ulc-devs team mailing list archive

[Thibaut Brandscheid <randaltor@xxxxxx>]

Hi all

Last week I was pretty busy, here are my design thoughts.

2011/11/26 Frederik Elwert <frederik.elwert@xxxxxx>

>     1. What categories make sense for our lens? (Categories are the
>        sections the main dash view provides for displaying results,
>        like “most used apps”, “installed apps”, and “downloadable apps”
>        for the application lens.)

1. Online Contacts (what if nobody is online - empty first category???)
2. *Attachments & Links* (would display attachments and links the user has
recently sent or received through mail or IM)
3. All Contacts

About Attachments & Links:
Unconventional, but could be a very useful category. This is only possible
in the Dash. The Dash displays information from a global perspective and
not from an application centric perspective, so why not take the chance and
merge useful contact related information and present them to the user?


    2. What filters make sense for our lens? (Filters are those items
>        in the unfoldable right-hand column used to limit search results
>        by certain criteria.)
>
In addition to Frederik's ideas, I would like to suggest an
organization/company filter (maybe a city filter, too?).
I don't know if a company filter is already covered by the group or
category filter, but, if not, it would be helpful for people working for a
bigger corporation to be able to see *all* contacts aligned to company XY.


    3. How to display results in the dash?
>
I'm one of the 'Community Proposed Unity Design' authors, the idea of
displaying contact information directly in the Dash was to show contact
information as fast as possible. Since it is not possible (right now),
let's use GNOME contacts - as suggested - *but add to the Dash output →
Icon + Name + Mobile number* (if the Dash supports line breaks).
Let's use the vertical renderer.

An other idea I had last week was to display the *user-and-I activity* by a
colored bar at the bottom of the user icon (green, orange, gray). This
feature would allow to get a quick overview on the sea of Dash icons
(negative: it would reduce the overall image size of the icon).
green = active, a lot of communication
orange = medium
gray = no communication for at last e.g. 6 months

If we are able to receive user activity data, it would be consistent to
include it as Dash filter, too. Like the file size feature in the files &
folder lens, it would be possible to display only contacts that match a
specific activity like: don't show inactive (grey) contacts or show only
active contacts.

    4. Which actions to perform on the contacts?
>
To start with, let us use GNOME contacts.


I edited an old Dash mock-up to better visualize the suggested changes:
Mock-up <http://ubuntuone.com/6olUeVcBZFbSOnWhDaO4XS>

I don't know if my suggested ideas are technically feasible. Lets think of
what would be cool, then of what we can get. Ideas like to grow, your
invited to evolve them further.
:)

Thibaut