[Bf-committers] Design process meeting notes - 2019.08.13

[Brecht Van Lommel]

Note we have been calling this the "user interface module", not
"design module". So to be clear, it's not some new module or team.

On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 9:17 PM Dalai Felinto <dfelinto at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> We had a meeting today about the design decision process in Blender.
> The design module was represented by William and Brecht.
>
> Participants: Brecht Van Lommel, Dalai Felinto, William Reynish
> August 13th, 2019
>
> A lot of the points here apply to the other modules as well. But since
> the design module spread throughout all Blender is important to also
> be the more clear in its communication process.
>
> Quick topics overview
> =================
> * Big picture
> * developer.blender.org
> * Buttons removal
> * Miscellaneous topics
>
> Big picture
> ========
> The design team helps us define the big picture. And this should
> always be properly documented so we can refer back to it. Without
> this, changes may be perceived as arbitrary personal preferences.
>
> When it comes to change the user interface to comply to these,
> however, the specific modules are to be involved directly as much as
> possible.
>
> developer.blender.org
> =================
> The tracker is still the place where all the design is presented.
> Though for the design process often chatting is important. It is a
> dance where we keep going back and forth between discussing things in
> our channels, reporting them back to the tracker, receive feedback
> there, and re-iterate.
>
> It is important though to keep the discussions concentrated as much as
> possible on the tracker, so they are not lost in blender.chat, emails,
> ... even if only to summarize what was discussed elsewhere. Though the
> more we can have the conversation there, more open it is.
>
> Buttons removal
> =============
> We had recently an episode where the first points here were rushed
> through leading to some disagreement on design decisions. This
> particular incident was related to the removal of buttons in the video
> sequence and text editors.
>
> This was a very isolated episode where the design behind these
> decisions wasn't well documented (and reviewed by a broader team).
>
> There is not much to add to this though. The autonomy we delegate to
> the modules may lead to surprises like this every now and then.
> Considering the sheer volume of the design team workload, I'm actually
> surprised these "polemics" don't come up more often. That said we will
> keep working to make sure the bigger picture and guidelines are more
> clearly communicated and signed of before we go down to the specific
> changes.
>
> Miscellaneous topics
> ================
> Since we were together we got over the short/medium term roadmaps for
> the design module and the current state of a few projects.
>
> 1. Video Sequence Editor, or, VSE - need a clear usability picture for
> the future. [The grease pencil team has a whole task dedicated to
> bring storyboarding into VSE, they are planning a meeting on that soon
> - T68321]
>
> 2. Collections I/O - during 2.80 we had some rough design for
> supporting I/O integrated with collections but we need to move this to
> the tracker [it is on Dalai's list].
>
> 3. Short term projects - Drag multiple objects, ... as the first
> project to follow the new module page format with papercuts and all,
> the design module has its hands full already.
>
> 4. Asset Manager - Bastien (Montagne) is in the institute. He will
> meet with Brecht about how to tackle it for future releases.
>
> 5. Particles / Everything Nodes - The current goal is to have some of
> it in 2.82. The focus is on delivering something solid as a start
> point, without getting lost on the project complex scope.
>
> 6. UI developer
>
> We once again acknowledged that we still need a dedicated UI
> developer. At the moment our UI developers are also our most senior
> developers. And we can't afford to fully allocate them for that.
>
> Best regards,
> Dalai
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