Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

More students, take that for granted. Dunno about the rest, really...



As a UX topic proposal, what about games UI (generic, not talking about any concrete example)? The current osso-games-startup is surely going to die (since it's Gtk+ based after all), and there's still a lot of questions to be resolved about what users expect from "quick" games on Maemo:
- Is a startup screen like the current osso-games-startup one the best approach? Jump directly to the fullscreen game?
- Allow games to continue in the background -- potentially killing battery? Warn user about this? How? Prefer autosave and close instead of going to the background?
- If "Common" startup screen: design? game banner+esrb rating+ play and restart buttons?
- Expected ingame widgets: the close button. or task switcher icon that opens game menu? second app causes autosave+close and opens system task switcher?
- Multiplayer games -- there's a lot of infrastructure in the Chatting app available AFAIU. Potentially you could tap on a contact and "play a game of X".

Dunno if it's the best topic to dedicate for a two hours discussion (but seeing most spots are still FIXME :P ... ).

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

javis, i think that would be cool.

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Hi, those of you that have requested invitation here please formalize it at the official registration: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...161#post374161

Sorry for the double work. The Long Weekend is growing and we needed something more robust for registration than a wiki page. No need to explain again all the things you have explained already here.

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Make a UI frontend agnostic to whether MPlayer or VLC is used. Use codecs as they are provided instead. Preferably GStreamer.

Agreed. Tracker is used backend for this right now. Needs finger-touch-friendly frontend & plugins. See Kupfer thread.

Nicotine+ is bloated and dead. Museek+ is the future, and the concept fits perfect on N900 purpose. OTOH, P2P clients without checksumming are dead too.

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

I suggested that one because VLC and MPlayer support more formats than GStreamer (even on my Desktop when installing all the "bad" and "ugly" plugins). We don't need another frontend with GStreamer as a backend - the built-in media player is mostly great already. (of course, a goal would be to have all codecs inside/available for GStreamer - but until that happens, I want my VLC- or MPlayer-backed media player, so I can enjoy exotic formats right now instead of "maybe in 7 months").

Although Nicotine+ still works fine for me (even on the N800), we could give Museek+ a try. The fact that is has the backend split from the frontends might make it easy to create a fresh, stripped-down Maemo UI for mobile usage. And there are several clients to choose from to base the Maemo UI on :)

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Hmm, in my case VLC cannot play files which Totem (with Fluendo bundle) can play. Or which RealPlayer can play.

I think the most user-friendly, short-term solution is to allow the user to find suitable plugins to play the file _including_ using VLC as backend.

For long-term it is find out the most popular of the features (e.g. exotic formats) which are not supported and support them via Nokia infrastructure which is GStreamer (and PulseAudio).

For example, when the lack of equalizer was pointed out a Nokia employee wrote an (unofficial) GStreamer equalizer plugin.

Versions before 1.2.10 suffer from an evil memory leak. The interface of Nicotine-Plus is optimized for a GTK2-based desktop.

Museek-Plus OTOH allows one to run the P2P-side on a different computer than the client which is by itself a useful feature (think of it running on a low-power ARM/MIPS/PPC device, or on a fast file server) and also useful for those who are roaming.

The user is also able to pick client best for their OS and liking: Mucous (ncurses-based client), Murmur (pygtk2-based client), Museeq (qt4-based client) and some command line tools. The Museek-Plus protocol is completely open, and the SLSK protocol is abstracted by Museekd.

I'm not sure how well Museek-Plus runs on Windows though, but the source is open. Another problem may be that the current clients are not optimized for finger-based touchscreen usage, and there is no web-based frontend.

BTW, the other P2P client which has a similar architecture as Museek-Plus is MLDonkey. It has support for multiple P2P protocols.

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Mmm we need to do something about http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo-Barcelon.../UX_meets_Code

This thread is too silent lately. :)

There is a lot of warming up in the UX / organization side, and we are getting a good bunch of professional designers ready to help developers improving their apps.

