we've heard everything but we've heard a lot - more
than we can handle or process in some cases :)  All of it was
carefully considered. Anyone who knows me at all will understand that.
That doesn't mean it is good for my health :)

Jon
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Johannes Schmid]

Hi Jon!

> Are they listening or participating? Transparency and reporting is
> pretty simple to solve. Publish logs, document (wiki), and blog and
> you're pretty much there.  Participation and engagement is much
> harder. Basically you need to find a way to build a relationship with
> a designer.  It doesn't have to be on IRC. IRC is just one of the ways
> people actively working on the design of the GNOME core are
> communicating. Google docs, git, sparkleshare, and IM are others.

Well, currently many people are just listening (logs, wiki blog) because
they cannot participate. And it is pretty hard to raise a point once the
"closed group" came to an agreement.
What happens is that bugs are filed against certain products which stall
after some amount of discussion. Sometimes even ending in something that
*can* be interpreted as "Sorry, you are not a designer, your argument
doesn't count".

I think by seperating developers (and other stakeholders) from designers
we make a big mistake. Design isn't right just because it is done by
designers especially when we don't talk about classical design art but
about user-interface design and usability.

Don't get me wrong, I think the overall design of GNOME 3 is pretty good
but there are certain corners where it would be good if input from
non-designers and users would have been considered.

> Dealing with timezones and distance is a challenge. No doubt about
> that. It is a problem even in our own team. However, once a
> relationship has been established (trust, respect, and understanding)
> it is much easier to surmount. It is most problematic when building
> new relationships. My advice to people who want to become involved is
> to be clever and find another way to build those relationships. Many
> have.

I think it is wrong to assume that people that already spent a lot of
time on a project will extend this to find clever ways to get involved
with designers.

> This could mean picking something that is close at hand and making it
> awesome and telling the world about it. Or even making something
> yourself. It often turns out to be much more effective than just
> showing up on IRC and saying - "hi, what can I do?"

That's pretty easy with code because you can make a patch and fix a
bug. 
It is much harder to fix design / usability issues by just showing up
and trying to tell everybody that the design decision made was wrong.
Even if I would patch some things I don't like about the design I would
hardly have a chance to have it integrated if I cannot make my point in
a broader discussion.

Regards,
Johannes


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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

There's a lot in this email, it's worth responding to in detail (because
it gets to the heart of the matter). Reordered slightly to make my
answer more coherent :)

William Jon McCann wrote:
> I think you need to be more clear about what your goals are.

My goals are to enable the design team to work productively with the
entire GNOME development community. And this includes people who aren't
doing GNOME development full time, aren't in the same time zone as
members of the team, and people that maybe the designers don't yet know.

> Design work requires conversation, closeness, and contact. You need to
> build a relationship with the problem, the users, the stakeholders,
> the developers, and ultimately with the product. These relationships
> must be durable.

I *absolutely* agree, and this is why I am concerned with the current
situation.

By working real-time, you are preventing a relationship from being built
beyond a small group of people. Those people work closely together, but
have the appearance of a closed tight-knit clique from outside the
group. There is no transparency about what the design team is, who has
what skills, etc.

Many stakeholders and developers who have design problems do not have
any relationship with the design team at all.

This is the problem I think we need to solve.


> Doing everything in person would be great for design work. This is one
> reason why we've been meaning to ask the Foundation to support more
> regular design team "hackfests". Using the occasional (video)
> conference call has been discussed many times as well.

Hackfests are great - they're open, and there is a natural constraint
(time, money, availability) limiting the people who can participate. For
day to day work, I really don't think it's ideal though. For hackfests
to be effective, you need most of the stakeholders present, and you need
to follow up with some really concrete reports and actions. The design
of the GNOME project affects every module maintainer - not just the
designers.

> But relationships are hard to do online. Hard to do
> long distance - more difficult the farther you are from that
> reassuring touch.

This is a pretty good problem statement for free software development in
general. I think we can agree that the key challenge that most free
software projects have had to overcome is how to build durable
relationships online. And we haven't always done it perfectly. But we
have at least 20 years of experience to fall back on when considering
how we might do so.

> Is IRC perfect for this? Certainly not. I didn't use IRC at all until
> just 4 years ago - and I still curse at it.  However, it is still much
> closer to a conversation than is email. The architecture of email
> encourages argument not agreement. Exchanges are volleys. Too much
> tactics and too little strategy. It still has a place in the world,
> obviously, but not in the tender stages of a design process.

