aflegg | # 21 | 2008-01-14, 14:02 | Report

I agree; and don't worry: I'm full of faults, one or two more won't make much difference ;-)

Agreed again, but we are where we are.

Fair enough. Personally, I've raised one or two of mine there (e.g. #2564), but I'm not a user experience designer, by any stretch of the imagination.

My point was that we can rant, critique, criticise, redesign all we want in the ITT forums: but it won't necessarily do any good. ragnar occasionally pops up here, but this isn't a Nokia feedback channel.

If Bugzilla's not appropriate, how about on the maemo-developers list?

ragnar | # 22 | 2008-01-14, 14:49 | Report

Hi all.

Bugzilla is a good place for bugs, i.e. deficiencies and errors in the current implementation. It's not such a good place for future improvement ideas, because it's harder for us to comment on anything that is coming in the future and ... Well, in general it doesn't really suit the tool. Issues like the scrolling are very wide and touch many areas of the UI. It's hard to even set a bug as "fixed" or "assigned" in that case.

For instance what Sean once wrote, a blog entry about his criticisms and improvement ideas is a rather nice format, at least when there a finite number of such postings. I believe that mostly everybody here has read his well written blog entry. Especially if your blog posts itself to planet.maemo.org. Commenting to our UI blog also works in at least reaching the real designers. Maemo-developers reaches OSSO developers, but not the UI designers.

I personally try to follow discussions here, but ... Well, like everyone in our team, I'm a designer with a lot of things to do, so hopefully it is understandable that our real work has higher priority.

spidy | # 23 | 2008-01-15, 06:48 | Report

Ragnar, thanks for clearing it up all together! I was going to jump in earlier but I didn't want to get burn cause it wasn't my intension to start a bug list, rather a list of possible improvements for next versions or upgrades.

Just out of curiosity... are you one of the designers for maemo OS? If so where does the community concerns fall in your priority list?

The reason I ask is, as a designer myself I must think of the users of my product, UI issues should be a higher priority to a non-crashing bug! I still must give credit to maemo platform as it is prolly one of the most stable micro OS around! Still though improvements can still be made. And it is my hope that forums and discussions such as this one can help the development of a product that everyone can use and love.

ragnar | # 24 | 2008-01-15, 07:16 | Report

Hi Spidy. I'm a member of the Maemo UI interaction design team, so yes.

Naturally we try to serve the interests of our current and future user base. Community concerns is a rather wide topic: there are UI concerns, SW development concerns etc. Where UI issues fall in the range of suitable improvements to the device UI, they certainly fall into our priority list. The process of how new features and upgrades get selected and developed is a rather complicated one, and I don't want to get into the specifics of how that works. We play our part, but there are many other players also involved, together we try to make the best decisions.

As has been publicly discussed of being "part 3 of 5", "broadening the range of target users" etc., what the current UI and OS represents is... How should I put it, on the path of going towards what we would feel being the right UI for such a device and software platform. To take one example, what has been possible with the current UI has been limited with the current (GTK) toolkit selection. Applications like Canola are a good example of what more could be done with the UI design when we would have access to a more ... shall we say graphics-oriented toolkit.

But yes, for us serving the users is as high on the priority list as it can be.

ARJWright | # 25 | 2008-01-15, 14:49 | Report

ragnar;
Thanks for your thoughtful (and well worded given your position on the UI team) reply.

Would it be a stretch to say that the UI would have seen more development if the tools were there? If that is the case, I'm very hopeful for a considerable uptick in what comes to the table in future updates to the platform as it seems that in the past year that the attention to Linux-driven MIDs has made for some active development in tools for this space.

akd | # 26 | 2008-01-15, 14:59 | Report

I'll be glad to see a way to have shortcuts to folders located on media cards.

ragnar | # 27 | 2008-01-15, 15:02 | Report

Hi. By tools do you refer to SW development tools, UI development tools, tools as in improvements to the (GTK) toolkit?

Well, whichever , I think the development tools and the quality of the development environment has most impact on the quantity and quality of 3rd party applications available for the platform. With great tools it is easier to produce application and the quality, both SW- and UI-wise is generally better.

Naturally tool availability and quality has also some impact internally, but I would say that their biggest effect is on the community/3rd party developer side. And the attention and improvements to that area will have a positive effect especially there.

ARJWright | # 28 | 2008-01-15, 21:32 | Report

In terms of tools, I am thinking more along the lines of UI tools.
Let me ask this: I am not a developer, but have great interest in UI/UX development as its happening on the tablet; besides here, is there anyone that I can talk to that can give me insight as to what happened and is happening in regards to this area.

IMO, it would be better of me to make opinions of such an area of use if I knew better what has already gone into things. And my experience in web design might be a differening perspective that can point things out a bit differently than what may has already been considered.

----
That all being said, I was at lunch today half-sick and catching up on the Apple keynote and the IT was great. For such a browsing related task, it really did shine well. And much of what UI improvements could come in handy, more or less came out when I was using it in this element, rather than using it in other means (laptop replacement for instance).

If the browser/browsing is the central task to the tablet, then maybe the UI needs to reflect that and bring more aspects of what it means to browse the net "fuller" as a part of the offering. In this way, it won't be as compared to other devices, as its niche as an advanced browsing device will push it to be what Nokia and others want it to be perceived as.