unity-design team mailing list archive

[Martin Owens <doctormo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Mark,

On Wed, 2009-10-21 at 11:09 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> First, we get much better collaboration and communication,

Do we? The first thing I've noticed from this experimental opinionated
stance is a tendency to alienate and frustrate people who want to
collaborate. There are people who will give up their personal visions
for yours without lots of hard data, but most of those are called
employees...

> and much better testing, if everyone is looking at the same
> experience.

Testing and experience can be brought about by standardisation of
configuration at testing time.

> We found this with Ubuntu itself - we reduced the default application
> install set to a single app for each major function

The key here is 'distribution default'. I will congratulate you on the
decision to prevent choice paralysis in normal users, insisting upon a
single application per function at distribution time is the right
choice. But this is development, this is upstream, that logic may not be
relevant. I notice that you don't insist upon one application per
function available in the repositories or launchpad PPAs.

> One of the great failings of the community approach is that it
> attracts folks who like to customise the environment to the point
> where it is "perfect for them", at which point they stop caring about
> the environment that the typical user sees.

Why is the consumer grade user more important to design development than
creative experimental people? This fight against the creative ecosystem
can only be destructive. I believe it will drive people away, hurt
upstreams, a number of side streams and limited sections of downstream.

But I have no data on that, that's just from my own principles of
inclusion and experience in trying to do the hard job of bringing
together conflicting ideas.

> In Ayatana, we'll take an opinionated stance, and we'll apply some
> common principles to the design process,

This principle isn't common, it's something I haven't seen in any other
projects, even the ones that I would aspire to with regards to design
and vision.

> and we'll live with the results.

Can you tell me what the metrics that you'll be using to see the
results?

> I have no interest whatsoever in making it possible for anybody to
> have any environment they want - we already have that.

Hmm, I can't actually believe you would say that. It sounds so,
authoritarian. To dictate what is in the best interest of the masses and
removing the choices of those who aren't believers in the one true
vision.

It certainly doesn't sound like "I am because of my community", it
sounds like "I am because of what Mark likes to see". Scary in a way.

> I'm interested in driving forwards to build a default out of the box
> experience which is as good as we can make it for the new, consumer
> user. 

So am I, Fixing Bug #1 is top priority. End users (not just customers)
are where my empathy has always been.

> Most people on this list are NOT a new, consumer user, so I'm afraid
> you will have to work hard to think from that perspective if you want
> your ideas to resonate here.

I have no technical or design problems with notify-osd, it's perfect for
me and for the hoards of people I teach Ubuntu to every week on the
ground. The discussions I've read here have been boring in a way,
because notifications aren't that interesting to me. Oh look,
information pops up; ok, move on to more important designs.

The problem I have is with the stated principles. I can't agree that
limiting choice in development is worthwhile. I think it's a confusion
between being a distribution downstream, where that is useful, and being
a project community upstream, where the same principle is a mistake.

If representatives of Fedora or Debian were to come here and provide
upstream patches to express the options they wanted to include in their
distributions default configuration; Would the project accept them with
the stated principle?

Principled Regards, Martin Owens