Here's an album of my demands, issues. https://imgur.com/a/m9WTv
The login theme also has some issues. None of the elements seem to be the same size. The text entry field is shorter than the drop down box or the button. I also don't think that a login button is needed, and if it is, then it is far too big.

Please help polish up our Plasma 5 desktop environment for its first release (and after that too)!

Everyone here has been great at identifying issues and reporting bugs here and there so far. So thanks!

Now we need your help in another really important way as well. When an issue has been identified as needing visual design input to resolve, they're now being tagged that way. Here is a list of such issues:

Issues requiring visual design input

Please take a look at the issues listed. Ideally you will have some version of the Plasma 5 desktop running (beta, project neon builds, etc.) but that is not required. Just try to understand the issue, including what VDG activity might be required to resolve the issue. Sometimes all that's needed is someone here to say "yes, that's a visual design bug" or "That's the way it's supposed to look/work". If you're not sure if it's a bug or if you're not sure what the solution should be, create a post titled "[Bug: xxxxxx] name of issue" to solicit feedback here for how to help the developer resolve the issue. Or you can contact me or any one of the VDG core members about to get some help. Please do not be shy about asking your fellow community members or one of the core VDG members for help. While resolving these issues quickly is important, it is not nearly as important as the quality of the resolution.

Helping with this kind of effort is really important. It's where all the high concept design rubber meets the road. This is one of the most direct ways that you can help make Plasma or any application instantly better. It is also a great opportunity to interact directly with developers as their working to fix problems!

Thanks so much for any help you can provide!

Nice write-up alake. However, I have to say that I (and maybe others too) don't really feel like I have anything meaningful to contribute in commenting the bug reports. I'm not really sure what's going on behind the scenes, so what kind of authority am I to say "That's a design decision", and "yes, this is a bug!" And simply stating that I have seen the same behaviour before doesn't provide any additional information for the reporter nor the developers. :s

I have one more bug to add https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=336247.

Sogatori: that is a massive issue we really should start working on.

The thing is I want to avoid the "behind the scenes" bits as much as possible what is even weirder is - there isn't much going on right now behind the scenes. Nothing dramatic at all. Some talking about icon themes, some chatting about "Plasma Next-Next" but what this tells us is that my and the VDG's communication hasn't been good enough outwards.
That the current goals haven't been communicated well enough.

I'm trying to figure out how to solve this - so any ideas is welcome. The goal to me is that when a design goal is settled - its my job to communicate it well enough that everyone here feel empowered by it, that they can work almost independently on something and still feel "in the fold". At the same time (and this is not an excuse, just an explenation) my personal goal has always been to let the community be the driving force behind all redesigns.
That anyone and everyone should feel like they could contribute and not feel as if they are not "worthy" or "good enough" or something. That designers should help and assist in the work so that everyone feel included.

So how do we solve this? What should the work method of the future look like? The structure of people - because I want to blur the lines between "VDG" and the "VDG community". Make it something that everyone feel they can be a part of.

Jens,

Just my opinion but i think a good start would be to keep the VDG as one big melting pot of visual designers, UX people etc.. rather than splitting off into sub-groups. I don't have any 'special' skills, i'm not an expert in anything but i can still contribute in discussions going on in the group when i do have something relevant to say (& I'm learning from the others all the time too).

If the group did split into sub-groups then it could feel like things were being done in secret even though they weren't, just because they were being done on a part of the forum that i didn't visit (or that i didn't feel 'qualified' to visit).

ken300 wrote:Jens,

Just my opinion but i think a good start would be to keep the VDG as one big melting pot of visual designers, UX people etc.. rather than splitting off into sub-groups. I don't have any 'special' skills, i'm not an expert in anything but i can still contribute in discussions going on in the group when i do have something relevant to say (& I'm learning from the others all the time too).

If the group did split into sub-groups then it could feel like things were being done in secret even though they weren't, just because they were being done on a part of the forum that i didn't visit (or that i didn't feel 'qualified' to visit).

There are no plans to split the group (especially not the forum). That was just one suggestion for the naming problem. Having subforums for certain thematic areas could make sense for a better overview, but we certainly won't split into a forum for usability only and a forum for visual design only. We're designing user interfaces, together, in a multi-disciplinary way.

However, the question remains: What would you need in order to be able to decide on design-related bug reports on your own?

Okay, here's a "low-hanging fruit": https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=336326
Before, the pin icon in the system tray Plasmoid looked like this:
http://wstaw.org/w/2LC0/
After the change, it looked like this:
http://i.imgur.com/N0ZqKZu.png
I think the first one is too small, the second one is too large.
Now we'd like to get design feedback on which size it should have. Any takers?

