[IAEP] future of the Sugar user experience

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> I'm a bit concerned lately about our capacity to keep delivering the
> same quality in our user experience. We are seeing a big growth of
> enthusiasm in new and old members of our community to contribute to
> the development of new features but we haven't tried hard enough to
> get new blood in the design team.

You might consider reaching out to the "old blood" too: perhaps
organizing so as to make effective use of the design resources you
have.  Many of the laid-off OLPC employees are still around, and they
might be willing to spend a few hours a month or so thinking about
Sugar design, especially if the hard work of identifying issues and
transcribing and creating mockups were done by enthusiastic helpers.
And developers need not be disqualified from design work, so long as
they make an effort to turn off their implementation brains and/or get
their work polished/reviewed by someone who knows nothing of the
implementation.  Perhaps mini-design conferences could be held for a
few hours on a weekend or after working hours, with a video camera
aimed at a whiteboard, and designers could brainstorm ideas and have
them recorded... then at a more leisurely pace these could be turned
into pretty mockups or else just post the videos as is as the design
document.
  --scott

-- 
                         ( http://cscott.net/ )