Let me be clear: real-time communication has a role. But it fails in
three key points:
* There is no record of the culture for newcomers and other members of
the community to consult (and no, I don't think logging IRC is
sufficient - can you imagine suggesting that someone read the IRC logs
for a month to get a feel for why certain decisions were made?)
* There is no clear way for a newcomer to contact the team, or to know
who the individuals in the team are (related to the lack of a record)
* If you're not in the room, you completely miss out on any opportunity
to influence the conversation

Email has its problems - you've pointed to one. It encourages
adversarial debate (witness this thread!). Another is that there is an
"email culture" (much as there is a "forum culture") and that culture is
developer-centric (more 1980s Old Unix than 2010s New Linux).

We do need to create an environment where designers can feel free to
brainstorm, create, and design. We also need a way to have a feedback
cycle with developers.

The compromise solution which I proposed last year (off-list), and which
a number of people did not think was a good idea, was to have a mailing
list whose membership was moderated. Archives would be public, but only
designers & some key developers would be members - all other email to
the list would be moderated.

This addresses part of your concern - the argumentative, confrontational
nature of GNOME mailing lists - while also allowing an area where people
outside the design team can see who is who, who does what, and get a
feel for the culture of the team. There would also be a way for
developers who would like help with their design problems to ask for it,
and interact with designers. Albeit with the lag time involved in
moderation.

> We don't have the perfect solution but I think there is now sufficient
> proof that GNOME design is flourishing despite it.  At some point, I'm
> sure, this want will motivate an inventor and we'll be even better off
> for it.

I am sure that I am not alone (because oth

Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 15:18, Vincent Untz  wrote:
> Le mercredi 01 juin 2011, à 13:33 +0100, Richard Hughes a écrit :
>> On 1 June 2011 12:57, Matthias Clasen  wrote:
>> > Basically, mailing lists don't work for many kinds of productive 
>> > discussion.
>>
>> Agreed. In my recent discussions with the dudes in #gnome-design there
>> was a flurry of messages, perhaps as many as 200 back-and-forth
>> discussions per hour. In that same hour, we iterated about 20
>> screenshots and quite a few designers piled in with suggestions.
>>
>> You just can't get that kind of latency and interest level with a mailing 
>> list.
>
> One thing that could be improved with mails, though, is communication
> about the design after the iterative process on IRC you describe. Many
> people would love to have a summary of the rationale of the design.
>
> I'm aware this is sometimes (maybe even always) propagated to a wiki
> page. But people still won't know about the wiki page if there's no
> announcement about it.

Something that has worked well in Sugar has been to start discussion
on the mailing list and then schedule a meeting on IRC. Afterwards
minutes are sent back to the ml where discussion can continue and the
feature champion adds mockups/etc to the wiki.

Regards,

Tomeu

> (fwiw, I pretty much agree that defining a design on a mailing list
> doesn't work well)
>
> Vincent
>
> --
> Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[William Jon McCann]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Johannes Schmid  wrote:
> Hi!
>
>> On 1 June 2011 12:57, Matthias Clasen  wrote:
>>> Basically, mailing lists don't work for many kinds of productive
>>> discussion.
>>
>> Agreed. In my recent discussions with the dudes in #gnome-design there
>> was a flurry of messages, perhaps as many as 200 back-and-forth
>> discussions per hour. In that same hour, we iterated about 20
>> screenshots and quite a few designers piled in with suggestions.
>>
>> You just can't get that kind of latency and interest level with a mailing
>> list.
>
> So what about those people who simply don't have the time to hang around
> on IRC because of various reasons. Many volunteers have only time to work
> on weekends or in the afternoon and are spread over various timezones. IRC
> is an anti-pattern there as you are excluding all these people.

Are they listening or participating? Transparency and reporting is
pretty simple to solve. Publish logs, document (wiki), and blog and
you're pretty much there.  Participation and engagement is much
harder. Basically you need to find a way to build a relationship with
a designer.  It doesn't have to be on IRC. IRC is just one of the ways
people actively working on the design of the GNOME core are
communicating. Google docs, git, sparkleshare, and IM are others.

Dealing with timezones and distance is a challenge. No doubt about
that. It is a problem even in our own team. However, once a
relationship has been established (trust, respect, and understanding)
it is much easier to surmount. It is most problematic when building
new relationships. My advice to people who want to become involved is
to be clever and find another way to build those relationships. Many
have.

