Creative direction of plasma

[Michael Rudolph]

On Tuesday 27 May 2008 18:01:36 pinheiro wrote:
> A Tuesday 27 May 2008 15:24:59, Michael Rudolph escreveu:
> > Hello everyone,
> >
> > some of you might have followed Riccardo's discussion with Aaron
> > the other day. It was about some issues with plasma themeing and
> > how these could be resolved. The consensus seemed to be, that
> > plasma needs more creative direction; it was even talked about a
> > creative director. Well, I hope we don't need a creative director.
> > I hope, we all can give creative direction to plasma. There are two
> > reasons, that together make me hope that.
>
> Think artistic direction is a good thing, but everybody maust agrea
> on that, and agrea that design is more than  "make it prety" and will
> have impact on the features presented to the user and how the user
> interacats with them. Any way I think plasma dosent need that, If any
> plasma developer wants design help in a given plasmoid you know were
> to find us. :)
>
> > First: everyone, who's involved with plasma needs to understand
> > what plasma is about. It's definitely not just about not having
> > icons on the desktop. Plasma is so much more. And everyone needs to
> > understand that, no matter what aspect of plasma they are working
> > on.
> > That's why I'm writing the plasma vision statement. It's an effort
> > to spawn a common understanding of what the problems are, that we
> > together try to solve with plasma. After all, KDE3 was a really
> > good desktop environment, so why are we all doing this, anyway?
> >
> > And secondly, it is my believe, that the number one sign of a great
> > user interface is, that the innocent user will not even realize
> > there is an interface.
> > After this really easy (or was it extremely hard?) design principle
> > is understood, everybody in our community of creative directors
> > should be able to give constructive criticism, as to whether a new
> > feature, artwork or otherwise, is too intrusive and tries to push
> > itself past a user's content (which is the only thing, that should
> > stand out on the desktop).
> >
> > Of course this meta discussion is rather useful. No, wait: rather
> > useless :-) And the plasma community has proven itself to be rather
> > immune to this kind of talk, so I will try to come up with some
> > more concrete examples that can be discussed during the next couple
> > of days. Probably as part of the discussion of scenarios that I
> > promissed earlier. Also, nuno said he would like to bring some
> > mockups to the table. Exiting times lie ahead.
>
> the mock up :)
>
> http://nuno-icons.com//images/estilo/imagefolders.png
>
> Ok this is a frist try at the desktop folders issue, notmart
> presented me the problem yesterday and we talked about it for some
> time, the idea we had is nifty i gees and goes in the linne of what i
> have read in anma blog. wen you drag an icon in to desktop you get a
> pop up asking "where should I put this"?
>
> the asnser would depend on the options available
>
> example:
> Peter has 3 difrent types of folders in is desktop
>
> odf named work , normal, named files and image, named my pictures.
>
> Peter drags a small movie clip from is camera int the desktop.
>
> the folowing options are presented to him......
>
> copy to files
> create a new folder for this file.
>
> peter decides to create a new folder and he choses video type of
> folder and names it "my cat movies".
>
> Peter is one happy boy.
>
>
> We also thought about making the folders colapsable in to some sort
> of folders container taht you can mouse over and see the items in
> each folder in some sort of screolview.
>
> > michael
> > _______________________________________________
> > Panel-devel mailing list
> > Panel-devel at kde.org
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/panel-devel

Hello nuno,

wow, that was fast.

But if I may speak freely: no, no, no!

This is just the most beautiful version of everything, that plasma needs 
to overcome.

We need to ask ourselves the question: What is it, that the user really 
wants to do? And how can we use the technology that is currently 
available, at the beginning of the 21st century (and specifically in 
plasma, prior to the 4.1 release) to ease the user's way to achieving 
their goals?

I like the lower folderview, in which you display a screenshot of an 
actual document. But why don't we just get rid of everything else 
around it?
I've been talking about "no interface" being the "best interface" and 
I'd like to explain that, using this very example:

Everything besides the document itself is useless, or as others might 
say: everything else is administrative debris. Your ODF document is the 
plasmoid. It's not just an entry in a list or a tiny icon in some 
gridview. It's the content itself, it is the very thing you are 
interested in. It would have small left and right arrows superimposed, 
so you could flip through multi page documents. Of course it shows the 
applet handle, when you're touching it. So when you need a closer look 
or need to get it out of the way, you can resize it. And you can move 
it. Drag it on the printer plasmoid to print it, to the trash plasmoid 
to delete it. Drag a note plasmoid onto it, to annotate it.
To edit it, you might have to double click it and open kword. But 
actually the idea is to just start typing, because the document is 
kword.

In terms of interactions with other plasmoids (I already mentioned trash 
and printer), I'd like to stack my content. But interactions are 
confessedly tricky; I have some ideas, but the important part for me 
here was to tell the story of "no interface".

I hope, I could make myself clear and I'd be glad to hear your comments.

michael