Re: [ui-best-practices-working-group] UI Best Practices Working Group Pr

[Kevin McGuire <Kevin_McGuire@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

The activities listed (UI Post-Mortem,
Show and Tell, Polish Review) are good practices for any group to follow.
 Its great for us to document them and provide direction.  We
need however to provide more written motivation on why they are worth spending
time on.

The issue I am struggling with though
is whether or not the UI Post-Mortem and Polish Review should be made mandatory
as the wording presently recommends. 

Either a team cares about usability
and UI polish, or they do not.  If they do, but they are having difficulty
achieving this goal, then the Working Group can provide guidance in the
forms of best practices (such as those below) and informal peer review/feedback.
 Up until now there has not been a forum for discussing UI issues
in Eclipse.  In this case the role of the Working Group as a peer
group is quite clear to me and good.  The number of people already
on the call suggests that the interest and motivation is there.

If they do not care, then making the
steps mandatory is only an administrative annoyance which will likely be
checked off in the most efficient manner.  A review alone will not
provide quality, either because the review itself may not be done particularly
well, or because the few items it brings forth may never be acted on.  You
can't mandate caring.

Not only will these steps not necessarily
produce usable quality UIs, but the contrary is also true: good UIs can
be produced without following these steps.  In WebSphere Integration
Developer, we never did a formal UI Post-Mortem as outlined, nor a formal
UI Polish Review).  We nevertheless achieved high degrees of usability,
finesse, and innovation by making UI quality central to the tooling team's
thoughts, with design and review occurring constantly throughout the iterative
cycle.  IMHO this is the best way to address UI issues, by baking
it into what is done on a daily basis.  By contrast, the recommended
mandatory steps only address two phases in the development: the end-game
(where frankly only surface usability issues can be addressed) and planning.
 A good start certainly, but not the whole story.

I think that raising awareness around
UI quality is a great role for the Working Group.  In that sense,
I can understand the motivation for making these steps mandatory.  And
I can see that by making the outcome public, visibility and thus pressure
is put on the groups to improve their usability.  I am uncomfortable
with them being rules, but perhaps that's just my personality <grin>.

I believe this issue of creating mandatory
process steps is central to what we believe the role of the Working Group
is.  I missed the first half of our last call so maybe I just missed
out on this discussion.

Cheers,
Kevin McGuire
Eclipse UI Guy

"Bob Fraser" <bfraser@xxxxxxx>
Sent by: ui-best-practices-working-group-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx

10/06/2006 06:25 PM

Please respond to
User Interface Architecture Working Group

To	"User Interface Best Practices Working Group" <ui-best-practices-working-group@xxxxxxxxxxx>
cc
Subject	[ui-best-practices-working-group] UI Best Practices Working Group        Proposal to the Planning Council (Draft)

Here is a draft of the proposal to the planning
council.  Comments welcome.
 
 
The Eclipse User Interface Best Practices
Working Group wishes to make a proposal to the Eclipse Planning Council
to encourage the participation of the project groups in the activities
of the working group.  We believe this will improve the usability
and user experience in and across the projects making up the simultaneous
release.
 
Background: The EMO was instructed by the
Board to facilitate the creation of a working group to focus on usability
and UI in Eclipse.  This has happened and the User Interface Best
Practices Working Group has the charter to help improve the usability across
the Eclipse projects that are part of the simultaneous release effort.
In addition to updating the Eclipse User Interface Guidelines, the group
will also participate in and facilitate the following activities to improve
the user interface experience:

• Trigger usability post-mortems to be performed by the different projects
• Conduct regular "show and tells" with UI leads from the projects to shed spotlight on problem areas and promote good ideas as best practices
• Do an end of release UI review and come up with a cross-project list of polish items

The wiki for the working group can be found
at: http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/User_Interface_Best_Practices_Working_Group
 
And a detailed description of the activities
can be found at:
 
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/User_Interface_Best_Practices_Working_Group_Charter_Related_Activities
 
Proposal: The User Interface Best Practices
Working Group wishes to propose the following items:

• The group requests that the Planning Council makes the output of the usability post-mortems a requirement for participation in the simultaneous release.  Specifically, that the projects shall hold usability post-mortems and a prioritized list of usability issues to be addressed shall be posted on the project wiki.
• The group requests that the Planning Council recommends that the projects participate in UI show and tells with the goal of sharing information on UI best practices and challenges.
• The group requests that the Planning Council makes the output of the UI Polish Review a part of the release exit criteria. Specifically, that the projects shall hold UI Polish Reviews and a final fix list shall be posted on the project wiki.

We thank your consideration of this matter.

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