unity-design team mailing list archive

[Allan Caeg <allancaeg@xxxxxxxxx>]

That sounds more beneficial for free desktops overall.

I think, it is best to define DE-specific principles. While there are
some principles/guidelines that would fit only one DE's goal's most UX
principles could be shared across DEs.

Maybe, a DE-specific guideline would be the "warm feel" of the artwork.
As we all know, Kubuntu has a different path from Ubuntu when it comes
to this area.

Probably, the best thing to do would be to keep in mind every DE while
constructing a set of UX principles. That way, no one is left out. After
all, one of Ubuntu's principles is giving the user the option to choose
because we recognize individual tastes, preferences, and needs.

We are yet to discover other DE-specific guidelines. If someone can
mention anything other than the artwork's feel, please do.

In other news, here is my UF thread on the survey to know how users
perceive the Ubuntu UX
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1279499 . I think, this thread
will be alive for quite some time. If I think that we already have
substantial responses, I will code them into themes.

Allan Caeg

On Wed, 2009-09-30 at 23:53 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Allan Caeg <allancaeg@xxxxxxxxx>
> > Date: Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 9:11 AM
> > Subject: Re: [Ayatana] Ubuntu User Experience Guidelines
> > To: Scott Kitterman <ubuntu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> (top posting fixed)
> > On Wed, 2009-09-30 at 11:33 -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> >> On Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:59:57 +0800 Allan Caeg <allancaeg@xxxxxxxxx>
> >> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >Borrowing heavily from the format and content of Google's UX principles
> >> >( http://www.google.com/corporate/ux.html ), below is my proposed draft
> >> >of the Ubuntu UX Guidelines. Before reading it, please keep in mind
> >> that
> >> >this (very) rough draft is based exclusively on my experiences with
> >> >Ubuntu (the OS), and the community so I am encouraging everyone to
> >> >contribute what is fit.
> >> ...
> >>
> >> My immediate comment is that it would be better to focus an Ayatana UX
> >> manifesto at the Ubuntu the project level.  They are already working in
> >> Kubuntu as well as Ubuntu (the OS).
> >>
> >> Scott K
> >
> >
> > Sir, you mean, have a specific Ayatana UX manifesto that is clearly for
> > Ubuntu (the GNOME desktop) alone and another one for Kubuntu? If I
> > understand you correctly, I agree. The reason why I pointed out the
> > GNOME HIG is because of *some* differences between the goals of the
> > desktop environments
> 
> I meant rather the opposite.  I think that eventually, that would be
> appropriate, but that first take a step back and look at the higher level
> abstractions that apply across the Ubuntu project and then drill down to
> desktop environment specifics.  As I understand it, Ayatana is not meant
> to just be fore Ubuntu, but to help improve the entire free desktop
> ecosphere.  If you focus too soon on one desktop for one distribution, I
> think that vision will be difficult to achieve.
> 
> As an example, one of the points we (I'm a Kubuntu developer) discussed
> with Ayatana at the last UDS was the idea of notification consistency.  If
> my chosen desktop is Gnome and I am running notify-osd, then I should get
> notify-osd notifications from all applications regardless of if they
> happen to be KDE or Gnome.  OTOH, if I'm using Pidgin in KDE, I should get
> native looking notifications from Pidgin.
> 
> We have achieved this goal for Karmic.  After a lot of work by both KDE
> and Ayatana developers, there was enough of an agreement about the f.d.o
> notification spec for KDE to be able to integrate with
> libnotify/notify-osd and so thanks to Ayatana (and the KDE developers that
> were involved) we will have that for Karmic.  KDE applications will put
> their notifications on the bus for whatever notification system is active
> to listen to and KNotification will listen on the bus for notifications
> from any application that puts them there.
> 
> The really nice thing about this is that the KDE patches hit KDE svn for
> KDE 4.4 and the Ubuntu archive for Karmic/KDE 4.3 within 24 hours of each
> other, so we benefit now and the whole free desktop world benefits next
> year.
> 
> I believe that this kind of effort is something that Ayatana is pretty
> uniquely positioned to work on and will ultimately elevate all of us.
> 
> So yes, we need DE specific work, but we need to work at the higher level
> too.
> 
> Scott K
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana
> Post to     : ayatana@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp