[wp-ui] Communication & first challenges

[Jane Wells]

Hi everyone.

#wordpress-ui chats. Since not too many people indicated time  
restrictions, I'm going to go ahead and set the official weekly chat  
time as 2pm Eastern time on Thursdays starting next week, which won't  
interfere with anyone participating in the WordPress Dev, BuddyPress  
or bbPress weekly IRC chats. I'm picking this time because if anything  
urgent comes up, I can roll it into the dev chat later that day for  
dev feedback. That's at irc.freenode.net #wordpress-ui.

P2. There will be a blog, but since far more coders than interaction  
designers responded to the introductions post here, I'm waiting to  
launch the site until people sign up for the first couple of  
wireframing projects so I'll know how many people are actually  
participating. I don't think forums in addition to a P2 would be  
useful right now, since threading will be important in following  
conversations.

Challenge #1: Right Now module on Dashboard. The Right Now module is  
pretty, but somewhat misleading. People get confused about which  
pieces of information relate to each other because of the lines and  
positioning. It evolved from the previous Right Now in 2.5, which was  
sentence style. The list format of the current Right Now is much  
better for translation, so we do not want to go back to sentence  
style. The first challenge is to reconfigure the information in the  
Right Now box (and/or re-evaluate what information belongs there) to  
be clearer, and wireframe a replacement design. Wireframes should be  
submitted by next Wednesday night so they can be discussed in  
Thursday's chat. Where/how to submit wireframes will be posted on  
Monday, as i need to work out some upload permissions first. Ideally  
people will work together and submit joint wireframes rather than  
everyone submitting their own.

Challenge #2: Better menu management. Right now the core development  
crew is working on a way to manage site menus from the admin. They  
started from existing plugins and widget code, and as a result, it  
could use some UI help. I don't want people to start from scratch and  
submit their dream model, because there's already work in progress.  
Just drop by the Trac ticket and provide UI feedback/suggestions. http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/11817 
  No timeline here, this one will be ongoing until freeze.

Upcoming Challenges: We're starting out with small things on purpose,  
as has been discussed before. As this process becomes more solid,  
we'll move on to bigger UI things like the Plugins screen, the  
Comments screen, and the Settings area. People who prove to be  
collaborative and helpful will have opportunities to lead these mini- 
projects, so please be nice to everyone and try to work together  
rather than competing.

Thanks,
jane



A footnote:
We're trying to create ways for interaction designers, information  
architects and graphic designers to contribute to core, in more  
meaningful ways than an occasional design contest. It will take some  
time to iron out the best ways for it to work, as there are other  
things of high priority being worked on at the same time (3.0 merge,  
anyone?). Anyone who likes things to be already worked out perfectly  
should really unsubscribe and check in again in a couple of months  
after all the infrastructure is up, a few design challenges are out of  
the way, and we're settling into a productive routine. If you wouldn't  
go work for a startup, then you might want to hold off on the UI list.  
Also, there's been a lot of traffic on the list suddenly about why  
this isn't a forum, etc., but as I look at the posters, I'm seeing a  
lot of coders rather than people who make wireframes and comps, which  
is, if everyone would remember, the point of this list. If we wind up  
with the kind of griping that keeps popping up on wp-hackers, it won't  
be useful, so please keep posts to UX and design issues. Thanks. There  
will be a web site going up soon, but it's part of a slightly larger  
effort, so in the meantime this list is where communication about  
design challenges will happen officially, or in the #wordpress-ui  
channel, though IRC is better for real-time collaboration that ongoing  
brainstorming.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.automattic.com/pipermail/wp-ui/attachments/20100128/4326778f/attachment.htm>