Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: More general stuff

[Preamble: After finishing this mail, I've noticed Bernhard's reply
concerning the same topic. I'll send this mail anyway ... I hope you
don't mind.]

Hi all, especially Nik!

First and foremost: sigh. I had hoped to avoid that kind of situation
that some more people get upset ... I wasn't in the best mood yesterday
as well. Why?

Yesterday, it seemed to me that Michael wanted to "protect" Sébastien
who initially sent in the patch for the nice shadows. Michael mentioned
"and our design guys apparently emit a long stream of complaining left
and right". And this - to me - is a completely wrong estimation.

This wouldn't matter to me, if ...

a) Michael wouldn't be one of the lead developers that have quite some
impact on the dev list. In my point-of-view, it's essential that he
understands the collaboration with the Design Team.

b) Michael would read the Design list, hence knowing what great stuff
tends to happen here. But, it's clear to me that this isn't manageable
to him time-wise ... since he really brings LibreOffice forward, there
was a need to correct his perception on the dev list.

c) I know from experience that it is hard for people not following a
list like "Design" for some time, that there is some vivid but
meaningful process behind the discussions. To be honest, I'm a bit
allergic concerning statements that sound uninformed, like the one
above :-\

Therefore I tried (and it seems that it partly failed) to convey in my
mail that there is some time needed, and the different arguments and
preferences have to be sorted out first. And, Nik, I remembered your
offer to draft a mockup based on the discussions and therefore mentioned
it. Because I wanted to highlight that people on the design list do care
- by working iteratively, not by "complaining". Thus, I'm very sorry if
my mail was the reason for you to get upset :-(


Am Mittwoch, den 09.03.2011, 09:29 +0100 schrieb Sébastien Le Ray:
> Le Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:58:00 +1100,
> Nik <nik@tdf.nikashsingh.com> a écrit :
>
> > Hi Christoph, all,
> >
> > Oh boy. I thought I'd wait a few days before responding so that I
> > wasn't as offended as I am now,
> > but it looks like you're expecting something from me and I don't want
> > to delay Sebastien's work.

As I said, I'm sorry if you perceived any pressure from my side ... I
didn't think about any "due date" or such stuff, rather mentioned your
proposal. My aim was to say, that design work matters - as well as the
contribution by Sébastien.

Sébastien - to mention that: I still haven't had the chance to try your
improvements (and will answer this in another mail), but its exceptional
that somebody invests the effort to provide such "live prototyping". In
the projects I work in (e.g. in my day job), it usually costs hours to
the whole team to do that for stuff that requires even more attention.
So thanks a lot!

[...]
> > > > Personally, I would have preferred
> > > > you to move on to some other fun / high-impact win, rather than
> > > > getting bogged down in random details here ;-)
> > Please don't expect anything from me. I won't be contributing to this 
> > task further.
> > I don't volunteer my free time to be told how unimportant Design
> > "random details" are.
>
> I don't think Michael intention was to hurt anybody, emails have this
> drawback that nuances are not correctly rendered.

True, but I also think that Michael requires some more understanding
that - qualitatively - visual design development (usability, user
experience design) differs from code development. But the amount of work
is as tough as code development (he sometimes seems to miss that ...).


> > Someone else will pick it up. Good luck.
>
> I sincerely hope that you'll change your mind and provide a good mockup
> (maybe with a gradient background too, shadows have an alpha channel so
> we can put anything behind).

Same hope from my side, because of his excellent skills - but, of
course, Nik is free to chose. 

Regards,
Christoph


-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+help@libreoffice.org
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/design/
*** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***