Category: design

The Next Step

The GNOME Project has been working hard to evolve and improve GNOME 3 since it was initially released in April 2011. We’ve made substantial progress, introducing new features, like GNOME Online Accounts, the lock screen and integrated input sources. We’ve also adjusted and refined many parts of the core UX, including improvements to the Activities Overview, the new-look Message Tray and ongoing work on System Settings. This is important work, and there is more that still needs to be done.

However, the core UX isn’t just about the Activities Overview or System Settings. There is another, crucial aspect of the new experience that we are in the process of building: core applications. And there’s one type of application that is especially important for the GNOME 3 user experience: the content application.

Content is one of the most important parts of a user experience. People care about content. Software is often just a means to get at and do something with it, whether it is the means to share holiday photos with your family, create documents for work, or play that new album you just bought. If we are going to provide a competitive, first-class user experience, we have to do content well.
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Announcing Every Detail Matters, Round 2

Details matter. Small aspects of a user interface make a huge difference. Get them right, and the experience becomes beautiful, satisfying and easy. Get them wrong, and it can be clunky, awkward and ugly. It’s only by paying attention to the details that we can raise the quality of the GNOME 3 user experience and make it fantastic.

Every Detail Matters was first run in the GNOME 3.4 development cycle, with the aim of getting the details right. We assembled an awesome crew of contributors who fixed, polished and enhanced the GNOME 3 experience, and who made a big difference to the quality of the 3.4 release.

Now Every Detail Matters is back. We’re going to be working hard through the 3.8 cycle to improve as many details as possible. Together, we’re aiming to make GNOME 3.8 the most polished version yet.

Every Detail Matters is a really good opportunity to make a contribution to GNOME. For the 3.8 cycle, we are targeting a whole range of bugs. Some are easy and good for beginners, and some are a bit trickier and will need a more experienced hand to fix. There’s something in there for everyone. If you fix just one bug, you can make a real difference to GNOME 3.

There’s a list of bugs that we are targetting on the Every Detail Matters wiki page. Thanks to the efforts of our developers, a bunch of them have already been fixed while I have been putting the list together. But we want to fix more of them. Like last time, we are aiming to resolve 20 of these issues before the end of the cycle.

We’re monitoring the Every Detail Matters bugs, and we’ll make sure that you get feedback and code review as fast as possible. So, pick a bug, and get hacking!

A Much Belated Boston Summit Blog Post

Last week I returned from a great trip to Boston, which included my first experience of GNOME Boston Summit – a three-day event that was held at MIT over the Columbus Day weekend.

Boston Summit comes at the beginning of a release cycle, which makes it a good opportunity to plan ahead and think about priorities for the next release. It was for this reason that I really wanted to be at the event this year. It gave me a chance to talk to people, find out what they are interested in working on, and figure out what I should be focusing on for the next six months.

True to its billing, GNOME Summit was an unconference: we started with a blank schedule, listed what we wanted to cover, and worked from there. I enjoyed the flexible nature of the format. Having the opportunity to shuffle sessions around on each day meant that we could adjust our focus as the event progressed.
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Taking GNOME 3 to the next level

It’s time to talk about GNOME 3.6.

I’m more excited about this release than any since 3.0. The list of major updates is impressive: new message tray, updated Activities Overview, lock screen, integrated input sources, accessibility on by default, new Nautilus. Then there are all the small changes: new style modal dialogs, bags of improvements to System Settings, a new Empathy buddy list, SkyDrive support, natural scrolling, new backgrounds, an overhauled Baobab… the list goes on and on.

Make no mistake: 3.6 is a major upgrade to GNOME 3. I’ve been testing it for a while now, and switching away from my development environment feels like a big step down. A huge amount of work has gone into this release, and it has been targeted at key aspects of the GNOME 3 user experience. We’ve done a lot, and we’ve made our work count.

So, without any further ado, let’s look at a few of the bigger features in detail…
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Report: A Coruña UX Hackfest

We had a fantastic UX hackfest earlier this week. A group of 14 contributors spent two days in the Igalia office here in A Coruña. The brought together designers and developers, and gave us an opportunity to work through some high-priority design issues.

Here’s a brief report on what we got up to.

Day One

The first day was all about files and file selection. We started with a session on the ongoing work to improve Files (aka Nautilus). This covered the role of previews in Files and how that can be improved. We also discussed how we can improve search results for files in the Activities Overview.

We broke into two groups in the afternoon, and this let us get some Serious Work done. One group concentrated on menus in Nautilus. First we reviewed the current menus, including context menus and the new gear menu button. After that we developed a plan for how to better organise them. We made some excellent progress here; I’ll be working to distill our work into a concrete proposal soon.

The other group concentrated on the file chooser. A key goal here was to ensure that Nautilus and the file chooser are as consistent as possible. The group developed a set of use cases, identified goals and constraints, and then produced some mockups. Some great ideas came out of this session, and should hopefully filter into ongoing development work.

Day Two

We switched gears for the second day. The morning was spent reviewing the new initial setup assistant which is being worked on for GNOME 3.6. Jasper demonstrated his work in progress; we identified UX issues with the implementation as well as aspects of the design that could be improved. You can read our notes from that session on the wiki.

The afternoon was spent examining search within applications. We looked at search implementations in a range of GNOME apps, including System Settings, Documents, Contacts, Files and DevHelp, noting the advantages and disadvantages of each implementation. This enabled us to write a set of design guidelines for how search should be designed within applications. We also agreed a number of changes to the current search implementations in Contacts and Documents.

The hackfest was a great success. Each of the topics that we covered are important, and we made excellent progress on each of them. We will be working up and publishing the results of the event in the future.

As ever, one of the best things about the hackfest was the opportunity to work alongside other contributors. We had a fantastic group in attendance, including impressive new contributors all of whom had a positive impact. The event was a great opportunity to grow the GNOME design community.

I’d like to thank the hackfest sponsors – your support has been invaluable.