Re: [ubuntu-art] Improving What We Do!

[Martin Owens]

On Wed, 2010-10-13 at 22:06 -0400, John Baer wrote:
> Martin you stated in a post on 10/07 your intent to attend UDS. Sadly
> I can not join you but I and others would like to contribute to
> discussions in some other manner. I share the same time zone as UDS
> but I am generally unavailable during the day.
> 
> Perhaps some impromptu evening meetings on the IRC would be
> beneficial. :) 

If there aren't enough people at UDS from the Art Team, then we may end
up having to have a real meeting.

My first thoughts on this team is that we need real software to manage
job requests, announcements (blogs/feeds etc) and submissions. The wiki
is a stop gap in my opinion which needs a nice and healthy replacement.
There is no shortage of candidates and we could move more towards debian
with cchost or more towards fedora with (er, I forget the name) with
their art management software. We have lots of choice here and I'd be
happy to head it up and collect together requirements.

Martin,


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[ubuntu-art] Improving What We Do!

[John Baer]

Hello everyone,

I was reading Mark Shuttleworth's blog about the 10.10 release and he makes
several good comments about community.

"Building a free OS involves an extraordinary diversity of skills, and
what’s harder is that it requires merging the contributions from so many
diverse disciplines and art forms. And yet, looking around the community, we
seem to have found patterns for coordination and collaboration that buffer
the natural gaps between all the different kinds of activities that go on."

My observation of the Art Team is there is room for improvement and turning
things around in a positive manner may not be as hard as it appears.
Fundamentally we lack a process for success or some may argue we simply lack
a process.

I advocate we change the way we contribute to the community by adopting the
following three (3) step process.

  1. Initiate
  2. Construct/build
  3. Release

The goal is to provide quality artwork in a manner which adds value to the
Ubuntu community.

* The term "Ubuntu community" also includes the derivatives.

The objective is to use a flexible process which encourages inclusion,
provides recognition of effort, and facilitates collaboration to achieve the
desired result.

I believe the above statements support the intent of Mark's message as
stated in his blog.

To begin the dialog and to move this effort along I created a Wiki page
here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Documentation/Blueprint

Please review and comment on the list or on the Wiki. If you comment the
Wiki do so in a manner which preserves content. :)

It is important to note for this process or any other process to work we
need stake holder buy-in. Stake holders in this context would include the
Canonical Design team, Art Team members, and the greater Ubuntu Community at
large.

My assumption is we really don't need to build anything, just use the tools
available. For example use the Art Team Launchpad Blueprint tool as our
 “job queue”.

Martin you stated in a post on 10/07 your intent to attend UDS. Sadly I can
not join you but I and others would like to contribute to discussions in
some other manner. I share the same time zone as UDS but I am generally
unavailable during the day.

Perhaps some impromptu evening meetings on the IRC would be beneficial. :)

Thoughts?

John
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Re: [ubuntu-art] Meerkat volume control design

[Dylan McCall]

While we're here, I was about to file a bug report about how it's a
little unpredictable that clicking the music metadata widget copies
its contents to the clipboard. Was there a particularly strong use
case for that? I keep wanting to click the music info to show the
music player, and I wonder if other users might be confused when it
doesn't. The current behaviour strikes me as inconsistent with other
indicators that have informational displays (like the current battery
level or the date).

Dylan

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Re: [ubuntu-art] Meerkat volume control design

[Сергей]

I guess it's better to put a checkbox there, like it was in Rhythmbox
indicator applet, like it's now in Transmission indicator applet etc. After
those applets users expect it to be there. And empty space is confusing and
just ugly.
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Re: [ubuntu-art] Meerkat volume control design

[Dylan McCall]

>> In other cases, however, an active choice was clearly made but that
>> choice doesn't address the element's purpose.  Why should a volume
>> control menu be labelled "Mute"?  Etc.
>>...
>
> Because that's exactly what the item does. (If the speakers are already
> muted, it says "Unmute".)

The issue suddenly occurred to me. It's one we all know and love :)

Right now a regular menu item is used as a title in one place
(Rhythmbox), and an action in another (Mute). The font and spacing is
identical in both cases. Where it's used as a title, there is an extra
icon to give the illusion of having less margin on the left, but that
is semantically broken and rather unconvincing in practice.

*Insert here: grumbling about needing text classes in Gtk and how
hard-coding styles in Pango is like writing a website, with tables,
fifteen years ago*

Dylan

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Re: [ubuntu-art] Meerkat volume control design

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Hello Ersin

Thanks for your excellent feedback on the sound menu.

