[Sugar-devel] Sugar UI Dictator

[Michael Stone]

On Sat, 20 Nov 2010 at 09:32:53 +0000, Martin Dengler wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 12:06:56AM -0500, Michael Stone wrote:
>> P.S. - Later [...] we discovered a confusion about the mandate of
>> the proposed committee; to wit:
>>
>>   Is the main purpose of the committee to act as a UI Maintainer (e.g., by
>>   deciding which UI-related patches to merge) or is the main purpose of the
>>   committee to make UI-related decisions on an as-requested basis?
> 
> I think it is both act as maintainer and make UI-related decisions.

@Martin -- Choosing "both" seems like a bad idea to me because it:

   a) balloons the scope of the problem to be solved,
   b) shrinks the population of qualified participants, and
   c) seems likely to cause turf wars.

Instead, I would prefer to stay focused on the need for UI-decision-making that
Bernie identified in his initial email.

> It seems we're re-invented the Design Team.  I spoke with Gary Martin and
> Bernie and, despite having lost the logs of my conversation with Gary, my
> hazy recollection is that that they also came to this conclusion.

"Re-invented" is a rather ambiguous term. If you mean "defined the scope of,
winnowed the membership of, empowered, and sought concrete commitments from..."
then perhaps we agree. If you mean something else, then perhaps you should be
more explicit.

> With that in mind, I think we should just have more people actively
> participate in the design team.  I'm interested, so have put my name
> down on http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Contacts#Team_Members
> I hope anyone else interested in being active, will do the same.
> Michael Stone, Bernie Innocenti, I'm looking at you.
> 
> Gary, can you add / correct anything from our conversation?
> 
> Michael, is there anything I've misunderstood/misremembered about your
> proposal?  Would you want the Design Team to adopt your "what does the
> committee do"[1] responsibilities?

I care about the substance, not the name: the UI committee that I'm describing
has a fixed membership, offers a service-level agreement, and is answerable to
the Oversight Board. In short, it is *designed* to meet Bernie's need for
competent, respected, decisive, and dependable UI decision-making.  Does the
Design Team that you, Gary, and Bernie are thinking of share these properties?

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On Sat, 20 Nov 2010 at 08:42:42 -0500, Walter Bender wrote:
> I mostly kind of agree with this. 

@Walter -- I'm not sure what "this" refers to.

> But adding a bunch of developers to the design team will not help it
> accomplish its design goals.

Two comments:

   1. I don't see "a bunch of developers"; I see specific people (Gary, Martin,
      Eben, Christian, Bernie, ...) with specific talents, predispositions, and
      availabilities. 

   2. Of the available choices, who would you be most comfortable empowering?

> We need more designers involved. 

What is your plan for getting them involved?

(My plan, such as it is, is:

   a) to make a place where they will want to come and

   b) to develop the pre-existing skills and sensibilities of the people we
      already have)

> And we need to stay focused on Sugar's core design principles. One thing I do
> remember from your IRC discussion with Gary (I was on the edge of the
> conversation) is the need to bring the HIG up to date. While this may be
> considered tactical, I think it is strategic, in that sets the tone for all
> further actions. (For the same reason, I have been advocating for an
> architectural document from the Engineering perspective.)

First, I completely agree with you that these are important tasks. 

However, I don't see anyone willing to work on them at this time.

Do you? 

If so, who did I miss? 

If not, why is no one willing to do the work that many people agree is
important?

Might they be unwilling because they don't see how the work can be completed
successfully in the prevailing organizational conditions?

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On Sat, 20 Nov 2010 at 09:38:57 -0500, Barbara Barry wrote:
> As an advocate for Sugar in the field in my work, I'm chiming in to support
> Walter's point.
> 
> What might help Sugar is a designer who can articulate a strong design point
> of view by understanding the needs of the users and translating them, guided
> by the Sugar core design principles, into a plan for development.
> 
> Design is not a set of isolated decisions about what features to add or take
> away but how to move consistently toward a goal, in Sugar's case an OS and
> computing environment that can help children as they learn.
>
> Designers have particular skills that are not obvious. Good ones are masters
> at modeling the needs of users in astonishing detail and accuracy, and it is
> their job to negotiate the terrain between the stated design goals of an
> organization, the user experience, and the implementation by developers.
> 
> It's not only Apple that has a distinct design point of view but really any
> company that makes a product that works and grows.  So Bernie, I think what
> you were asking for is not a Dictator, who suggests, approves or denies
> features, but someone to lead by articulating the user model and helping the
> community develop it in a coordinated effort.

@Barbara -- this is a really nice description both of what design is and of the
most positive aspects of life in 2006-2008 when OLPC and its partners were
really driving the evolution of Sugar. 

In some ways, I too would like to return to those times. 

However, both for better and for worse, it looks to me like we're now stuck in
a world in which 

   * we can each give only a few hours per month, 
   * there is no central authority around which to organize effort, 
   * we meet face-to-face for only a few hours per year

and in which many harsh words have been exchanged. (Including some by me. :()

Consequently, it also seems to me that we're not really presently capable of
achieving the kind of coordination you're describing...

..and worse, that we're only going to make things worse if we keep pretending
otherwise. 

Fortunately, though, we can still work on baby steps [1]. :)

Thoughts?

Michael

[1]: Anyone else remember the "lava pit" and "duo-sit" coordination games [2]
of ages past? I'm searching for their moral equivalents here.

[2]: http://www.commonaction.org/gamesguide.pdf, p. 11, 14