Category: gnome

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.

Pre-GUADEC Reflections

I’m looking forward to this year’s GUADEC. I missed the one last year, so it’s going to be great to be back. As usual, there are lots of people who I’m looking forward to seeing in person, including both established and new contributors.

GUADEC 2012 could be an important one for GNOME, I think. These are interesting times for our project. GNOME 3 is only 16 months old. This year’s conference is, somewhat remarkably, GNOME’s first since 3.0 was released in April 2011 (what with last year’s conference being a Desktop Summit).

GNOME has come a long way since the initial release of GNOME 3. We’ve worked hard to refine and extend our new user experience. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that almost every part of GNOME 3 has been improved. On top of that, we’ve also introduced a stream of new features that complement what we released for 3.0.

The most important development since the release of GNOME 3.0, in my opinion, is that we have started to articulate a new vision for GNOME applications, and we have initiated a range of application development efforts as a part of that. We have new applications in the shape of Documents, Boxes, Contacts, Clocks and soon, hopefully, Calendar. We also have redesigned applications like Epiphany (now called Web) and Nautilus (now Files). This effort to articulate a new vision for GNOME applications represents nothing less than the future of our project.

But we live in competitive times, and the GNOME 3 effort is an ongoing one. Thinking about where GNOME is right now, my view is that the project faces a number of crucial challenges which it needs to take on if it is going to succeed.

First, we need to evolve how we work in order to ensure the quality of the GNOME 3 user experience. Quite simply, we have to raise the bar. GNOME has to ensure that new features are successfully executed, and we have to maintain a high level of quality across our entire user experience.

Second, I think that we need to establish a strong vision for GNOME 3. All too often, we see the GNOME UX as a collection of parts, rather than as a consistent and integrated experience. This needs to change – to create a high-quality user experience, we have to think of GNOME 3 as a product. That requires a unified design for our core applications and a complete experience that has no missing pieces.

Third and finally, a big challenge for GNOME right now is how we talk about our project. We need to articulate an effective and powerful value proposition for GNOME. My personal view is that GNOME has an incredibly compelling story to tell, a story that can motivate and direct our efforts as contributors, as well as those of our partners and supporters. We need to tell that story in a concise and arresting way, so that people can easily understand and relate to our goals, and so that we can effectively direct our activities as a project.

In my mind, these are the critical areas which we need to address if GNOME is going to succeed. (There’s actually one more that I would include in that list – that’s something that me, Jon and Jimmac will be talking about in our GUADEC presentation.) The good news is that this year’s GUADEC shows signs that the project is rising up to these challenges. We have a UX Hackfest taking place, talks about how the UX relates to the OS, about testing, and about the role of design in GNOME. We also have BoFs planned that will discuss new feature initiatives and the future of GNOME. Together, these events promise to help us come up with solutions to the challenges we face.

GUADEC is our opportunity as a community to get together and talk about the issues that matter. Let’s make this one count.

UX Hackfest next week in A Coruña

I’m really happy that we will be holding a two-day UX Hackfest prior to this year’s GUADEC conference. It’s been a while since we’ve had a UX Hackfest, and this was a great opportunity to get people together.

This cycle is turning out to be incredibly busy, and there’s a lot of major features in the pipeline, including the lock screen, new input methods integration, message tray design updates, a reworked activities overview, updated designs for System Settings, Nautilus and Contacts, integrated application search, and a new initial setup assistant.

We’re holding the UX Hackfest to help us get on top of these feature initiatives and make sure that they are executed to a high standard in the next GNOME release. I’ve tried to keep it small, since this tends to be a better format for doing design work, and will help us to make speedier progress through the long list of things we want to work on.

I personally feel that events like this can play an important role in helping us to drive up the quality of the features that we develop for each release. There’s nothing like sitting down in a room to review work in progress and figure out what needs to be done. I hope that we can have more events like this in the future.

Another really nice feature of the hackfest is that there will be a mix of new and old faces in attendance. In addition to core design contributors and hackers, there will also be some cool interns helping out, including Fabiana Simões, Meg Ford, Giovanni Campagna and Anna Zacchi.

Igalia are generously hosting the hackfest in their A Coruña offices, and the GNOME Foundation is playing an essential role by supporting attendees. I’d also like to thank my employer, Red Hat, for enabling me to participate.

Update: I’ve just heard that Red Hat will also be sponsoring this event. Thanks Red Hat!

GNOME Design Update, Part Two

I left it too long to blog about what’s been happening in GNOME design, and I’ve been left with a backlog of things to tell everyone about! In my last post, I wrote about the work the GNOME designers have been doing on the core user experience, including things like the lock screen, notifications, printing and scrolling. In this one I’m going to review application design efforts, as well as work we’ve been doing around application integration.

Application development is a major focus for us in GNOME design. We recognise that GNOME needs new, updated applications, and we’ve been making good progress in that direction. GNOME already has some new applications in the shape of Web, Documents, Contacts and Boxes. Others are starting to emerge, such as Photos, Videos and Clocks. Not only are we assisting in these ongoing application development efforts, but we are also designing other new applications, and we are also working on improving the integration between applications and GNOME 3.

Here’s our recent application work.
Continue reading GNOME Design Update, Part Two

GNOME Design Update, Part One

As always, the GNOME design crew have been hard at work of late. We helped to drive many of the changes you can see in the last GNOME release, including a new color picker, updated application designs, new scrollbars and updated spin button widgets. We haven’t taken our foot off the gas though, and there’s plenty of work to report.

It’s an exciting time in GNOME design land right now. GNOME 3 is a big undertaking: we’re working to improve the entire experience, including everything from interface widgets and controls, through to applications and the core user experience. But we are making good progress, and more and more pieces are slotting into place. Slowly but surely, the design of the overall experience is starting to take shape.

It has been far too long since I’ve posted a GNOME design update. In fact, it’s been so long that I’m dividing this update into two. In this first part, I’m going to detail design work that is focusing on the core GNOME user experience. The second post will cover application design updates, as well as application integration. I’ll post that update in the next few days.

Excitingly, many (though not all) of these new designs are planned as features for the next GNOME release. If you want to help implement any of these designs, just get in touch.
Continue reading GNOME Design Update, Part One