Re: Reboot: Strategic goals for GNOME

[Paul Cutler <pcutler gnome org>]

On Wed, 2010-03-03 at 11:15 -0600, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 3:09 AM, Dave Neary <dneary gnome org> wrote:
>          vision for GNOME 2.x did.Back in February, I posted the
>         following - it
>         kind of got lost in the ensuing thread; but I think it's worth
>         breaking
>         out into a new discussion (marketing list CCed). Like I say,
>         I'm not
>         happy with the "vision" part of this (GNOME everywhere, and
>         invisible)
>         because it doesn't offer a destination - it doesn't help
>         anyone make
>         decisions about what's important - in the way that the
>         "simple, usable,
>         beautiful" But perhaps it's the beginning of a vision that we
>         can work on?
> 
> 
> Hi Dave;
> 
> 
> Let me update you on what the marketing team did at the Chicago
> hackfest in mid-November[1][2] since we haven't yet made
> our announcements.
> 
> 
> The most difficult thing that we did at the hackfest was to settle on
> a short-term vision for Gnome 3 which will, I think, help shape this
> discussion about medium-to-long term. Our starting point was this
> email from Vincent:
> <http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2009-April/msg00004.html>. We interpreted that directive to mean that all Gnome marketing efforts should be directed at the first point: selling users on the revamped user experience.
> 
> 
> This is--perhaps--slightly different from how a corporation marketing
> department operates: finding what the market wants and then directing
> engineering resources at that. Instead, Gnome 3 is whatever it will be
> and it's our job to take that and sell it to our audience. Here is
> what we (then) saw Gnome 3 as:
> 
> 
>         There was wide ranging discussion about what GNOME 3.0 is and
>         how much of a change it is. We talked with each other about
>         what each of the proposed technologies will bring to the end
>         user experience: tightly integrated search,
>         application-oriented window management, dynamic workspace
>         workflows, temporally oriented document location (Journal),
>         interruption suppression (message tray), and user interface
>         physicality (via window and Shell chrome animations). There
>         was also agreement that aside from "3.0" technologies, there's
>         a number of long-stewing features coming to fruition that can
>         also be emphasized: Telepathy, for example.
>         
>         
>         There was an observation that we're achieving a new level of
>         tight integration throughout the desktop environment. Think of
>         IM notifications with rapid dismissal in the messaging tray in
>         Shell. Or, think of Empathy sharing your Desktop with you
>         friend via Telepathy without you needing to open a firewall
>         port. Another example could be how both the Journal and
>         Tracker technologies (potentially) tightly integrated with the
>         Shell UI.
> 
> The following morning that was boiled down to:
> 
> 
>         First, we agreed upon the themes--the Shell, the search work,
>         the new levels of cross-application integration--all
>         substantially advance the release team's primary point of the
>         3.0 release: a better user experience.
> 
> We went through over a hundred themes before we settled on what Gnome
> 3's marketing theme will be: "Made of Easy." (Pause for dramatic
> effect.)
> 
> 
> Up until this past week, I was really happy with that. When I saw
> Seth's blog post and the subsequent press coverage, I understood that
> the Gnome 3 marketing train had just gone off the rails. What, until
> then, had been a well-defined expansion of our user experience in
> Gnome 3.0 had just been radically re-cast as what can either be seen
> as a partially implemented, half-baked version of our long-term vision
> for Gnome 3.x's usability end-game or, worse, a experiment thrust on
> our users until we figure out what Gnome 3.x will be.
> 
> 
> Let me state this clearly: until last week, Gnome 3.0 had a
> barely-achievable time frame and a well defined goal for users to look
> forward to. Today, Gnome 3.0 is looking like a repeat of GNOME 2.0 and
> KDE 4.0's marketing disasters. We are dangerously close to repeating
> history, again. Specifically, we had set expectations in the outside
> word to an achievable level before and now they are
> completely in-achievable. Gnome 3.0 will disappoint because it doesn't
> have what Ars and others mistakenly took as our plan.
> 
> 
> But we can fix it.
> 
> 
> We need to put some reality check in place on what is getting out to
> the press. Everything in Seth's posts are just ideas. They aren't
> Gnome 3.0. And they aren't going to happen in time. In fact,
> production of marketing video assets for Gnome 3.0 begin in a little
> over 30 days. We knew that there would be risk starting this early but
> the simple fact of the matter is that video production takes loads of
> time and resources; we have to start this early. And as a matter of
> practicality, there's a lot of code to write to get anywhere near what
> has been proposed at the usability hackfest and not a lot of people
> available to do the actual writing of that code.
> 
> 
> In addition, from a marketing perspective we, publicly, *cannot*
> promise anything as radical as proposed by Seth (or others) for
> delivery *after* Gnome 3.0. Here there be dragons:
>      1. It makes us look like 3.0 is half-baked
>      2. It makes us look like we're experimenting on our user base
>      3. It makes our desktop environment look unstable
> On the other hand, if such changes happen organically, so be it.
> 
> 
> Well, we have a choice between two paths forward:
>      1. we agree that Gnome 3.x is what was the plan before last week
>         and that any other usability changes beyond that are merely
>         organic and non-disruptive, or
>      2. we delay Gnome 3.0 until all the disruptive changes we want to
>         make are ready
> For better or worse, a dot-oh release is a stake in the ground: "here
> is what we are committed to." If we aren't committed to what we
> deliver in Gnome 3.0, then it's not 3.0.
> 
> 
> We need to decide, like, this week--seriously. And whatever we decide
> shapes our discussion of Gnome 4.x.
> 
> 
> [1] http://jasondclinton.livejournal.com/77635.html
> [2] http://jasondclinton.livejournal.com/78061.html
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Jason, thank you for writing this email.

I just wanted to reinforce a couple things Jason write above:

* What is GNOME 3.0?  I'm not trying to start a debate - I think I know
the answer, but I'm guessing if you asked 10 people you'd get 10
different answers.  We need to clearly articulate to our users what it
is and what the benefits are.  One of the things we discussed at the
Hackfest was who our audience was - and I believe that's current GNOME
users.  Change is hard and we need to help them understand why there is
a new interface and how it will help them.  We don't need to worry about
Windows switchers or other desktop environment users at this time.

* I think the UX hackfest was awesome - but in some ways it raises more
questions than answers.  For both the marketing and documentation teams,
we need help from the Shell team to understand what features are
in-scope that we should be communicating to our users (and documenting
in the help).

Paul