This could mean picking something that is close at hand and making it
awesome and telling the world about it. Or even making something
yourself. It often turns out to be much more effective than just
showing up on IRC and saying - "hi, what can I do?"

No one is excluding you. Don't ask for permission - go ahead, do
something great and let the world know about it.

Jon
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[William Jon McCann]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:31 AM, Dave Neary  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Allan Day wrote:
>> Dave Neary wrote:
>>> Presumably you & others are still not interested in drawing a few
>>> developers and designers into a gnome-design mailing list, separate from
>>> the usability list
>>
>> I think it's important that we work on being more accessible, and we
>> need to make it easier for people to stay informed about what we're up
>> to in GNOME design, but I don't think a mailing list is a good way for
>> us to do that, and I'm pretty sure the others who are involved in
>> design work feel the same way.
>>
>> So yes, you presume correctly. I'm open to other suggestions though. ;)
>
> That's disappointing. Using IRC really is an anti-pattern which the
> design team should avoid - it's only one step removed from doing
> everything in person or on conference calls.

I think you need to be more clear about what your goals are.

Doing everything in person would be great for design work. This is one
reason why we've been meaning to ask the Foundation to support more
regular design team "hackfests". Using the occasional (video)
conference call has been discussed many times as well.

Design work requires conversation, closeness, and contact. You need to
build a relationship with the problem, the users, the stakeholders,
the developers, and ultimately with the product. These relationships
must be durable. But relationships are hard to do online. Hard to do
long distance - more difficult the farther you are from that
reassuring touch.

Is IRC perfect for this? Certainly not. I didn't use IRC at all until
just 4 years ago - and I still curse at it.  However, it is still much
closer to a conversation than is email. The architecture of email
encourages argument not agreement. Exchanges are volleys. Too much
tactics and too little strategy. It still has a place in the world,
obviously, but not in the tender stages of a design process.

We don't have the perfect solution but I think there is now sufficient
proof that GNOME design is flourishing despite it.  At some point, I'm
sure, this want will motivate an inventor and we'll be even better off
for it.

Jon
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Johannes Schmid]

Hi!

> On 1 June 2011 12:57, Matthias Clasen  wrote:
>> Basically, mailing lists don't work for many kinds of productive
>> discussion.
>
> Agreed. In my recent discussions with the dudes in #gnome-design there
> was a flurry of messages, perhaps as many as 200 back-and-forth
> discussions per hour. In that same hour, we iterated about 20
> screenshots and quite a few designers piled in with suggestions.
>
> You just can't get that kind of latency and interest level with a mailing
> list.

So what about those people who simply don't have the time to hang around
on IRC because of various reasons. Many volunteers have only time to work
on weekends or in the afternoon and are spread over various timezones. IRC
is an anti-pattern there as you are excluding all these people.

Regards,
Johannes

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

On 06/01/11 13:57, Matthias Clasen wrote:

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:31 AM, Dave Neary  wrote:

That's disappointing. Using IRC really is an anti-pattern which the
design team should avoid



I really can't think of anything better than a mailing list which you
could use to allow GNOME developers to initiate discussion with
designers, and to allow designers to work together publicly on design.


Basically, mailing lists don't work for many kinds of productive discussion.
Calling them an anti-pattern does not change that.


I didn't call mailing lists an anti-pattern, I called excessive 
dependence on IRC an anti-pattern.


Dave.

--
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GNOME Foundation member
dne...@gnome.org
Jabber: nea...@gmail.com
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Vincent Untz]

Le mercredi 01 juin 2011, à 13:33 +0100, Richard Hughes a écrit :
> On 1 June 2011 12:57, Matthias Clasen  wrote:
> > Basically, mailing lists don't work for many kinds of productive discussion.
> 
> Agreed. In my recent discussions with the dudes in #gnome-design there
> was a flurry of messages, perhaps as many as 200 back-and-forth
> discussions per hour. In that same hour, we iterated about 20
> screenshots and quite a few designers piled in with suggestions.
> 
> You just can't get that kind of latency and interest level with a mailing 
> list.

One thing that could be improved with mails, though, is communication
about the design after the iterative process on IRC you describe. Many
people would love to have a summary of the rationale of the design.

I'm aware this is sometimes (maybe even always) propagated to a wiki
page. But people still won't know about the wiki page if there's no
announcement about it.

