On Friday 20 November 2009 16:38:33 Ian Clarke wrote: > My wife Janie, who (among other things) is a GUI designer, may have some > free time over the next few months, and I'm trying to persuade her to > attempt a ground-up redesign of Freenet's UI. She has built UIs in GWT > before (to critical acclaim within her company), and I think this would be > a good route for Freenet too. > > I think our current problem is that despite our best efforts, the current > UI is built "from the code forward", rather than "from the user back", and > as such I think it is fundamentally flawed. Despite how much we try, I > think it is very difficult for us to put ourselves in the shoes of an > ordinary Freenet user, we are already too immersed in the concepts and > jargon of Freenet. > > The answer I think is a completely fresh perspective from someone that is > unpolluted by existing Freenet concepts and jargon, who can focus on the > user's needs to get stuff done, rather than our need to expose > functionality. > > Janie has asked if we could put together a document describing the "use > cases", basically the tasks that should be achievable from Freenet's UI > from the user's perspective, but *not* simply a list of the > functionalities that must be exposed. > > I've started a collaborative document here, all are welcome to contribute, > but please read the notes at the top: > > http://etherpad.com/5GB8lyh5qD > > Ian. >
If this can help, I sent a message some times ago. Here it is: Hello, I felt bored tonight, so I wrote this. This is just a beginning, but in order to have a good UI, we need to adress those questions with all the attention they deserve. In particular, the raison d'etre (why a new UI?) and the model of the user (what is our target audience?). FREENET UI => Raison d'etre: "To allow the user to access all (or the more of) the services provided by a Freenet node. Current limitations: - A lot of users complain about Freenet being complicated to use - Some menus/sub-menus contain too many elements, when other contain too few - Some informations presented to the user are complicated, and make him ask a lot of questions - Some informations presented to the user are related to the node's internal logic - Feel free to complete Success criterion (measurables): - Users complain far less about Freenet being complicated (Freenet loses its image of a complicated software) - Users are capable to accomplish all the action they want in a small time (we can ask a user to do some action an measure the time it takes for that (both in old and new UI), ...) - Feel free to complete" => Model of the user: General knowledge: The user can read/write his own language and perhaps english. He knows how to use a computer. Knowledge in the application domain: Weak: the user only knows the basics : some general vocabulary, no technical detail. Do not know any specific terms. Computer skills: Basic +: the user knows how to use a computer and may have already used some P2P softwares before. Mostly run windows and is used to basic actions. Feel free to complete => Activity modeling: Here we need to do some polls, ask people on irc, if possible watch them using freenet. We could also refer to the state of the art: we're not the only p2p application, and even though freenet is different, I'm sure we could reuse some things. SO, we need questions to ask in order to know what peoples do on freenet, and how they do it. If we can get some scenario from existing users (in our target audience), it would be also great. I stop here for now, since this point also depends on the two previous ones. If you have any question, please ask :) Regards, Dieppe P.S. : I have to say that it's been a while since I didn't go to the channel or saw message on frost (I'm waiting for Freetalk for that ;)), so I may have a truncated view. _______________________________________________ Devl mailing list [email protected] http://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
