unity-design team mailing list archive

[Frederik Nnaji <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Thorwil,

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 09:05, Thorsten Wilms <t_w_@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Mon, 2010-06-28 at 02:25 +0200, Frederik Nnaji wrote:
>
> > 2. In which of the above categories would you prefer to see
> > "Contacts".. Personal or rather Network? or perhaps a new "People"
> > category?
>
> Network is for your local (computer) network and thus no place for
> Contacts/People.
>
> Not all contacts/people a user wants or has to manage are what they
> would call "personal".
>
>
> People and Contacts are not quite the same. The first implies or
> encourages bundling of as much information as you you can get, while the
> later puts an emphasis on addresses and communication channels.
>

Contact is what we're interested here, thanks for the disambiguation!


> > 3. What do you know about the concept of "Places" and how happy are
> > you with the current implementation of it?
>
> I think the Desktop folder has great potential to confuse users with its
> special dual presence.
>
> The whole dual approach of having a single-rooted filesystem and
> "Places" on top of it presents a scary conceptual depth.
>

agreed. Yet the idea of having Places beside similar concepts such as
Address, Location and Resource is of course a reasonable attempt at spacial
organization in the mind..
I think we don't need it really..


> > David suggested we discuss specifically the integration of
> > metacontacts in Unity's launcher, so please ppl, let it happen ;)
>
> _meta_contacts? I'd prefer to call it people/profiles if it's about
> bundling addresses belonging to a single person. Hmm, there's also the
> question of how to model organizations, where you might have addresses
> that do not map to persons.
> Call it Groups if it's about collecting addresses in a mailing list or
> newsletter style.
>

okay.. i'd roll with "Contact".
Communication is useless without the concept of contact, so this would be a
milestone IMO.


On the other hand, i'm moving away from the concept of Contacts as a Place:
for the advantages the new Places will bring it might be an attractive
undertaking, yet the primary place for contacts IMO should be the human
memory, where the most valuable and important contacts are permanently being
kept alive through human social interaction.

More important than a Places > Contacts is, according to this logic, an
intelligent Contact Menu.

Ayatana already has:
* Messaging Menu
* Networking Menu
* Me Menu
* Power Menu

hopefully soon also "Contact Menu".

I envision this to become the one indicator responsible for sending messages
to single destinations. I think we can look at the general structure of
Contact like this:

User -> Contact Menu -> Contact (Contact Menu item) -> Connection
(IM/eMail/VoIP...) -> Communication

Contact should be organized after purpose.. a person who is in my "friends"
list in facebook doesn't necessarily belong into my Contact Menu.

The name Contact List suggest a different approach than Contact Menu,
because the first goal of a list is to be complete. A Menu is supposed to be
compact and useful..
let's think in this direction, is what i suggest