(fwiw, I pretty much agree that defining a design on a mailing list
doesn't work well)

Vincent

-- 
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Richard Hughes]

On 1 June 2011 12:57, Matthias Clasen  wrote:
> Basically, mailing lists don't work for many kinds of productive discussion.

Agreed. In my recent discussions with the dudes in #gnome-design there
was a flurry of messages, perhaps as many as 200 back-and-forth
discussions per hour. In that same hour, we iterated about 20
screenshots and quite a few designers piled in with suggestions.

You just can't get that kind of latency and interest level with a mailing list.

Richard.
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Matthias Clasen]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 5:31 AM, Dave Neary  wrote:
> Hi,

>
> That's disappointing. Using IRC really is an anti-pattern which the
> design team should avoid - it's only one step removed from doing
> everything in person or on conference calls. Bugzilla isn't a forum, nor
> can you be sure who you're talking to, or easily follow past discussions
> through archives. And design is apparently out of scope for the
> usability list. Wiki pages and blog posts are good, but they are
> broadcast rather than a communication channel.
>
> I really can't think of anything better than a mailing list which you
> could use to allow GNOME developers to initiate discussion with
> designers, and to allow designers to work together publicly on design.

Basically, mailing lists don't work for many kinds of productive discussion.
Calling them an anti-pattern does not change that.
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Johannes Schmid]

Hi!

> That's disappointing. Using IRC really is an anti-pattern which the
> design team should avoid - it's only one step removed from doing
> everything in person or on conference calls. Bugzilla isn't a forum, nor
> can you be sure who you're talking to, or easily follow past discussions
> through archives. And design is apparently out of scope for the
> usability list. Wiki pages and blog posts are good, but they are
> broadcast rather than a communication channel.
>
> I really can't think of anything better than a mailing list which you
> could use to allow GNOME developers to initiate discussion with
> designers, and to allow designers to work together publicly on design.

Couldn't agree more but that doesn't only affect the design-team but also
some other GNOME sub-projects like gnome-shell.

Regards,
Johannes

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

Allan Day wrote:
> Dave Neary wrote:
>> Presumably you & others are still not interested in drawing a few
>> developers and designers into a gnome-design mailing list, separate from
>> the usability list
> 
> I think it's important that we work on being more accessible, and we
> need to make it easier for people to stay informed about what we're up
> to in GNOME design, but I don't think a mailing list is a good way for
> us to do that, and I'm pretty sure the others who are involved in
> design work feel the same way.
> 
> So yes, you presume correctly. I'm open to other suggestions though. ;)

That's disappointing. Using IRC really is an anti-pattern which the
design team should avoid - it's only one step removed from doing
everything in person or on conference calls. Bugzilla isn't a forum, nor
can you be sure who you're talking to, or easily follow past discussions
through archives. And design is apparently out of scope for the
usability list. Wiki pages and blog posts are good, but they are
broadcast rather than a communication channel.

I really can't think of anything better than a mailing list which you
could use to allow GNOME developers to initiate discussion with
designers, and to allow designers to work together publicly on design.

> Right now, design update blog posts (like the one I did last week [1])
> are one of the best mechanisms at our disposal, in my opinion. Long
> term, we probably need specialist design tools or even a wave in a
> box [2].

Blog posts are, by their nature, periodical and, as I said, broadcast
rather than "a place to get in touch with GNOME's designers" (which was
the original request).

>> (which is more post-processing than drawing up plans,
>> I think)?
> 
> Maybe I missed a memo, but I wasn't aware of it having a particular
> focus (other than usability).

Maybe I missed a memo myself - usability and design aren't the same
thing, I think. Although one can design to make something usable, what
I've seen mostly on the usability list is the incremental improvement of
applications which have already been designed (this is what I mean by
post-processing).

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
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GNOME Foundation member
dne...@gnome.org
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Allan Day]

Hi Dave,

Dave Neary wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Allan Day wrote:
> > #gnome-design is good; so is the usability list.
> > 
> > The ui-review Bugzilla keyword gets used in GNOME Shell and the control
> > center. We could try that here too.
> 
> Presumably you & others are still not interested in drawing a few
> developers and designers into a gnome-design mailing list, separate from
> the usability list

I think it's important that we work on being more accessible, and we
need to make it easier for people to stay informed about what we're up
to in GNOME design, but I don't think a mailing list is a good way for
us to do that, and I'm pretty sure the others who are involved in
design work feel the same way.

