[kde-guidelines] HIG meeting in Malaga, September 1st

[Ellen Reitmayr]

Protocol of the HIG meeting in Malaga, September 1st 2005

Main topics:

I.   Internal organization / Collaboration with other parts of KDE 
II.  Konqueror 
III. HIG



-----------------

I ORGANIZATION


Workgroups

As discussed in the working groups meeting 
(http://muse.19inch.net/~jr/tmp/restrict/working-groups-mindmap.png) there 
will be four working groups to enhance coordination within KDE, communication 
between parts
of KDE, delegation and funding.

In our meeting, we discussed the structure of the HCI working group:

The HCI group will be made up of the following groups:
- Accessibiltiy
- Artwork
- Internationalization / Localization 
- Usability

Each workgroup will have one representative. The representatives of each work 
group will have regular (4 times a year?) meetings with the board.


Purpose of workgroup: 
- Collect issues / requirements to assign resources (within KDE and funding)


Workgroup member:
In order to improve the coordination between the subgroups (accessibility, 
artwork, internationalization, usability) and to facilitate the 
representative's work, the subgroups have to report regularly about their 
activities. This may either happen by subgroup representatives, or by 
collecting current issues and topics in a summarised way at a publicly 
available location (e.g. wiki or forum, see below).

Additionally, the HCI workgroup needs an *active* communication channel:

- Mailing list for HCI group (kde-hci)
- We'll advertise for this list on the dot, in different mailing lists, blogs, 
etc.


First topics in this list:

- Where to collect our issues? (wiki.kde.org with restricted (only fir mailing 
list members) access?)
- Who wants to be the representative of the HCI workgroup?
- What support does the representative need? 



Contacts in KDE/QT

Another major issue was that the we need a contact in QT to bundle usability 
requirements to make sure important features are implemented in a usable way. 
Same is the case for the KDE libs. 

It was stated that the workgroup representatives will be the ones to 
coordinate such issues.



Collection point for KDE-wide usability issues 

It was asked for a collection point for KDE-wide usability issues, suggestions 
that affect the whole desktop, etc.

Jan suggested that an issue tracker would be the most suitable tool for that. 
It is currently developed, but it's not sure when it will be available. Until 
then, we will:

- discuss issues in IRC or in the usability-devel mailing list 
- summarise these discussions and file them somewhere (wiki.kde.org?)


Review of artist work

The same accounts for the review of artist work.




-----------------

II KONQUEROR


It was asked if Konqueror should be an included file and web browser, as well 
as if it should provide embedded file viewing (imageview, PDF, etc) by 
default. Its dynamic nature implies a number of usability problems, e.g. 
menus, wording- and shortcut-issues; view profiles;  konqueror as the 
mix-it-all-application.

It was already decided that with KDE4, document and web browser will be split 
up. The redesign will be usability engineered right from the beginning.

For the web browser, Firefox and Safari will serve as examples.

The Document/Content manager needs a complete redesign. It will have to be 
identified what viewing applications are needed for which file types?




-----------------

III HIG


Publication


As soon as the minimum requirements for the most important chapters are met we 
will publish the KDE HIG.

Before publication, we should think of a marketing strategy, e.g. showing key 
applications which have already converted, dot articles, etc.


API Integration

We will need to link from the API to the HIG and vice versa.


Getting people involved

For implementation notes, code snippets, technical advice:
- QT technical writers
- Todo list on the wiki which describes little tasks which can be accomplished 
by the developers

A list of 'junior' usability jobs was defined, e.g.:
- Finding application examples for the HIG
- Making screenshots
- Checking Apps for HIG compliance

These will be also advertised on the wiki todo list.











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