Dear Matthew Paul Thomas, Thanks for your comprehensive reply. I appreciate it. I would have written sooner, but I've been working hard on my next batch of slideshow mockups (nope, I haven't given up on it yet) and I wanted them to be ready to show you by the time I wrote back.
Please take a look at them at http://ubuntuwtf.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/some-more-slideshow-mockups/ Though I am sincerely thankful for your comprehensive and thoughtful suggestions as to how I might channel my interest and enthusiasm, I'm feeling I'm being pulled in other directions. I'm finding, basically, that I enjoy two things: a) drawing and using GIMP to express my design ideas, and b) communicating with others, connecting people who are working on different things in different fields, and initiating and facilitating discussions. To that point, I'm continuing creating mockups for the Ubiquity slideshow. Perhaps I'll convince them to abandon building it with WebKit and Javascript, using CSS/HTML slides, and just build an old-fashioned image slideshow. That way, we could spend less time on mechanism (the slideshow), and more time on content (the slides) - sounds like a good mantra to me. I also figure, with all the Megs of space they'll save by ditching WebKit, they'll have plenty of space to design nice, luscious slides, and still fit in onto the Live CD, with space to spare. > One thing the Canonical Design team hopes to do in the next few months is publish guidelines for volunteers on how to carry out this kind of testing. I look forward to those guidelines when they are published. Until then ... since you are interested in helping Ubuntu devs and volunteers become better at design, I though I'd share an other idea of mine. Actually, it's more of a half-formed idea ... nonetheless. I think it would be great to have a website where Ubuntu devs can ask for design proposals for the projects they are working on. Put another way, it would be great to have a single website (a one-stop shop) where interested designers and illustrators can go, find a particular project to contribute to, and then submit their design proposals -- kinda like what I've been doing with the Ubiquity slideshow, but without this website. I just feel, we have had some great success in building an open source software ecosystem. Wouldn't it be great (and help Ubuntu reach Mark S's goals of making it as pretty and intuitive to use as Mac OSX), if we could foster a great open source design ecosystem? I mean, so far we have the Creative Commons, which has helped many artists license their work with open source licenses. Then we have Jono Bacon, facilitating the Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase. All that is fair and well, but I think there are plenty of people who would like to do more than just submit designs for the next Ubuntu wallpaper, or GTK+ theme. I'm sure there are others out there, like me, who would like to submit mockups as proposals for how parts of the system might look. I'd be curious to see what people would come up with - a new way of interacting with the user for: installing software, software updates, burning DVDs, who knows? And who knows what inspiration those designs might trigger? We might see a renewed interest in the GNOME community (who seem to think that GNOME Shell is a step forward), to consider new designs, new approaches. Just a thought. Again, thanks for listening, and I very much look forward if you have any feedback to any of this, or to my latest slideshow mockups. Thanks again. Cheers, Howard "Freeman" Stellar.
-- ubuntu-desktop mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
