Re: [kde-artists] We need a Vision!

Am Dienstag, 11. März 2014, 23:57:57 schrieb Aaron J. Seigo:
> On Tuesday, March 11, 2014 14:55:13 Björn Balazs wrote:
> > UX always serves a certain purpose. There is no universal good or bad.
> > In order to provide consistency and hence a smooth experience for the
> > user,
> > the definition of what is desired and what not has to be made on a high
> > level. We call this a Vision.
> 
> This is sensible for specific project spheres within KDE. There can be no
> KDE- wide vision of the type you are looking for because the scope of KDE
> is too diverse. Jos, I think, touched on this but I'll expand a bit:
> 
> We have libraries for which the audience is application developers.
> 
> We have suites like Kontact and Calligra which have very specific targets of
> their own ... and development resource limitations for which adopting an
> external vision is likely to exceed the budget of. Many of these
> applications look to a broad audience on multiple platforms.
> 
> We have Plasma which is focused on providing a user platform (rather than an
> application) and has device spectrum baked into its design (as that will be
> critical to its survival in the next decade in ways that are simply
> irrelevant for many/most KDE applications).
> 
> There are other examples, but the above is enough to show that there is huge
> diversity in:
> 
> * capacity for taking on a vision
> * target audience
> * intrinsic attributes
> 
> The vision for KDE as a whole therefore must, by necessity, be broad and
> ultimately vague. A vision for a specific project (or set of projects)
> within KDE can, however, be focused and targeted.
> 
> I *highly* recommend picking a specific area such as Plasma and focusing on
> developing a detailed vision for it.

I am absolutely aware of what you say and also think that we might end up with 
a set of visions. The trigger simply is: in UX we need something we can use to 
base decisions on - so the minimal effort out of this is an UX vision if we 
cannot find a broader consensus.
 
> This will also have the happy advantage of not having to find consensus
> among dozens of teams and hundreds of contributors. Rather, you can work
> with a small number of people and generate something that works for them.
> 
> If that vision is successful *and* it has some generic nature to it, other
> projects can then be encouraged to pick it up. This reflects the horizontal
> structure within KDE. It takes time, but KDE is a very big boat and big
> boats take time to change direction.

+1. This is what I love (and sometimes hate) KDE for :)
 
> > for the vision. During this process, we plan to also again ask users about
> > the importance of different aspects if possible. Then we want to discuss
> 
> You will never reach "the users" because most of our users are invisible to
> and not in contact with us. We have regular contact a relatively small (but
> very passionate!) group of our users online (and less regular contact with a
> few more), but they are not representative of our overall user base and the
> collective skill level in things like "define a vision" is very low.

I have to strongly disagree here. True - at the moment it is hard to get in 
touch with a sort of representative sample of them - but it is not impossible 
to reach them. We do have contact to all users - because we are delivering 
software to them. On a longer term we need to hook onto this communication 
channel to reach even the harder to reach ones...

Also true: The skill to "define a vision" is low. But that would never be the 
task I would give to a user. I would rather use indirect techniques to involve 
them. Users are always good at reporting about themselves and their 
experiences. So we could e.g. ask what they associate with KDE or how KDE 
needs to turn in order to have their mother / girlfirend / ... use it. Then a 
group of experts have to turn this into a coherent vision.

> I think bouncing near-final ideas that have been cleared by the relevant
> contributor communities off of people is useful as a form of focus group
> study. Even then, it would be far more interesting and useful to talk to
> people who are *not* KDE users right now as a vision needs to do more than
> preach to the choir that already exists.
> 
> Ultimately, though, the vision needs to make sense to three groups:
> 
> * the people who will be communicating it to the public
> * the people who will be doing visual design in support of it
> * the people who will be doing the software development in support of it
> 
> It doesn't really matter how much a segment of users loves a vision, if
> those three groups are not in sync with it, it won't happen.
> 
> Those are also the people who are most likely to know what is realistic and
> of value to the technology and its audience.

The intention and choice of audience of this (cross) posting was exactly to 
get people of the groups you named to participate in the creation work. 

Cheers,
Björn
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