Re: [Ayatana] Ubuntu User Experience Guidelines

[Kevin Godby <godbyk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello.

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 6:05 PM, David Siegel
<david.siegel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Allan, I think you're on to something really great here, and I would like to
> work on it with you. Just a few quick thoughts for now:
> Building upon Tango and the GNOME HIG as a foundation, though, looks like an
> easy way to start but doesn't strike me as the best way. While I really
> admire the Tango Project and think that the GNOME HIG has been tremendously
> beneficial, I think we need something more ambitious, quintessentially
> Ubuntu, and probably tangential because, after all, Ubuntu is not like
> GNOME.

I think I agree with you.  The Ubuntu user experience encompasses more
than just the GNOME user experience.  There are interactions outside
of the GNOME desktop that we have to consider (e.g., startup and
shutdown, installation, package management, troubleshooting and tech
support).  Therefore, the Ubuntu user experience guidelines should be
more like to principles to follow, not specific mandates (such as
those outlined in a HIG).  What are the most important principles
behind the overall desired Ubuntu experience?

> Also, the notion that Ubuntu should be "consistent" has always slightly
> irked me. We need to be careful to choose the domain in which we exhibit
> consistency -- do we want buttons, menus, and scrollbars to behave
> consistently within Ubuntu? Do we want Ubuntu to be consistent with other
> free desktops? Do we want to Ubuntu to be consistent with popular
> proprietary alternatives? You can see how consistency quickly becomes
> uniformity. In some ways Ubuntu is inconsistent to a fault; in other ways,
> Ubuntu's inconsistencies make it great. I guess what I am rambling on and on
> trying to say is that we should only be consistent when it's good for us,
> and never when it does more harm than good :) lol

The consistency that I'm most concerned with is internal consistency
-- the Ubuntu user experience should be internally consistent.  it
doesn't necessarily have to be consistent with Windows, OS X, or any
other platform/operating system.

--Kevin