Re: Prototyping the next generation panel?

[Karl Lattimer <karl qdh org uk>]

On Thu, 2008-10-30 at 17:43 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-10-28 at 18:30 +0000, Calum Benson wrote:
> > On 28 Oct 2008, at 16:00, Vincent Untz wrote:
> > >
> > > Don't know if you read Owen's post, which talks about how this could  
> > > be
> > > implemented:
> > > http://blog.fishsoup.net/2008/10/22/implementing-the-next-gnome-shell/
> > >
> > > I guess we'll have stuff in a svn module as soon as there's proper  
> > > code
> > > to show :-)
> > 
> > Cart, meet horse...
> > 
> > How about we start as we hopefully mean to go on, by usability testing  
> > mockups of some alternative shell/panel designs first, to figure out  
> > if we're heading off in roughly the right direction before we even  
> > think about committing anything to code?  (If those initial  
> > investigations have already been done, can we see the results  
> > somewhere?)
> 
> Replying to this a bit late.
> 
> I think a lot of the technical stuff we need to do is really pretty
> orthogonal to the usability aspects... if we can make the bold
> assumption that we want a framework that involves:
> 
>  Easy to program and experiment with
>  3D effects and animation
>  Application windows mixed in with desktop components
>  
> Then the technical stuff we are working on makes sense.  I think there
> is a lot within the above constraints that is usable, and a lot
> unusable.

I agree the technology is fine, but we need to think in terms of
usability too, so don't hold back on the technology at all. Lets see
where the discussion goes in the future.

The idea of low-tech prototypes is to not waste too much time on coding
them but have something that can give us data. If we follow this route
then we'll be in a good situation moving forward.

BR,
 K