So yes, you presume correctly. I'm open to other suggestions though. ;)

Right now, design update blog posts (like the one I did last week [1])
are one of the best mechanisms at our disposal, in my opinion. Long
term, we probably need specialist design tools or even a wave in a
box [2].

> (which is more post-processing than drawing up plans,
> I think)?

Maybe I missed a memo, but I wasn't aware of it having a particular
focus (other than usability).

Allan

[1]
http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/recent-goings-on-in-gnome-design/

[2]
http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2010/09/wave-open-source-next-steps-wave-in-box.html
-- 
IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org
Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/


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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Dave Neary]

Hi,

Allan Day wrote:
> #gnome-design is good; so is the usability list.
> 
> The ui-review Bugzilla keyword gets used in GNOME Shell and the control
> center. We could try that here too.

Presumably you & others are still not interested in drawing a few
developers and designers into a gnome-design mailing list, separate from
the usability list (which is more post-processing than drawing up plans,
I think)?

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
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GNOME Foundation member
dne...@gnome.org
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Calum Benson]

On 20 May 2011, at 15:23, Bastien Nocera wrote:

> The easiest is to add the "ui-review" keyword, and poke people on
> #gnome-design.

Cc'ing usability-ma...@gnome.bugs is probably still somewhat useful, too. (I 
certainly still see bugs that way that I'd miss otherwise, or take longer to 
get to.)

Cheeri,
Calum.

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Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Oracle Corp.

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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Allan Day]

Hi José,

On Fri, 2011-05-20 at 09:52 -0400, José Aliste wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a simple question (hopefully ddl is the right mail list for
> this): how are we supposed to interact with the design team? it seems
> that the best way is contacting them through irc in #gnome-design, but
> what about Gnome bugzilla? Does setting a keyword or something makes
> the design team in the CC of a bug or something so we can get UX
> advice from them?
> 
> I understand that dealing with design of new features, hanging in IRC
> is best as it is faster to interact this way, but there are a bunch of
> bugs in Evince that need a thumbs up/thumbs down from the design team
> and I d like to know which is the best way of interacting so we can
> get these fixed/or wont fixed but with a clear statement from UX point
> of view why we are doing so. (and having a page, that probably exists,
> explaining the interaction between different teams would be also
> great)
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> José

#gnome-design is good; so is the usability list.

The ui-review Bugzilla keyword gets used in GNOME Shell and the control
center. We could try that here too.

Allan
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Re: On the Interaction with the design team

[Bastien Nocera]

On Fri, 2011-05-20 at 09:52 -0400, José Aliste wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have a simple question (hopefully ddl is the right mail list for
> this): how are we supposed to interact with the design team? it seems
> that the best way is contacting them through irc in #gnome-design, but
> what about Gnome bugzilla? Does setting a keyword or something makes
> the design team in the CC of a bug or something so we can get UX
> advice from them?
> 
> I understand that dealing with design of new features, hanging in IRC
> is best as it is faster to interact this way, but there are a bunch of
> bugs in Evince that need a thumbs up/thumbs down from the design team
> and I d like to know which is the best way of interacting so we can
> get these fixed/or wont fixed but with a clear statement from UX point
> of view why we are doing so. (and having a page, that probably exists,
> explaining the interaction between different teams would be also
> great)

The easiest is to add the "ui-review" keyword, and poke people on
#gnome-design.

Make sure that your bugs include clear before/after details, even
screenshots if the feature is trivial to implement, mockup-able, or
already available as a patch.

Cheers

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On the Interaction with the design team

[José Aliste]

Hi,

I have a simple question (hopefully ddl is the right mail list for
this): how are we supposed to interact with the design team? it seems
that the best way is contacting them through irc in #gnome-design, but
what about Gnome bugzilla? Does setting a keyword or something makes
the design team in the CC of a bug or something so we can get UX
advice from them?

I understand that dealing with design of new features, hanging in IRC
is best as it is faster to interact this way, but there are a bunch of
bugs in Evince that need a thumbs up/thumbs down from the design team
and I d like to know which is the best way of interacting so we can
get these fixed/or wont fixed but with a clear statement from UX point
of view why we are doing so. (and having a page, that probably exists,
explaining the interaction between different teams would be also
great)

Greetings,

José
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