my idea for the steps
0. hello what is the APP used for, get more information in the hp and owerview about the following steps
1. where do you come Form (world map)
2. partition where to install after this step the Installation start
3. user information, Name and password, language and tastatur preselected from world map and boot selection
4. additional configuration (if wanted)
- network
- mail Konfiguration
- messenger
- theme
- software

bjoernbalazs wrote:[Persona]
My mum. (Uses computers a little, but, well, you know... If there are smallest problems, she is lost. If rebooting doesn't help someone has to show up)
-> My mum will fail here on anything I have seen so far. To make her pass this hurdle we need to move the focus away from technical decisions to descriptions of the goal to reach. So why not add a sub-wizard:

You have right. maybe it is possible that the installer see at the partition table what the user will do.

when on the pc only one big ntfs partition will be available, than the installer show you the option paralell installation or replacement. If there are a lot of partitions the installer is more detailed. The design isn't nice at all, but I'd like to show the idea.

andreas_k wrote:my idea for the steps
0. hello what is the APP used for, get more information in the hp and owerview about the following steps
1. where do you come Form (world map)
2. partition where to install after this step the Installation start
3. user information, Name and password, language and tastatur preselected from world map and boot selection
4. additional configuration (if wanted)
- network
- mail Konfiguration
- messenger
- theme
- software

The language selection should come before the partition selection / partitioning step in order to present that crucial step in the correct language (guessing language form region is not always correct). Maybe the keyboard layout as well for those who choose to partition manually and enter partition labels, but that's far far less important than the language.

+1 for software selection at installation! This must not be "Here is every package I would install by default, here is every package available, please choose what you want" because that would be waaaayyy too much choice (only vanilla Arch or Gentoo users want that ), but tasks for which there are several popular applications to choose from (e.g. web browser, office suite, e-mail client). The choice could be either one or several of the alternatives (I know quite a few people who have more than one browser installed, for example).
That should come before the software in question is installed, though, to avoid having to install stuff and then remove it immediately afterwards.
Being able to set up network (especially WiFi) inside the installer would be necessary if it wanted to download current packages from the repos during installation (which makes sense if you want to avoid having to do a huge upgrade right after installation of the install media isn't all fresh anymore).

Otherwise I'd put all the stuff under 4. into a first-run-wizard, because if it's only in the installer then only the user who installed the system would benefit from it.

Hey, just posting here to say that I love the mockups done by jensreuterberg and Uri_Herrera. Tjey're amazing ! Can't wait to install Linux everywhere with this awesome installer !

Hello all. I am tasked with working with the developer, Teo, to take this design to completion. The initial brainstorming phase has been helpful to get some great ideas on the table. Teo has communicated additional constraints which are captured below. There are both short term and long term project needs both of which must be accounted for in the delivered design.

I followed the KDE HIG and made liberal use of what has already been discussed here.

Concept

Vision
For recreational computer users who would like to install Linux on their existing computer, Calamares is an installer that makes it simple and fail-safe to install Linux. Calamares makes it easy understand what will be done at every step without overwhelming the user with detailed technical information, unless explicitly requested.

Persona (Selected from the pre-defined KDE personas)
Susan, 34, Recreational user. While Susan seldom uses her computer for work, it has become an essential part of her social life. With her computer, she can be creative and spread this creativity in the world. She chats with her friends, shares music, playlists and other media, creates videos and uploads them to her web space, and runs a blog with her own style. She can't imagine a life without her laptop. Still, she is a fun person and does not want to worry about technical details. She expects her machine to work.