I'd love to see it be the same size and icon as the breeze theme uses. maybe use the icon for the small button setting.

Here is a big one to polish: what about making the system tray icons smaller than icons on task bar, and task bar icons smaller than the application launcher icons? It just makes no sense that icons of tray are larger than icon of kickoff.

jensreuterberg wrote:Sogatori: that is a massive issue we really should start working on.

The thing is I want to avoid the "behind the scenes" bits as much as possible what is even weirder is - there isn't much going on right now behind the scenes. Nothing dramatic at all. Some talking about icon themes, some chatting about "Plasma Next-Next" but what this tells us is that my and the VDG's communication hasn't been good enough outwards.
That the current goals haven't been communicated well enough.

I'm trying to figure out how to solve this - so any ideas is welcome. The goal to me is that when a design goal is settled - its my job to communicate it well enough that everyone here feel empowered by it, that they can work almost independently on something and still feel "in the fold". At the same time (and this is not an excuse, just an explenation) my personal goal has always been to let the community be the driving force behind all redesigns.
That anyone and everyone should feel like they could contribute and not feel as if they are not "worthy" or "good enough" or something. That designers should help and assist in the work so that everyone feel included.

So how do we solve this? What should the work method of the future look like? The structure of people - because I want to blur the lines between "VDG" and the "VDG community". Make it something that everyone feel they can be a part of.

Oh, I don't think that the you guys communicate to little. I think it's just the nature of communication that works against your goal. Unless everyone makes an effort to write down what they were doing every day the newest information will always be available for those who are the most involved, which is a good thing.
My personal problem simply is that I could comment on a bug and say "I think that's by design", however, I am not certain if this information is still up to date. It's not so much a problem of the VDG as my personal problem.

daedaluz wrote:Here is a big one to polish: what about making the system tray icons smaller than icons on task bar, and task bar icons smaller than the application launcher icons? It just makes no sense that icons of tray are larger than icon of kickoff.

I agree, something has to be done about this, this bugs me everytime I look at the taskbar. The kickoff icon looks completely out of place and it makes the impression it is simply a pinned application.
I am not sure the suggestion you made will look good, if you make everything else smaller, as this will be annoying too (Imho every item should use space in an optimal manner, no matter how much other items use).

One inspiration could be the way Microsoft solved the issue in Windows:



Another suggestion would be to make it look completely on par with all other item in the taskbar, it seems Ubuntu goes the same way (the Dash icon look similar to every other launcher). Currently the kickoff icon looks way less important than the other items/launchers.

Another issue I would like to mention for the sake of consistency: Why does kickoff have no pin icon to make it possible to keep it in foreground?

Sogatori wrote:Nice write-up alake. However, I have to say that I (and maybe others too) don't really feel like I have anything meaningful to contribute in commenting the bug reports. I'm not really sure what's going on behind the scenes, so what kind of authority am I to say "That's a design decision", and "yes, this is a bug!" And simply stating that I have seen the same behaviour before doesn't provide any additional information for the reporter nor the developers. :s

It's a fair concern, Sogatori. You're right: you have no authority. But rest assured that neither do I or anyone else in the VDG. What we do have, or what we can earn, is influence. Such is the nature of open source.

If you're not sure about a bug report then ask the community here or engage me or any other VDG core member directly. Do the same thing you would do if you saw something on your own that looks like it might be a bug but you're not sure if you should write a bug report. The only difference is that someone else wrote the bug report. The more times folks chip in, the more we'll form a shared understanding of the overall design direction and the more comfortable you'll feel commenting on a bug report without additional input. Each time we successfully support the developers in resolving the issues we earn influence not by authority, but by the merit of our contributions. We have to start somewhere. Sometimes an icon is needed. Sometimes it's just about how to make text on a background look good. Sometimes it's just about where show an error message. Not every issue that you, me or anyone else reports will always resolve in a way that we prefer. That's normal and, in fact, should be expected. What matters is that our overall contributions are helping to move things the right direction.

So again, we really need everyone's help to support our developer community with addressing bugs flagged as needing VDG input. Like I said, don't be shy about asking questions here if you're not sure. This is simply one of the most direct and effective ways we can affect the visual design of our favorite desktop environment and applications.

Issues flagged for VDG input

I just tested the Plasma 5 RC and found that when I resized the panel even just a little, systray icons looked blurred (the keyboard indicator icon was broken all along)
http://wstaw.org/m/2014/07/08/systray.png
Should I file a bug?

colomar wrote:I just tested the Plasma 5 RC and found that when I resized the panel even just a little, systray icons looked blurred (the keyboard indicator icon was broken all along)
http://wstaw.org/m/2014/07/08/systray.png
Should I file a bug?

Yeah, I'd say file a bug.