But what we start to miss now are... the developers with the cool applications!

REMEMBER TO REGISTER! We are sponsoring 17 participants at the moment (see the list at http://maemo.org/news/events/maemo-b..._long_weekend/ ) and we have still budget for some more.

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Irreco would be a good candidate application for the UX/UI tuning but as far as i know there are not many active developers at the moment. That application has a huge potential.

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

We also need one more project proposal in "concepting", three more in "usability" and two more in "graphics", if we want to keep the proposed project schedule as it is now.

Depending on how many different suggestions there are, an idea (for Saturday - the Usability day) would be to have shorter time slots, but have more applications (many applications in Extras need "just a little more love" to be more usable). Going through an application, highlighting problems and figuring out improvement suggestions can probably be done in 30-40 minutes per application instead of 2 hours (but maybe I'm also just misunderstanding what is going to happen in these sessions :).

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

What about usability for zoutube (the youtube app i wrote, which this weekend will hopefully have iplayer inside or as a separate app using most of the same structure)

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

These days are being quite hectic and the Long Weekend itself is growing out of our initial expectations. Next Monday I will let Arabella (Forum Nokia) to handle the finishing of the agenda. It would be good if there would be a community representative since until now it's only me bridging between everybody.

Arabella is a UX specialist and she has discussed a lot of ideas already with the rest of professional designers joining the UX event.

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Don't know if I can help or if help from the community is still needed, but fell free to ask :).

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

I'm still not completely sure how this event will work, so my suggestion is maybe not feasible, but here it goes...

I have something for concepting and if there is someone with good coding and probably math skills, we could maybe implement it during the weekend.

I would call it Lightscribe, Lighttalk, Laserwrite or something similar. Basically you enter some text. Then you hold the screen of your device facing away from you over your head in portrait orientation. Now you wave your arm continuously from left to right. If you are in a dark place the formally entered text should be visible as a ghost image readable even from far away.

The idea is of course not mine, there are already devices like that:
http://www.gadzooki.com/cool-stuff/lighttalk-ii/

Still, it could be something pretty neat if the display of the N900 is bright enough. Also it could be something with a little wow-factor which IMO has something to do with positive user experience and which is still lacking on the platform.

We have many good/nice/solid/useful apps, but we're missing out the wow-apps :)

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

I'm hoping the Documents stuff will have a session thrashing out how to write stuff for new users/ non-techs in user-friendly language. I fear some of the highly technical people don't realise how inaccessible some of this place is to n00bs.

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Exactly. If I was there that would be my focus, so I'm counting on you Kathybear!

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

conny,

the Push N900 competition had a proposal (which was going to use liqbase) which did what you are talking about

http://wouwlabs.com/blogs/jeez/wp-co...tation_pov.pdf

i almost fell off my chair when I saw it, cos it was buried away in the middle of a bunch of canola updates.


I have many concepts that I would like to evolve along very similar interwoven groundings, from things like tic-tac-toe (perfect touchscreen stuff) to the full orchestra collaborative app.
I decided on the calendar because it can be used for many other practical things even though it wont use all the strengths, it does go over multiple file construction and will hopefully touch on collaborative editing and stuff :)
I want to get the coding for the network based liqflow working properly as well and that has technical challenges which would make it a really good challenge.
essentially I just want to make use of sketches and get the devices talking to each other locally.

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

"Tentative" happily removed from thread title.

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

lcuk, thanks for the pointer - it looks really cool. Only difference is, that they are using a grid of external LEDs and I was thinking about using the display and the build in accelerometers directly. I'll have to think about something else now ;)

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

I'd be interested to.

http://maemo.org/profile/view/lorebett/

I've been working on open source software for a while now

http://www.lorenzobettini.it/web.php/Main/Software

and also on Qt based software.

I'm a researcher on Computer Science, basically on language design and implementation.

cheers
Lorenzo

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Please register at http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo-Barcelona_Long_Weekend

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

I had already done that...

