A bit off topic but I saw Grant Robinson, the Senior Interaction Designer at Xero speak at a conference about the design process at Xero. Slides, podcast and notes can be founds here: http://www.webdirections.org/resources/grant-robinson-visualising-the-user-experience/
As mentioned before I think there could be a lot to learn from these "new generation" online software tools such as Xero, Basecamp, Campaign Monitor etc..
- They are built for "normal" users and not the IT department
- Understanding that great design can also be good HCI
- Should be able to use with basically no training - Almost "fun" to work with
I'm not sure what inspiration sources are being used for the upcoming re-design of the eZ admin interface, but my humble suggestion would be to glance at these online success stories.
for the "new generation" of software tools there is a good start in reading "Getting Real - A smaller, faster, better way to build software" http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php and follow the paradigm "Less, but better" Dieter Rams' 10 principles for good design: http://designmuseum.org/design/dieter-rams
<i>"Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly. Good design is as little design as possible."</i>
Jonathan Ive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Ive was inspired by Dieter Rams http://www.designsojourn.com/jonathan-ive-design-genius-or-something-else/
and so again a good start are the Apple Human Interface Guidelines, too
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/XHIGIntro.html or http://developer.apple.com/ue/index.html
Remember that this time we don't plan to just do changes in 4.3 and let it stand still for 4 years, it will now be a more incremental approach where we do some stuff in each 4.x version, and there will be a dedicated guy in charge of UI soon. So basically don't have your hopes up for 4.3 fixing everything, it will do some (as time and the 2 remaining scrum sprints allows) and then we'll do some more in 4.4 and so on.
Question: IF we do this as a project, will that bring additional value for you? Will any of you like to help out?
Twitter hash tags #epublish http://twitter.com/#search?q=ezpublish and #ezfresh http://twitter.com/#search?q=ezfresh
I'm sure you meant #ezpublish :)
A concrete prototype, and a requirements document are presented here : http://share.ez.no/blogs/ez/administration-interface-refresh-tell-us-what-you-think.
Please comment !
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Nicolas Pastorino
Director Community - eZ
Member of the Community Project Board
As far as I can tell, there will be no "big new" eZ publish version. Everything that was planned for Project V will be implemented sooner or later (or whatever feature / approach is the most efficient at the time we get started), but in a gradual manner, for each major release (and this means twice a year).
That's right. We've also been reforming the engineering department in eZ Systems for the last few months and preparing ourselves for some of the bigger changes. These changes have been a long time in the making because we're striving to introduce their benefits while causing as little pain for our users as possible. Believe me, none of the great things discussed in the past have been forgotten about; we're just trying to ensure that with every release we take a step forward without taking two steps backwards.
The admin interface is a good example where we'll first start with cosmetic changes and adding some AJAX to speed up the experience but without changing the work flow. As Tony mentioned in one of the first replies to this thread back, stability is important to avoid hampering productivity for existing users. We're leading the process but we're inviting the community to give feedback on the design. Once released and we can start collecting feedback from our users, we'll begin work on the deeper usability changes.
