unity-design team mailing list archive

[Martín Soto <donsoto@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Martin (and everyone):

Just a few comments on your post:

First of all, I also believe that better communication with the (technical)
community would be very valuable. Obviously, Canonical and the UI team have
failed so far in selling their work to large fractions of the Ubuntu
community and I agree that this can cause serious problems in the long (or
maybe not so long) term.

I wonder, however, what sort of approach would work better in this regard.
You seem to favor open discussion and justification of design decisions.
Interestingly enough, this is precisely what several members of the design
team (including Mark Shuttleworth) have been doing these days, by blogging
extensively about their design aims. Although I find their expositions very
interesting and illustrative, I'm not sure they'll satisfy the large
majority of technically-oriented community members.

Problem is, techies and designers tend to have very different mindsets. You
normally have designers arguing in terms of subjective criteria: For a
particular design, they try to strike a balance between a number of more or
less subjective and often competing quality attributes. This makes designs
very hard to justify, since it's rather a matter of designers arriving to a
point where they feel that, all things considered, their design is right.

Technically-minded people, on the other hand, strive for strict, objective,
black-or-white criteria for making technical decisions. They also normally
see interaction design as merely a set of technical choices. Combine these
two, and you'll probably see where the problem lies: they'll expect every
single change to be justified in clear, incontrovertible terms, and this is
something they'll never be able to get from a competent interaction
designer. This is probably the reason why, for almost every single UI change
in Ubuntu, you'll find a number of very vocal people complaining loudly, and
reacting with righteous indignation when no satisfactory justification comes
out from the designers responsible for the change.

Now, with more than 15 years of Linux experience and a PhD in computer
science, I happen to be a very technical user. Still, I'm able to see the
value of good design, and personally greatly appreciate Canonical's efforts
in this direction. I think, however, that awakening this same sense of
appreciation in many of my fellow technical users will be a very difficult
endeavor (the expression "herding cats" really comes to mind here...)

I would really appreciate any ideas in this direction, because I don't have
many. The few I have are based on my own experience: First, as an advanced
user, it is easier for me to adapt to UI changes than it is for less
advanced people to deal with the technical complexities of a standard Gnome
desktop. Second, a good design is beneficial for me and makes my computing
experience a lot more pleasurable in the long term, even if adapting to it
is annoying because of my habituation to the idiosyncrasies of previous
software versions.

Can we build a compelling argument based on these and similar ideas?

Thanks,

Martín