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Which day would you prefer?

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Which day would you prefer?

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

It would be nice to have one known KDE application ported to Maemo. If you get a good candidate (not KOffice since they are getting already UX help from us) and have the lead developer(s) in the Long Weekend then I'm all for having one of the slots for that project. We can still sponsor 1-2 developers for this.

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

I would say Saturday?

Edit: yep definitely interested in the Usability day.

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

DigiKam? :)

Uhm no, I think something is already boiling for an image editor program for Maemo 6...

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Which day would you prefer?

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Comments welcome about these candidates:

MyPaint, proposed in another thread. Definitely interested but we need to know whether there would be at least one developer bringing it to Maemo 5. Usability?

Mapper. Alberto Mardegan registered today. Are there more developers interested? Will anybody put navigation there? Usability?

Conboy is interesting for concepting imho specially if the project wants to move forward instead of being a simple replica of Tomboy. What about a metawiki where users can link URLs, local files, embed objects... or something like that. And polish the local/online link. Concepting?

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Linking of URLs, email addresses and local files is already possible. Something Tomboy is doing too, btw.

Anyways, I´m open to new concepts and ideas, but in fact the problem is not the lack of ideas/vision, but the lack of developer man power. This is made worse by the fact, that I need to rewrite it using Qt.

Because of this I consider Conboy almost dead. If I want to have something ready for Maemo6 launch, I´ll have to start the rewrite soon. Probably I´ll go into bug fixing mode in early 2010, so I´m not sure if it makes sense to put "Concepting" energy into right now. Of course those concepts could be reused in the Qt version. But then we should replace the name with Cuteboy :)

It would be fine for me, but it would take a long time until those concepts would be visible in software.

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Count on this, then. I'll update the wiki this evening.

If you have other core contributors please propose them to register. I can't guarantee sponsorship since it will depend on the people invited from other projects, but the will is there.

This goes for the rest of projects taking part in the Long Weekend. The deadline for sponsorship requests is this weekend!

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

I prefer Friday, if there's not another project more interesting for this slot. Please note that I'm not putting BlueMaemo in the table, because I already have help from a designer (wazd) and IMO the results so far are good (see the extras-devel version for a preview), the project is a bit stuck because Wazd has paid work to do atm :( .

My intentions are for a small Pexeso-like game (you like chess games, I like concentration games :p) with multiplayers functionality and other cool stuff, this is mostly in planning mode (for a long time), but I think with some help from the UX people this can be shiny and unique :).

But as I said feel free to put other project in more advanced state in this slot, I probably can bug the UX people during the weekend :D.

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Ah. I was indeed thinking in Blue... Are you sure that can't be squeezed in UX improvements?

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Of course it can, but it's a bit unfair IMO, because someone already started the work and it's not finished yet (3 screens missing atm).

PS. Don't worry about the current app name, I'll change it in the first public release :).

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Thank you for all your input! Let's close this preparative thread and let's move onto

UX meets Code: the work in progress thread

With this I'll handle the coordination to Arabella. She will introduce herself in the new thread. I must concentrate on other areas of the fast-growing Long Weekend!

Re: Tentative: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

I have seen in the Agenda that MaStory has been accepted for the Sunday.
I don't mind it (on the contrary I'm very happy that it's accepted), except that I have the flight back to home at 16:15.
I see that Thomas has the same problem, so I would say it's not necessary be physically there, we can always ask to someone be there by us, true?

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

something I have thought about that may need some concepting.
Recently Frals and co have taken up the technical work for adding MMS into the subsystem.
how about we look at how we want the UX to work with it?
a concepting session on MMS on the N900?

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Wow, Is this working in any form ? Last time I checked they were facing some big blockers.

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

of course they have blockers
but nothing to stop us from talking about the UX :)

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

Had ? So it works ? I'm impressed :D

Re: UX meets Code hackfest in December @ Barcelona
 

dont twist my words young'un \@
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