[Bf-interface] UI team scope

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hello everyone,

I got annoyed a bit about the 'tip in splash' reviews. Not that it's so important - and who the heck cares - but I really would like to see UI design work happen here on more advanced and sophisticated levels.

My last reply on the tracker thread I also post here. I hope we can settle and agree on a bit of positive focus for the team.

The UI team is new still, it has to be empowered, but also still has prove itself. We should definitely treat UI design as something requiring expertise and years of experience just like any other contribution we  want in Blender. We want high quality, simplicity, the best design possible. And we should acknowledge that merely using software doesn't make anyone such an expert - which makes the topic so difficult to communicate about.

To enable the new UI team to get involved and help them to grow and become expert, we agreed on them to help out on approved and ongoing development tasks, to help active developers with UI design. That can be for Lukas (doing new Cache Library ui), or for Viewport team (how should workflow-oriented draw modes look like), or for Antonis' Custom Manipulators (including invisible ones), or for rigging tools and depsgraph, or for rule-based wire/object colors for debugging, or a better workflow for adding Drivers, or help for Joshua with Action Fake users, .. and so on. If you're involved with Blender projects you should know what goes on. Shouldn't be too hard to find tasks in areas where everyone will be appreciating your work.

For the UI team it's also a sensible requirement to first understand how things work and were meant to work. Design-compatible solutions are much more future proof and pleasant to use than solutions that fight with it. I'd be very happy to help everyone exploring and understanding the current system, but I'm not patient enough anymore to defend it each time. Just accept it as a given. A mature designer can do that and work with it. 

We also agreed on not attempting to make everyone happy with a single configured or "default" presentation. Newbies and kids or occasional users have just different requirements than the expert users. Even the experts mind to differ. That's the 'workflow' project.

Just as design exercise example: what we could do on startup of newly installed Blender, is:

	• Show splash, in bottom it has text "New installation, what do you want?" with options:
		• Copy previous configuration (splash updates with file names etc)
		• Learning mode
		• Expert mode
In Learning mode the splash then switches to a new picture, which can be a slideshow even of tips or config choices for noobs (do you have a laptop, or mouse or trackpad or tablet, etc). Learning mode also should have the most minimal keymap possible, which we then promote as default for training and tutorials as well. If needed, customized learning modes can be configured by CGcookie or Guru for their needs.

Expert mode gives a splash with options to choose from preconfigured workflows (old fart mode, motion tracker workflow, sculpt/modeler, etc) - or Maya/Max maps , and the own saved configs.

We can also check on having splash (on mousemove or keypress) change into a tip-splash - with images even! - and with option in that tip splash to disable it (and save a config). Heck we could play animation tutorials in the splash. Or turn the whole UI in a tutorial for people.

This is just an example of work I'd encourage to see more here. Many ways are possible. But let's not be lazy. Don't easily choose the obvious (we don't need help for that anyway). Impress me I'd say. :)

-Ton-

BYW: this is what UI discussions too often resemble:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_Parkinson%27s_Bicycle_Shed_Effect


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Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute
Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands