[Kde-pim] Kontact Touch GSOC Project

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi Michael,

On Thursday, April 25, 2013 19:59:18 Michael Bohlender wrote:
> Considering your feedback I tried to find a project approach that achieves
> two things: 1. Lots of experimentation on the UX side as Thomas (and I) 
> want to use this project to evaluate current Plasma Active UI/UX
> possibilities. 2. A stable/fast application because I don't want to invest
> a summer just to produce something that can/will not be used by anybody.
> 
> So my idea is to use the first half of my time to experiment and produce a
> prototype that can serve as a bases for further UI/UX development for
> Kontact Touch. And use the second half to work on Kontact Touchs codebase
> doing cleanup and gradually port things of the prototype over.This way, the
> results of the second half could be gradually reviewed and merged like it
> was suggested. 
> I think this is a good tradeoff. What do you think?

I don't think this will work very well. You'll just notice you'll run out of 
time towards the end, you might be able to get some useful stuff in, but you 
likely won't be able to finish this way. It's just another way of postponing 
the hard work.

Better: Do design mockups and "getting dirty in the code" simultaneously, SoC 
gives you 40 hours a week, split this up, do 10 hours of design and 30 hours 
of coding / merging each week. (The 10 / 30 split is somewhat random, for me, 
design takes much *actual* sitting down than coding, but needs more "letting 
ideas simmer and become clear". For both parts, pick the ones first that are 
relatively independent from each other, then get the working areas closer 
together / move to bigger pieces. There are enough of the smaller "port the 
use of this item to PlasmaComponents"-style tasks.

This setup also prevents you from going overboard with design, but makes sure 
you're actually working on something achievable. Moreover, you'll want to see 
your design in action, and you want to iterate over it a few times. Pure 
waterfall sucks in that regard.

So, instead of doing en entirely new UI for Kontact Touch, which might be well 
beyond what's possible, try to concentrate on smaller pieces: Do a design 
session on the left-hand-side flap, investigate the mail list, etc, and then 
implement fixes for those. Your current proposal is I think too ambitious and 
bears the risk of never being finished.

In short: Don't redesign, but improve bit by bit, both in design and in code.

One thing that should be added to your proposal is deployment: Thomas won't be 
able to even have a look at your work if you don't update packages on Mer OBS. 
That doesn't have to be a lot of work, but should definitely be part of your 
proposal.

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

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