launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Barry Warsaw <barry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Feb 05, 2010, at 08:57 AM, Brian Fromme wrote:

>As you probably know by now, our UI design expert, Martin Albisetti, has
>taken a new job within Canonical.  This leaves us with the need to make a
>major change in the way we deal with UI reviews.  I have met with Iain
>Farrell, the project manager for the Design group.  We have agreed to be the
>points of contact for UI review requests from Launchpad to the Design team.

While I'm pretty sad to see Martin go (our loss is U1's gain!), I'm glad we're
being proactive about addressing the continuing need for UI reviews.

Martin had started the process of training new UI reviewers.  AFAICT, Michael
Nelson is the only graduate from that process[1].  I believe Curtis was being
mentored for graduation and a few others of us had the ability to do UI
reviews if backed up by a second review.  How will this change now?

I wonder, does it make sense to put guidelines in place for UI reviews based
on the "size" of the user interface change being proposed?  Almost every
branch affects the UI in some way, but trivial changes need less review
bureaucracy than medium size changes, which again need less design team input
than wholesale feature development or redesign.  I think it would make sense
to try to classify design reviews along the lines of who needs to be involved:

* No UI involved, so no additional UI review needed
* Code reviewer alone can sign off on UI change
* Two UI mentats are required to sign off on the change
* A graduated UI reviewer must sign off on the change
* The UI design team must sign off on the change

Of course, branch review is usually too late for the UI design team to be
getting involved, so guidelines about how and when to engage them early are
also needed.

Ultimately, we want as little overhead as possible, but enough to ensure that
Launchpad has a consistent and constantly improving user experience.

-Barry

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