Scenario
Susan has an existing computer with Windows on it. She would like to install Manjaro Linux alongside Windows after observing her geeky sister Viola using it. Some of her important videos files are on a Windows partition. Viola creates a bootable usb stick with Manjaro linux gives it to Susan to insert it into her computer, reboot and just follow the instructions. Susan follows the instructions provided by the installer. When Susan is finished, she has a fully functional Manjaro Linux with access to all her important video files and all the tools she needs ready to use.
Main Task
Install Linux on computer: Infrequent, & critical
Critical Sub-Tasks
Partitioning / formatting - This is the most (and perhaps only) critical sub task, as it possibly destroys existing data, might be hard to revert in the future (e.g. chosen file system) and requires technical decisions / knowledge.

Organization

Command Structure
The essential commands are:

• Set the information required for each installation step/module
  
  • Set user info (name, username, password, picture, etc.)
  • Set language
  • Set keyboard layout
  • Set up partitions
  • Set location and timezone
  • Select applications to install
  • Others
• Move to the next installation step
• Go back to the previous installation step
• Go to any installation step
• Begin the installation process
• Cancel the installation before or during the installation process

This meets the criteria for a simple command structure.

Content Structure
The content is a just collection of installation steps - a flat content structure. Any number of installation steps/modules can be created by downstream by distributions. Each installation step has:

• A name
• A collection of fields containing data necessary for that installation step
• May have sub-tasks/steps/pages.
• May have advanced options.
• An icon - this one may be challenging since installation steps/modules can be created by downstream and there is no way of knowing ahead of time what those modules might be. We could provides canned set of icons that covers many of the common installers steps.

UI Patterns

Command pattern for a simple content structure: Direct manipulation of content. No menu buttons, context menu or context panel.
Navigation pattern for a flat content structure: Wizard. The layout used is slightly different than shown in the HIG, but should, noentheless, satisfy the underlying intent of each of the wizard pattern guidelines. (There are also potential issues with that layout that might be worth revisiting).

Layout Design



When the next step transitions to another module the "next" button shows the name of the next module. Otherwise when the next step is just another page within the existing module the "next" button just shows "Next". So the first image shows the layout for a single page module or the last page of a multipage module and the second image shows the layout for a page that's not the last page in a multipage module.

Applying to a couple of example modules, it might look like this:


For the near term project needs, perhaps just the "container" design (top and bottom panels) can be implemented. The detailed module designs could perhaps be implemented as part of the longer term project goals. Of course, we'd have to flesh out more of the individual module designs (like partitioning) but we already have great start based on the helpful discussions so far. Of course we'll continue to work together with the developer to tweak the design as necessary to adjust to any implementation challenges that might come up.

Hope this helps!

can you share the svg file. thanks

Great Mockups!
will the acutal installer also have a close button? - because if it does i see no point in the "cancel installation" button.

Saabhero wrote:Great Mockups!
will the acutal installer also have a close button? - because if it does i see no point in the "cancel installation" button.

Thanks Saabhero.

I was thinking about this as I worked on the design and erred on the side of providing an explicit control so that the target user (Susan) clearly understands how to cancel the installation. From the user perspective, the application was started with the intent to perform an installation. Something about the user situation changed enough that they want to stop doing something that we know they originally intended to do - there's a potential that the user is already in an uncertain state. While the window close button will pretty much do the same thing, I thought the effect of closing the window might be a little ambiguous to the target user. We could show a popup dialogs explaining the effect of closing the window to the user after the window close button is pressed. However, most of the user consternation comes before that when the user is trying to decide how to cancel the installation. To lessen the uncertainty, I thought it was worth exposing the Cancel Installation command in a more explicit way.

Hope this helps!

A mockup for the partition page

1. Overview of your hard disks and partitions.
From the harddisc you can see type and size in addition the read and write speed so that you can choose the fastest disk for your system


2. You have to select an partition to install your system. you can choose between resize & install and format & install. In addition for the advanced users you have the other buttons. If you choose resize & install you get this dialogue window.


3. when you are finished you get an overview with history what will be done.

