volt | # 61 | 2010-03-30, 16:38 | Report

No. Can't you see? Engineers have N900s. Web designers have Ipodphones. That is why the powerful software is here, while the useless but pretty software is there.

Flandry | # 62 | 2010-03-30, 16:49 | Report

If someone artistic has a hankering to help, i'd welcome a better design for gweled. Here are the current pixmaps:

gweled.zip

You can make directly equivalent images that i can make available as alternative skins or create a completely new layout that incorporates the same elements. If you do the latter, please consider both portrait and landscape layouts. The actual board size could actually be increased in the latter case.

lewis_nyman | # 63 | 2010-03-30, 17:02 | Report

I thik one of the problems with some open source projects is that developers are the ones leading the project, sometimes they are only ones on the project, with no experience or training in design.

Drupal had this problem for a long time, a lot of the default themes were terrible because Drupal was/is not designer friendly.

It's not as simple as writing some code or even making some pretty pictures, you can't expect programmers to know everything a designer knows, that takes years of learning and hard work.

Anyway, I'm a web designer, I own a N900, I'd be more then happy to collaborate with someone some a project.

Send me a message.

ysss | # 64 | 2010-03-30, 17:10 | Report

The 'problem' is the motivations and incentives in open source model.

AFAIK opensource projects are not created to appeal to as big of an audience as possible, as in commercial projects. That should give an idea of how things are generally structured and what elements may be left out/de-prioritized during the development.

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Last edited by ysss; 2010-03-30 at 17:12.

m165 | # 65 | 2010-03-30, 17:23 | Report

I'm a designer and I'd be willing to help out. I have a lot of work on at the moment (uni), but if I have time, I will help any developers out, and will be able to help more next month when uni is over!

Any developers feel free to PM me, and I will see if I can help.

Missingbyte | # 66 | 2010-03-30, 17:28 | Report

I would have to say i do agree with the subject, i feel that the good coding and a sexy gui go hand in hand. I'd be happy to help any programmer with my skills, PM me

Missingbyte | # 67 | 2010-03-30, 17:39 | Report

I vote for flip clock, just think the red needs to go is all and the light grey darker a few shades

cjp | # 68 | 2010-03-30, 18:07 | Report

I kind of agree with the OP, although I'm reluctant to really point it out. I think its incredible enough to have such elaborate and powerful apps in the first place free of charge, completely done out of other users' free time.

There are, however some general pointers I could suggest that app designers look at when getting to the point of checking the UI for their app (:P):

1) Always visible scrollbar on the right of the screen is a no-no. It immediately gives the appearance a cluttered feel and besides usually the scrollbars can't be manipulated by finger, but need the stylus. Why do we have a scroll bar if we can pan the page with touch-input? I do realise that at times it poses a problem to have both text "painting" and page scrolling in the same app at the same time, but I think the scrollbar should be avoided until the bitter end.

2) Prefer using elements that can be used with your finger. This will naturally result in the following: the appearance will "open up" as it loses its clutteredness as stuff can't be stuffed into the same view. You will have to make elements larger, thus clarifying the whole look. It will also force you to hide some of the functions to other pages.

3) Relating to having too much stuff on the screen, make the text in the app bigger than 10pt and use a font more consistent with the rest of the UI. For example italics tend to strike me most as looking very out-of-place. Same goes for insisting on a certain colour for a text. Think about support for various themes.

4) Never (ever!) hide the "X" and/or "minimize" keys. Not everyone knows of "ctrl + backspace"

5) I know you want to have all the things the app can do right there on the first page of "Settings". Consider evening out the less used features behind an "Advanced" tab or button. This way the user was warned of the jungle of options coming his way.

This is just a few, but I think these ae maybe the most common "flaws" I've stumbled upon. Like I said, really loving the App scene in Maemo, but making your app functional and looking good would be an ambitious yet justified combination.

If I had to name one "example app" that's native to Maemo for how it should turn out, I would name the Calendar and Modest. The calendar has a lot of features packed into it, but still it looks good and you can get the most of its features, even if it all isn't seen at a glance. There are numerous things I would change with how the calendar works in the first place, but graphical design is IMO good.

Modest is my second picking as an example app because it doesn't really have anything fancy going for it, but its dead-consistent with the rest of the UI and pulls off showing your e-mails, e-mail settings, postboxes etc. without it feeling like a techie's app. I think Claws, Nokia Messaging/Nokia Mail (whatever its truly called) and numerous other e-mail clients for mobiles are really too cluttered to ever compete with Modest.

Does this give anyone a more "concrete" idea about what the UIs should look like?

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Last edited by cjp; 2010-03-30 at 18:17.

thp | # 69 | 2010-03-30, 18:38 | Report

Just pick an app that you think needs a better UI and re-think the navigation and layout, then use a mock-up tool (e.g. http://www.balsamiq.com/) to create a mock-up and create a new thread and discuss your ideas with the developers.

The developers will then tell you about some special cases and features that you have not thought about in your mock-up. Fix your mock-up or convince the developer that his/her idea of this feature is not optimal.

There are lots of small paper-cuts that can easily be fixed. For example, the fabulous "Desktop Command Execution Widget" has a preferences dialog. In this, there is a picker button "Update interval:" with different choices (5 Minutes, 30 Minutes, etc..). The first choice is "0" and the label below the button says "'0' disables periodic updating". That's just plain wrong - just change the label of the choice from "0" to "Disabled", and get rid of the label. It's even small things like this that you should find and tell the developers about.

Edit: Screenshot:

cjp | # 70 | 2010-03-30, 18:38 | Report

I think your project is in the clear for not being too "engineery". Nice colours, some graphical effect to the interface but nothing over the top. Sound, music... I think everything comes together well in Gweled.