Below, I give a quick qualitative analysis of the responses in as objective
as form as I can and the follow it up with some anecdotes and my opinions.
Just stop reading after the data if you want to respond without having your
opinion colored.
Summary:
Out of 9 attendees who blogged on the UX Hackfest and were emailed, 5
responded. The email sent was the following:
I am writing you this email on behalf of the GNOME Marketing Committee and
because you were a UX Hackfest attendee.
The GNOME Marketing Committee is deeply concerned about the coherence of our
message to the public about what the 3.0 release will be. Up until the UX
Hackfest, that message was coherent: GNOME Shell with deep integration with
presence management and time-based file management. Now, the Committee does
not know what to tell the public. The Committee has empowered me to gather
opinions about what attendees believe will be in 3.0.
Please answer the following four questions by one week from the time of this
writing. Feel free to make your answer as short as you please: a one
sentence answer is sufficient. Please know that I will make every attempt to
keep your answer in confidence; however, I will provide a summary of the
opinions of all attendees to the Committee.
In a follow-up round of emails, the Committee or its designee will include
coders as well as the wider usability community in its inquiry. Those
questions will be based on what we hear in this round of questions.
The questions for this first round:
• What new user-visible experiences will be in the GNOME 3.0 release?
• Who needs to work on it? Are there coders working on these features and do
they agree with your time estimate?
• What is your long-term vision for the user experience beyond the 3.0
release?
• Please name individuals whom you believe should be included in the
above-referenced second-round of emails.
Of those 5 who responded to question 1, "What new user-visible experiences
will be in the Gnome 3.0 release?" 4/5 mentioned Shell as a positive change
which would "certainly" or "would" be in the 3.0 release as "the" or "the
biggest" major visible feature. 3/5 said that Gnome 3.0 would feature Gnome
Activity Journal but used language like "uncertain" or "unclear" to describe
the situation. 2/5 mentioned that a new Control Center was likely. 2/5 said
that a new theme or icon theme set was likely to be in 3.0. 1/5 expressed a
desire to see Nautilus changes but didn't know of anyone working on it.
Of those 2 who responded to questions 2, "Who needs to work on it? Are there
coders working on these features and do they agree with your time estimate?"
the first expressed concern about the Gnome Activity Journal and a11y
reaching completion, the coverage of documentation at the 3.0 release due to
the short freeze, the open status of dconf and its impact on the UI of all
apps, and the constant shift in UI design of Shell git master. The other
responded worried about not seeing "enough" repeatable usability evaluation
of the new UI and that there generally not "enough" people working on Shell
and Activity Journal.
Of those 5 who responded to question 3, "What is your long-term vision for
the user experience beyond the 3.0 release?", 4/5 agreed that 3.0 was just
the beginning of the realization of several long-term trends which would be
fulfilled during the life of 3.x; the hold-out emphasized internal
consistency in theming and color as developing over the life of 3.x. 2/5 saw
3.x as rounding out a "beta-ish" 3.0 release. 2/5 saw an change in
fundamental file management methods over the life span. 2/5 saw an increase
in the general portability of users and their data. 2/5 saw a general
long-term approach to increase application usability and consistency. 1/5
saw more applications moving to Clutter. 1/5 saw People becoming
"first-class objects".
Of the 2 who answer question 4, "Please name individuals whom you believe
should be included in the above-referenced second-round of emails," the
following names were offered: Owen Taylor, Colin Walters, Alex Larsson, Seif
Lotfy, Thorsten Prante, Xavier Claessens, Guillaume Desmottes, Matthew
Barnes, Chenthill Palanisamy, and Shaun McCance.
Caveats:
Seth, who we had discussed on our conference call in the context of the
Pooper and the public image of Gnome 3.0, was one of the respondents. Other
than confirming that he saw "Shell as 3.0" and not mentioning *any* of the
ideas in his blog posts, his response was incomprehensible,
post-modern evasion. I only bring this up because I think that it's safe to
say at this point that none of Seth's ideas have any other champions.
No one from Shell replied. I begged them to in the middle of the week but it
hasn't happened. I asked again today and Owen said that they weren't
planning on answering our four questions anyway but that he would follow up
to this list with a separate post. Jon McCann expressed resentment that we
even asked anyone these questions. I have logs of the entir
