launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Lange <jml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
...
> The top 3 themes:
>
>  * speed, in many aspects
>  * reducing downtime
>  * confusing ui and discoverability of features
> I know great progress is being made on the first two.  Perhaps the new UI
> designer being recruited will help bend the curve on the third?

I certainly have high hopes.

However, I'd like to add a few clarifying remarks:

The new position is a visual design / HTML+CSS+Javascript combo. This
is separate from interaction design, information architecture and the
like, although one naturally bleeds into the other. If you think of
http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf, Launchpad has lots of
room for improvement at each layer, and our new hire will be looking
primarily at the top two layers[1]. Well, that's the plan anyway. Once
the battle actually starts, we abandon the plan and go with whatever
works best.

However, there are two other important things that we are starting to
do *now* and that we can do more which will also help bend the curve,
at least for our new development: user testing, and time spent on
polish.

User testing is a fantastic way of identifying all of the clicky,
confusing parts of any new UI. It's cheap, relatively simple, can be
done by anyone (although Matthew Revell has got a fair bit of
experience and can certainly help), and so far has always been worth
it.

Spending time on polish is *also* worth it.  The time is there.  It
doesn't matter how big the backlog is or how long the feature has been
in development, what matters is making it a joy to use.

jml

[1] It's my job to deal with the bottom two layers.