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.Asia 2012

This year’s GNOME.Asia conference wrapped up a couple of days ago, and it was a pleasure to participate for in the event for the second year running. The conference was been a fantastic opportunity to meet GNOME enthusiasts as well as see some existing contributors face-to-face for the first time.

It was a busy conference for me, as I was involved in three separate sessions. The first was a design workshop that me, Jon and Jimmac ran prior to the conference. This was a well attended event that ran for a whole afternoon. We began with a discussion of design process, and gave an overview the various stages we go through as a part of design initiatives in GNOME. After that, we demonstrated some of the tools that we use in GNOME design, with Jimmac showing off some Inkscape tips and tricks.

Myself, Jon and Jimmac gave the keynote on the Saturday morning. Titled ‘Beyond Dead Reckoning’, the presentation talked about the history behind GNOME 3, as well as discussing where GNOME is today and where it is going. In the final part of the talk, we presented our recent design work and our efforts to define a new pattern language for GNOME application design. We’ll be giving a talk on the same theme at GUADEC next month.

I also gave the keynote on the Sunday morning. This was an updated version of the presentation I gave in FOSDEM earlier in the year, which centred on the Every Detail Matters initiative. I think that effort contains some important lessons for how we organise our development efforts in GNOME, as well as how we can improve other outreach initiatives.

As ever, the highlight of the conference was the people. It’s always fantastic to meet enthusiasts and contributors, as well as to speak to people who might want to participate in GNOME in the future. GNOME.Asia does a fantastic job of bringing new people into the community, and deserves all our support for that reason alone.

Big thanks to the GNOME.Asia organisers – Max, Haggen and Sammy especially – as well as the volunteers who helped out on the day. They worked extremely hard to make the conference run smoothly, and did a great job taking care of those of us who flew in to give talks.

I’d also like to thank the GNOME Foundation for assisting with the organisation of the conference, as well as enabling me to attend.

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