[wp-ui] First steps

[Nitin Reddy]

Hi!

I'm Nitin Reddy and I'm a software developer with a firm in Dubai (GMT+0400). Although my day job involves primarily building applications on ASP.NET MVC, I develop with PHP too and build WordPress plugins. I have had to work with modified WordPress cores that I see novice developers do (and I've always moved all of what I saw into plugins), so I've picked up some experience working with the WP core. I've been working with WordPress as a blogging engine and CMS since version 2.6, so I guess that makes me relatively new to the scene.

I'd love to contribute to the UI/UX initiative and can help with (X)HTML/CSS/Javascript/PHP development. I probably will not be in the IRC rooms during the meetups due to the timezone difference but I will be following the discussions through the mailing list.

-Nitin


________________________________________
From: wp-ui-bounces at lists.automattic.com [wp-ui-bounces at lists.automattic.com] On Behalf Of Jane Wells [jane at automattic.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 9:10 PM
To: wp-ui at lists.automattic.com
Subject: [wp-ui] First steps

Hi everyone. Almost 300 people have signed up for this list, which was
way more than I expected. I'm not sure how many of you are people who
actually want to get involved and contribute to the UI/UX work that
goes into making WordPress, vs. how many are developers or users who
just want to keep up with what's going on or offer feedback on other
people's design work, so I think the first thing this list should do
is help everyone get to know who's here. Lurkers need not do this, but
if you're planning to contribute to the UI work ahead, please email
this list and tell us a little bit about you: Your work background/
current job, specific design/usability/accessibility skills/talents
that we should know about/make use of, what you hope to contribute to
WP UI, your location/time zone, and maybe the one UI thing you would
like to address in WP if given the chance. My main goal here is to
find out how many people of all the subscribers are actually people
who can wireframe, make comps, run usability testing, etc, vs. simply
wanting to weigh in with opinions on the work of others (which can
happen on Trac tickets). This list is meant to be a working group.

After people have had a day or two to introduce themselves, we'll have
a better idea of how many people are actually planning to participate
in this list for now, and can plan accordingly. I've got a list as
long as my arm of potential design projects we can divvy up into
groups, so knowing people's backgrounds and interests will help
determine which projects we hit first. We can also then decide on a
day/time for a weekly UI chat in IRC.

I'm in the process of setting up a site for this group to use a la
wpdevel.wordpress.com, and will start adding people as authors once we
have created teams and begun working on projects and there are things
to report. I'll need to know your wordpress.org login name to add you
to the site. Usability people are welcome and encouraged to speak up
also, not just designers. Getting the plan up and running for
distributed testing is on the goals list, too.

I guess I'll start. I'm Jane, and am the main UX person for WordPress.
I led the admin redesign of 2.7, and work closely with the core team
on UI changes. We never have time to get to everything, so there's
still a ton left to do. I work for Automattic, which donates a big
chunk of my time to the open source project. Before this job, I'd
worked at agencies, companies and research groups in almost every
front-end web job there is over the last 10 years. Though mostly UX
stuff, I've also done project management, content development, HTML,
visual design, testing, etc. Right now I'm a bottleneck for UI changes
in WordPress, and anyone who works in this industry knows that it
takes a lot longer to create a wireframe deck than it does to sketch
an idea, so I'm hoping to grow this group into a healthy contributor
community so that I can step back into more of a advisory/curatorial
role rather than slowing things down while I draft wireframes or
conduct individual testing sessions. I'm on the east coast, and would
love it if the weekly chat could be during the day sometime before
3pm, but if the majority needs to have an evening meeting instead, I
can work with that. I traditionally do wireframes in Omnigraffle, but
would like to find a good open source tool (the ones I've tried
haven't been great) that we can all use for this if possible. I
generally go for Photoshop for comps, and have not found GIMP to be an
adequate substitute, though I'd love to move visual design to open
source tools as well. Suggestions are welcome.

I'll be happy to answer questions, point to resources etc for those
who want to get involved. However, this is not the right place (yet,
anyway) to come if you are just getting started and want to learn the
design/UX trade as a new career move or something. I'd like to start
off with more experienced UI/UX people just to get some processes
nailed down. I hope that in the future the WP UI group will be an
awesome place to come to learn new skills.

Who's next?
Jane

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