Just a suggestion - more & more I install from a LiveUSB, is it worth having some way of detecting the LiveUSB that's the installation medium and removing that from the list of devices that you can install to automatically (if that's possible)? If the aim is to make the partitioner simple & non-threatening for new users unless you want to do manual partitioning yourself then doesn't that make sense? Assuming that they've only got one HDD anyway then they'd be faced with one less confusing choice & you could skip the first step in andreas_k's brilliant mockups all together.

One thing that i'm not so keen on is the 'read/write' speeds - to my mind the first partition page is more aimed at new users might be best with the minimum of information on it, obviously enough to make sure that they pick the right disk though Personally i'd assume that maybe if someone's system has multiple HDDs then maybe they aren't the new user that the front partition page is aimed at & that they probably already know their way around a partitioner!?!

ken300 wrote:Just a suggestion - more & more I install from a LiveUSB, is it worth having some way of detecting the LiveUSB that's the installation medium and removing that from the list of devices that you can install to automatically (if that's possible)? If the aim is to make the partitioner simple & non-threatening for new users unless you want to do manual partitioning yourself then doesn't that make sense? Assuming that they've only got one HDD anyway then they'd be faced with one less confusing choice & you could skip the first step in andreas_k's brilliant mockups all together. ...

Thanks for the feedback.

Simple by default powerful when needed.
Left side: Simple by default (with two bottons for fast installation)
Right side: powerful when needed (when click the Advanced Partition botton all other partition settings will be shown)


I don't like the cancel Installation botton, because now I need a second botton line. Maybe the cancel installation will be shown only on the first page and the summery page. When you change the Cancel Installation botton with the back botton you can reduce the bottons and the workflow will be shown nicer.

Simple by default

Powerful when needed

andreas_k,

really great mockups!

Wouldn't it be more suitable for Susan (the use case we're aiming at) to have a front page to the partitioner that just said (assuming she's only got 1 HDD) something like "This is the hard disk that we've detected - is this correct?" followed by enough information about the HDD (size, name of the current OS etc...) so that Susan's happy that that's the correct drive, a message that nothing destructive will be done until the end of the partitioning stage and just display the 'Resize & Install', 'Format & Install' and the 'Advanced Partitioner' buttons.

Susan will be won't feel out of her depth by lots of buttons and us manual partitioning types can just click straight on the 'Advanced Partitioner' button. If more than one HDD is detected then before the above page you'd ask which HDD to use.

In the same way shouldn't all of the actual partitioning be done by the summary/overview page - shouldn't the only choice be 'are you happy with this?' and just 'Yes' & 'No' buttons. That's where it should warn that clicking 'Yes' will actually do stuff to the HDD.

It would be a good idea too to have some informative help pop ups so that Susan feels like she's kept informed about what's going on - she probably doesn't know what '/' or 'Swap' is or if she needs them - or what 'sda', 'ext4' etc etc are. Pop ups to tell Susan that '/' is the main partition of your new linux system, 'ext4' is a filesystem, leave it as that if you're not sure, will be very handy - without them the 'History' area of the overview page probably won't make much sense to her! It might also be good to have before and after views of the partitioning of the disk you're installing on so that you can easily see what's going on.

alake wrote:Vision
For recreational computer users who would like to install Linux on their existing computer, Calamares is an installer that makes it simple and fail-safe to install Linux. Calamares makes it easy understand what will be done at every step without overwhelming the user with detailed technical information, unless explicitly requested.

Persona (Selected from the pre-defined KDE personas)
Susan, 34, Recreational user. While Susan seldom uses her computer for work, it has become an essential part of her social life. With her computer, she can be creative and spread this creativity in the world. She chats with her friends, shares music, playlists and other media, creates videos and uploads them to her web space, and runs a blog with her own style. She can't imagine a life without her laptop. Still, she is a fun person and does not want to worry about technical details. She expects her machine to work.

Thank you so much for taking the time to follow our suggested process, awesome work!
And this immediately shows us the benefit of this: It allows us to make sure we all have the same goal.
We should use this to really make clear we're on the same page before talking about design specifics.

