launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Lange <jml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

At the recent Launchpad Thunderdome in Dallas, we talked a bunch about
Launchpad's plans and some UI stuff. What's attached are the raw notes
from those conversations. Read it if you are interested in improving
Launchpad's UI.

I'll turn these into something more *useful* soon: blog posts, RFCs,
LEPs, plans, actions and perhaps even actual results.

cheers,
jml

Agenda
======

Launchpad <-> Love <-> Users

 * Launchpad in one year's time
 * Bugs and blueprints
 * QA tracking
 * Encouraging contributions to Ubuntu
 * Dashboard / Wall
 * New user experience


Launchpad in one year's time
============================

 * Doesn't make you think
   * Think about the data, not about the presentation
   * Less clutter
   * Currently has too much information
 * Fully Web 2.0
   * AJAX
   * NO REFRESHING
   * Presents information that interests you
   * "Me-centric" views
 * Powerful search and reporting
 * Unintrusize UI
 * Snappy
 * Visually slick, sexy
   * Depends on brand decisions
 * Delightful: pleasant surprises only
 * No dead ends
 * No OOPSes, crashes
 * Decent notification to some users


ACTIONS
-------

 * Resolve branding
 * Turn into tools for UI reviews & development
 * jml & huw to thingy an AJAX policy
 * Identify reference examples



What are our problems?
======================

 * Confusing navigation
 * Advocating against opinionated developers
 * Changes / new features should be highlighted
 * Think about psychology of changes / rollouts
 * There should always be a next step [Close the loop] [UI principles]
 * Bug tracking doesn't fit design team


Activity walls
==============

 * Why?
   * Give an impression of activity
   * Enhance serendipity
   * Unified view, rather than per component
   * Removes need for some kinds of searching

Random ideas
------------

 * Clustering
   * Grouping similar events
 * Announce "milestones"
   * e.g. one a certain percentage has been reached, announce to wall
 * Personalization
   * e.g. don't show me any more of these
   * Mute bits that aren't interesting
 * Arbitrary posts?
   * Would replace / merge in announcements system?
 * "Like" <--> "Thank you"
 * Push / auto-update (NO REFRESH)
 * RSS / ATOM
 * Stuff I'm subscribed to


ACTIONS
-------

 * The first step is for someone to take the events we already have and
   provide a way for grouping them in one chronological view


Dashboards
==========

As many ideas as possible
-------------------------

 * Bugs in progress
 * Bugs assigned
 * Bugs that affect me
 * Bugs that block me
 * Reviews I need to do etc. (+activereviews)
 * Bugs reported / affecting *that are incomplete*
 * "Things to do"? "Things you are interested in"
 * See translations that need review that you can review
 * Failing builds
 * MUST DO vs COULD DO vs WAITING ON
 * Mailing list moderation
 * Team membership requests
 * Polls awaiting your vote
 * Notifications from Launchpad
   * e.g. downtime
 * For administrators, project moderation etc.
 * Nominations for release
 * Work items
 * Questions that need info
 * Feedback requests for blueprints
 * Questions assigned
 * Key dates (milestones, sprints)
 * Milestones
 * Open branches
 * CVE requests if security contact
 * Derived data that we could show
   * Bug statuses over time
   * Branch statuses over time
   * MP statuses over time
   * How much karma I earned (recently)
   * Achievements
   * Progress indicator
   * Comparison to average "velocity"
     * e.g. "13% above your personal average"
   * Translation progress over time
 * What's the difference between team & individual dashboard?
 * What's interesting to me across Launchpad?
   * Stuff about me
   * Team
   * Project, distro, distroseries
   * We could...
     * Replace home page for logged in users
 * What projects do I work on?
 * Design my "global" (root) dashboard
   * Include "How popular is Launchpad" stats
   * Search!
 * Person pages (e.g. "/~jml") become a profile
   * Need to think about anonymous vs logged in
 * Where do team dashboards hang?
 * Avoid clutter
 * Activity walls
 * People who work on X also work on Y
 * People who work on X and are in the same city
 * For each $THING
   * About this $THING
   * What's happening on $THING
   * What can I do on $THING
 * In general, TWO AXES
   * Area: project, distro, source package, global
   * Subject: me, team, other person, global


Tracking QA in Launchpad
========================

 * Don't want to burden other projects in Launchpad in with overhead of QA
   widgets

Options
-------

 * More statuses
 * Separate QA fields on bugs
 * Separate entity / process for doing QA

References
----------

 * Bug #2297614