Re: [Usability] CD Ripping Interface [was Re: ui-review of new modules]

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On Tue, Jul 08, 2003 at 10:48:42AM -0400, Luis Villa wrote: 
> (4) Luis reads the documentation describing what the GNOME design
> philosophy/model is. Luis then reads the document describing the
> idealized design process for a good GNOME app, which is nicely backed up
> by examples on how the usability team or members thereof have designed
> other GNOME apps (real or hypothetical) in the past. If Luis has lots of
> time, Luis reads some of the other suggested readings he finds on the
> GUP page. Luis then designs his app following those guidelines, which is
> not perfect (since guidelines cannot completely substitute for
> experience) but is a much better approximation of a good app than if
> he'd used process (3), and happened much more quickly than (1) or (2).
> 
> I realize that (4) would take a lot of time and effort on the part of
> the usability team (as did the HIG), but it's the best way (IMHO) for
> usability to become part of the GNOME culture.

So here's a concrete way to start doing this: what are the steps
involved in designing a GNOME app? Do we want to do personas?  Do we
want to do the "frequent by many" etc. grid from DFBSOTS?  Do we need
to catalog the tasks and goals to be supported?

There should be a document listing these steps. If we're doing
personas, surely we should have gnome-wide personas that people can
use or at least start from.

Perhaps there's a template document, or a checklist.

Then we need application design documents that are the outcome of
following the process, as examples.

In short, if we want to design apps there should be a process you
follow that can be done well or done badly, and people should be able
to learn that process. This allows you to have experts and novices,
and allows you to make talented novices into experts over time.

We don't have many UI specs in GNOME, and that means even when we have
a good design we have no record of why it's good. So someone is likely
to mess it up again at any moment, and every design process starts
from scratch.

Havoc