Alexia wrote: >> so you can guess my new motto: ‘from the first week we start >> building the real thing.’ > > Developers work in iterations. When you start you have a vague idea of what its going to be, a goal, but you never know how it will make sense to reach that goal in the end. So you iterate, without polish and beauty you make a draft, test, make sure the framework is solid, etc and then go over it again. At some point you run into a fundamental issue and need to discard a lot of the underpinnings and the code above up to and including UI concepts. I am all for making UI from rough to polished. after an initial analysis phase (which takes place in the first 20% of my work) I can guide this, rough to polished, from the first week of implementation, because I know exactly what we have to achieve and where we have to go. the throwing away of non-working UI concepts happens on my piece of paper, not in code written at much greater expense (in time and motivation). but you (I mean: all GIMP devs) have to let me guide you. you have to accept and trust that I can ‘see’, ‘feel’ and judge a UI idea/concept in a minute without it ever existing in code or even a drawing. that I am able to tell you how it will work, for users, three months after the release of the software. that I can separate 977 bullshit UI ideas from the 3 that will work, and concentrate us on making the best out of them. you have to let me guide you and at this moment there is, I believe, no developer at GIMP anymore that lets him or herself be guided. > It also means that you do not wish to spend time polishing things that might get discarded - the work goes from rough to good - from general to specific and in an ideal world, so would UI and interaction design. It would start off as rough guidelines and complete in a finished product... Sofar, we have tried to make it work in reverse - that the UI/interatcion is fitted on top of a ready bit of code like a mask. And in my personal experience... That does not work. I am happy you say that. it is encouraging. UI is not a skin/decoration of back-end code. UI is the realisation of the product, in this case the GIMP project. A lot of needs from product, technology and users put a lot of requirements on the UI, which I juggle in the design of it. you notice that technology is only 1/3rd of the picture; of my puzzle. and by my experience, the UI design has also an impact on ~33% of the back-end code. if developers refuse to harmonise this back-end code with the UI design (as happens now) then the devs are implicitly shaping the UI... > It creates frustration for both sides, because we cant get the mask to fit and you feel that we disrespect your work... And that is truly unfortunate, because we really really need your insights and input and I personally believe it's of most use when it is given in form of concepts, rules, insights and diagrams rather than ready made bitmap expectations of how it would have to look... I am happy to develop and tune new methods of working, but it starts with trust. --ps founder + principal interaction architect man + machine interface works http://blog.mmiworks.net: on interaction architecture _______________________________________________ gimp-developer-list mailing list List address: gimp-developer-list@xxxxxxxxx List membership: https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer-list