Creative direction of plasma

[Jamboarder]

On May 27, 2008, at 10:19 AM, Robert Knight <robertknight at gmail.com> wrote:

For example, things to discuss in that mockup include:

1. The functions to be provided by the folder view
2. The layout of the folder view, including
   - The layout of icons in the main view section
   - The title
   - The available controls and how they work from a function pooint of
view
3. Colour scheme
4. Visual effects and aesthetic 

(1) and (2) are the most important aspects to get right and this is
something which needs input from UI designers and users.  They are not
as subjective as (3) and (4) which as you rightly say, everyone will
have their own strong opinion on.  We can clearly reason about who is
going to use the applet, how we expect them to use it and what they
should be able to do with it.  From those requirements a suitable layout
can be designed, taking your input on aesthetics into account.  The list
of requirements in (1) is a textual-description and the layout can be
described using a really rough and simple black and white 'wireframe'
with no colours, gradients or other distracting effects.  
[...]
So what I really want to see happen is more collaboration on those first
two points to try to find an agreement on (1) and (2).  The developers
and artists can then work in parallel to implement it and I hope with
much less friction between the two parties.

Regards,
Robert.

As a nothing more than a lil ole plasma theme author (with 10 years of systems engineering experience in my day job) this is a well reasoned (requirments-driven) approach that would provide a clear, consistent and easily communicated framework within which I could reliably build complete, cohesive plasma themes.

Hope this helps,
Andrew (Jamboarder) Lake







On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 17:01 +0100, 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
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