GNOME Foundation AGM: Design Team update

I didn’t really have any content-packed slides to show at the GNOME AGM this afternoon, but here they are anyway for anyone who wants to relive the excitement.

The quick summary for anyone who wasn’t there:

  • Over the past 12 months, the GNOME Design Team has collaborated pretty well with folks like the nautilus and control center devs to land the major design changes that those apps have undergone in 3.0, and the GNOME Marketing team to create the new website.
  • The GDT has participated in several real and virtual events including the Boston Summit, and the GNOME User Days and -design Office Hours on IRC.
  • SparkleShare continues to rock our world.
  • GDT will continue to take a design-led, holistic approach to improving the user experience in GNOME 3.2 and beyond.
  • The new HIG… still isn’t quite ready.

It’s fair to say I did feel like a bit of a fraud talking about the design team as “we”… it’s been a while since I’ve been much more than a small and increasingly-distant part of GNOME’s usability history, and I certainly can’t take any of the credit for any of the achievements I was talking about today. (Except the continued non-appearance of the new HIG, which is partly my doing, and we really do hope to have it out there in some form sooner rather than later.)

Finally, many thanks to Jon for helping out with the presentation after a slight logistical mix-up this morning!

Usability Team Update Update

Bastien pointed out after my Usability Team Update at the GNOME Foundation AGM today that I forgot to mention another nice little project that arose directly from the UX Hackfest in London Totem Chapters/Markers support, which is being implemented by Alexander Saprykin as part of this year’s GSoC.

I was also a bit lax in namechecking some of the people I’d intended to. So as well as Hylke Bons and Thomas Wood, who I did mention, and Bastien’s mention above, kudos also to Allan Day, Mo Duffy, Karl Lattimer, Garrett LeSage, Ivanka Majic, Jon McCann, Matthew Paul Thomas, Jeremy Perry, Charlene Poirier and David Siegel who have all been directly involved in the few highlights I had time to talk about today, and to the many others who’ve contributed to the usability effort this past 12 months.

And an honourable mention to Seth Nickell for his memorable contributions to the Hackfest 🙂