On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 01:31:25PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote: > On 10/20/2009 01:12 PM, Adam Williamson wrote: > This has been the shortest Fedora release cycle yet, hasn't it? I can > relate to trying to get as much polish as possible with what time is > left with the major features under folks' belts. Not much shorter than our usual six months, actually -- although it probably seems like it after the longer F10->F11 period. > I know the schedule is important, but more times than not in the various > projects I've worked on, it's the small usability tweaks that get > dropped, the schedule is used as the justification, and it is a really > disappointing loss of an opportunity to make a big positive impact. > Sometimes, also, these kinds of tweaks do need to be made towards the > end part of the implementation cycle as sometimes initial designs for > features evolve between initial requirements, spec, and implementation - > usability tweaks you would have proposed early on aren't always > applicable anymore. > > Moving forward, for F13, could we propose a feature called 'small effort > / big impact polish'? We could brainstorm early on these sorts of > changes we might make to the desktop default configuration and enumerate > them on the wiki? Maybe if they are clearly communicated up front using > the Features page, at the beginning of the cycle, folks could get more > used to the idea / know its coming with a little less stress / perceived > risk. The 'implementation' work for this 'feature' during the cycle > would be less actual development and more doing any research / > comparative studies / usability testing needed to help make a call on them. > > In short, I don't want us to lose out on big impact polish changes, but > I also don't think the ends always justify the means. I do understand > the concern that discussing these sorts of changes openly will turn into > a useless flame-fest, but if we can apply just a little bit of structure > to that (maybe a designated feedback period is scheduled into the f13 > feature, for example) the feared flame-fest could be avoided. This seems very rational to me -- the middle paragraph above seems a bit coincident with "Fit and Finish," but that's not a bad thing. :-) I wrote a reply earlier with much the same point. I feel like the response to every Desktop change should not be "This is different! Different is bad!", and at the same time we can do a better job as a project of propagating change *notices* around in advance with just a little effort and goodwill. -- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug -- Fedora-desktop-list mailing list Fedora-desktop-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list