Ersin Akinci wrote in ubuntu-artwork@ on -10/01/37 20:59:
>...
> I'm not sure where to send this, so my apologies if I've contacted the
> wrong list.  I was looking at 10.10's new volume control menu,
> pictured here:
>
> http://files.digitizor.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Selection_013.png

As your fellow Redditors pointed out, the sound menu is categorized as
part of the Ayatana project, so the Ayatana mailing list is the most
appropriate forum.

> I want to commend the Ubuntu team for their ongoing efforts to improve
> the toolbar, and I really enjoy the new functionality in the volume
> menu.  However, I've also wondered about some of the design decisions,
> specifically what the rationale was behind them.  I drew up a list of
> 23 issues that I thought the design team might be able to address:

First, a quick response to
,
which will help explain how we got here:
|
| I'd love to get involved. Part of the problem is that the design
| process, from an outsider's perspective, isn't transparent. I wasn't
| sure where to begin until someone on the art mailing list mentioned
| Ayatana. I agree with the gist of Shuttleworth's infamous "this is
| not a democracy" statement about Ubuntu's design
|
(https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/light-themes/+bug/532633/comments/167),
| but as a purely practical matter, I don't want to invest time in
| something where I don't know how/if my efforts will be
| noted/implemented/etc. Regarding the window control "debate", I don't
| see any evidence that the community's input was taken seriously (full
| disclosure: I like the window buttons on the left) nor that the
| design team made a serious effort to win over/explain their positions
| on one of the most hotly contested issues that the Ubuntu community
| has ever seen.
| Perhaps someone can write up a post about how Ayatana/Canonical
| design works...?

There are, at the moment, three main sources of design decisions in
Ubuntu. There are decisions made by individual developers (for example,
the design of Simple Scan). There are decisions made by Canonical's
Design team (for example, the design of Ubuntu Software Center, or the
Ubuntu Web sites), for which we try to explain our positions. And there
are decisions made by Mark Shuttleworth in his role as SABDFL (for
example, the title bar buttons), which are up to him to explain.

In the case of the sound menu, I was responsible for designing the
contents and layout, though Mark made a few changes. Otto Greenslade
designed the look of the playback controls, Daniel Fore provided the
icons, and Conor Curran wrote the code. Several of the points you raise
are about the Ambiance and Radiance themes in general, which were mostly
designed by Otto Greenslade and implemented by Ken Wimer and Andrea
Cimitan. (I don't normally get time to report problems with the theme
design, so thanks for giving me an excuse!)

Feedback like yours is extremely useful. Even more useful would be to
get involved with the designers and engineers working on new elements
(such as the various parts of Unity, the Ubuntu single sign-on dialogs,
the date/time menu, or the networking menu), suggesting layout
improvements before the designs are implemented.

> 1. What is that arrow bullet on the left next to the Rhythmbox info?
> Is it a control? If so, why is it flush with the edge of the menu
> (Fitt's law)? Why would we even need a control there to hide it?

The triangle is supposed to convey that the application is running. We
use the same symbol in the messaging menu, and in the Unity launcher.

We have not (as far as I know) tested what proportion of people
understand this symbol, or whether some other presentation would work
better.

> 2. Why is there a musical notation icon next to the Rhythmbox title?
> Isn't it already clear that it controls music?
>
> 3. Why is Rhythmbox even mentioned by name at all? How is that
> important? If you're going to be locking in the applet with a
> particular music player anyhow, what's the point of repeating its
> name?

The menu is not locked to a particular music player: so far, Amarok,
Banshee, Rhythmbox, and Xnoise all integrate with it. And as shown in
the pathological screenshot on the wiki
,
it's even possible for multiple players to show up at the same time,
though in real life people will rarely see that.

So the Rhythmbox item is supposed to represent the application, in the
same way as application items in the messaging menu do. However, Mark
asked that we use a generic music icon rather than the application's own
icon. Unfortunately, this makes the purpose of the item (launching, or
switching to, the application) rather unclear. So today, Conor is
experimenting with

Re: [ubuntu-art] DesignHub Update

[Сергей]

Launchpad has its own application similar to SparkleShare: it's Ground
Control. See https://launchpad.net/groundcontrol and
http://ground-control.org/ for details.
IMHO, a version control system is usable for designers if it supports at
least thumbnail view in web frontend and downloading directories in
archives. Otherwise it's almost useless.
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