So, from the vision and persona you presented, Calamares would be targeted exclusively at recreational/casual users. This vision and persona mean that we simply do not care about the potential needs of "power users". At all.
From that perspective, a button to switch to "advanced" features does not make any sense. Advanced features are for advanced users, which are not part of our vision and not our target persona. Period.
Guided by that, we are able to create an installer which optimally caters to the needs of casual users, without any features that might confuse them. Yay for focus!

That means, of course, that if Calamares is to be used for installing a distribution in a professional context, we would need an alternative for power users, not within Calamares, but outside of it. That is well possible, but if we're going down that road, we need to be clear on it and consequently kick out any advanced features from Calamares.

If, however, we do want to also cater to power users within Calamares (by implementing the "Simple by default. Powerful when needed" mantra), they have to be mentioned both in the vision and as a secondary persona.
In that case, I'd add this to the vision:
"Users with more technically advanced installation needs will find those supported by Calamares as well, although not visible by default. Where available, Calamares exposes advanced features on demand."

And to the personas, I'd add Santiago as a secondary persona:
"Santiago runs a medium-sized business for electric installations. For him, technology needs to be comfortable and make him feel smart.

As a manager with engineering background, Santiago's major work is to negotiate with customers. However, to avoid costs, he administrates the small network in the company himself, including a file server and fifteen PCs for his office clerks.

He loves comfort and does not like to dive into manuals or use the command line to set up the small network. The system has to be reliable and easy to use, so his employees get along with it."

I specifically chose Santiago, not Philip the Geek, because for me the distinction between recreational and professional use is more important than between "novices" and "experts", and because Philip would be fine with just changing stuff afterwards if it wasn't part of the installer, or with using an alternative "expose all the things!" command-line installer.

Makes sense to me colomar. I hope the Calamares folks will chime in at some point if we're completely out in the weeds on this. Consider the following the updated Vision and persona as you suggested.

Vision
For recreational computer users who would like to install Linux on their existing computer, Calamares is an installer that makes it simple and fail-safe to install Linux. Calamares makes it easy understand what will be done at every step without overwhelming the user with detailed technical information, unless explicitly requested. Users with more technically advanced installation needs will find those supported by Calamares as well, although not visible by default. Where available, Calamares exposes advanced features on demand.

Persona (Selected from the pre-defined KDE personas)
Susan, 34, Recreational user. While Susan seldom uses her computer for work, it has become an essential part of her social life. With her computer, she can be creative and spread this creativity in the world. She chats with her friends, shares music, playlists and other media, creates videos and uploads them to her web space, and runs a blog with her own style. She can't imagine a life without her laptop. Still, she is a fun person and does not want to worry about technical details. She expects her machine to work.
Secondary Persona
Santiago, 34, Decision Maker. Santiago runs a medium-sized business for electric installations. For him, technology needs to be comfortable and make him feel smart. As a manager with engineering background, Santiago's major work is to negotiate with customers. However, to avoid costs, he administrates the small network in the company himself, including a file server and fifteen PCs for his office clerks. He loves comfort and does not like to dive into manuals or use the command line to set up the small network. The system has to be reliable and easy to use, so his employees get along with it.


To make it easier to keep track of this kind of information and to make it easier to find what the results of our discussion are, I've created a KDE VDG Calamares project folder on the KDE Community wiki to capture this information. That way we don't have wade through forum threads to find design deliverables. You can find it here: https://community.kde.org/KDE_Visual_De ... gn_Project

So now I have made every step. It is the best of Jens, Uri, Alake and something from me. The process was quite very well. you guys rock.



Partition overview for Susan, Resize dialogue and the last mockup for the manual installation


I remove Jens from the user icon (sorry) and the design is the same than at the login screen (not like google) The summary page is similar to the start page


The link to the svg files https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/164 ... aresV5.zip