[kde-guidelines] Hi! Introduction and short notes about the Plasma Sprint

[Jens Reuterberg]

Thank you! :) its both humbling and inspiring being here. You guys 
rock!
(as a side note I tend to ramble when nervous, in text and in speech so 
tell me to shut up or stop rambling if you (anyone) wants to. I wont be 
offended :) )
Also I really really think that a google hangout, a "designy hangout", 
would be awesome. Just grab a date when we can all talk "face-to-face" 
just to get some structure since it feels like I'm stepping on peoples 
toes here considering the massive amount of work being done by you 
guys are more or less unknown to me.

Also everything below where ideas that popped up during the Sprint. 
Not plans. So I'm not trying to sneak things past you guys or anything. 
Just to have that said.

Well in this case it was mostly about the systemtray - not actual "pop-
ups" (sry wrong terminology from me).

The idea was to go with Marcos brilliant work on the systemtray ... 
"box"/"window"(?) where they all share the same layout and you can 
move within it to other areas.
This combined with Sebas wonderful new calendar provided the frame-
work for visual ideas and a concept of "unification" of the desktop 
experience. 

http://vizzzion.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/clock-alpha-calendar2.png

This resulted in an idea of a unified layout - where it was divided into 
different areas. The analogy that worked for that was a newspaper 
article. 
If you look at Sebas new calendar you can notice that it has a Content 
which is the actual calendar, the date-grid and planner. At the same 
time it has a header, a Critical bit of information, where the user can 
get the most relevant information at-a-glance (Day and Month) and 
then it has an Informative bit, in this case "November 2013".
The date, "21", is simply Decorative. It doesn't add new information (as 
the date can be seen in the date-grid) but it makes it more accessible.
 
For a newspaper analogy: the Critical Information is the Header. It 
gives the user an at-a-glance bit of information about what is 
happening within the widget/app/plasmoid.
(ex. "Germans love Chocolate")

The Informative would be the Ingress where the article is summarized 
and repeated. It gives the user/reader more information than the 
header, less than the article, but you can ignore the article after 
reading the ingress.
(ex. "During a Plasma Sprint Martin Grässlin confessed his love for 
chocolate and explained the current bruha-ha in Germany concerning 
Ritter sports ingrediens")

The Decorative would be the Photo or Illustration of the article. It can 
be safely removed without ruining the article but it can also simplify 
and add "another way into" the articles content.
(ex. a photo of Martin holding a Ritter Sport chocolate bar)

The Content in this analogy would be the article in full. The "relevant-
bit"

The difference and why this needs to be addressed is that it moves us 
away from the concept of "wasted pixels" and the rocket ship 
interaction of KDE's Plasma (where everything is laid out with the 
minimum of fuss, like the dashboard of a rocket ship in comparison 
with for example the dashboard of a Prius, one is made based on the 
idea that the user is willing to learn how to use it, the other is based 
on the idea that not all users want to learn and invites the user to 
interaction and experimentation)

The relevant point is that this is not Content. This is the "surrounding 
objects" - by seeing it as a newspaper, with information being delivered 
to the user, we can set a layout blueprint that will draw the user into 
the content or deliver the relevant information to the user without his 
or her need to first scan the plasmoid/widget.
By formalizing it in an accessible way, through image examples, 
codesnippets and example plasmoids we can make the design work of 
devs so much more easy while at the same time create a "Design is 
easy but relevant!" feeling with devs.