Before I take this to Brainstorm I'd like to do a pre-storming session here (hopefully with some input from Nokia since I know they're working on stuff in this department).

Currently in Fremantle the interfaces for personalization are rather limited, much like they were in previous Maemo releases. This would be fine, but things are happening in Maemo 5 that make advanced personalization features a requirement.

Maemo is finally coming into its own as an N-series operating system. The N900 will be Nokia's new flagship device (even if they wont admit it ) and there's going to be a major influx both of new users and new artists. These artists are going to bring personalization content (themes, backgrounds, sounds, etc.) that's quickly going to overwhelm the existing personalization interfaces.

So, I'd like do a little pre-storming session here to think about some of the ways we might improve the personalization system in Maemo to help users discover, organize and user personalization content.

As far as changing icons and stuff goes, as long as emelfm2 works as great on the N900 as it does now on the N8*0s, personalization will be easy for me. Same goes for changing system sounds .

Wobbly windows and and Beryl

OK, let me be more specific. I'm interested in how users find and organize theme, backgrounds, audio sets, icon sets, etc. and not so much in actual desktop or theme effects.

So, as an example, if you were to add a bunch of background sets from n900wallpapers.com eventually that little 5-line background selector is going to get a bit crowded. Personally, I think we could make things a bit easier by using tags or defining categories to make it easy to browse through the available selections.

We could make community packages of quality artwork (audio, wallpaper, themes) but it is a bit difficult to define 'quality artwork'. How do other community-based distributions like Ubuntu manage this? The idea is (to me) that, we decide purely on the quality of the artwork, and after that, discern and imagine a first time user uses the artwork in question. The power user will feel OK searching further.

Not knowing about Ubuntu as GNOME (or FD.o) user there are several options. One can browse e.g. Gnome-Look.org and there are various ways to sort artwork. The Maemo section is very much out of date, btw.

Anyway, even if no packages for extras(-*) some kind of centralization is still useful. If not only merely a wiki entry with the howto & pointers.

Are you still going with packaged themes in the repository? I remember reading a few people's debates about how to distribute them. Or are you assuming people will know how to do that (or work that out as a seperate problem and are just looking for organization?)

If so I think a tag based solution would work better then hard categories. Maybe use a hard category for the dominant theme (e.g. nature, vehicles, women, etc..) then have tags people or the artist could add. Of course then the problem is naming said categories, and then what would most average users think of when they're looking for a specific image. And you don't have the ability to do a card-sorting study =p.

Just a quick note here from the user side (I have N810), I personally don't like the fact that themes ended up in repos , it's just that when I'm browsing the app manager and programs available for installation I get a feeling that themes just don't belong there. Some other way to distribute them would be better imo. Otoh that would make it one more place to look from for the users..

Maybe if the categories were maintained properly and that they would be logical then it maybe wouldn't be that bad...

My 2c..

Do you have a reference tho that discussion?

The way I envision it is this: design.maemo.org or art.maemo.org is platform for artists. There is some kind of moderation like with extras-devel so we don't end up with nonsense themes or evil code. Not sure how to do that part.

From the user perspective the user can see, experience, the themes by browsing through the lists (tag cloud?) and using .install to install the theme (*.deb). These point to a seperate repository purely for artwork called e.g. extras-artwork. When browsing the user sees details of the theme, because artist made screenshots. These screenshots are pre-defined by us, so that there is some kind of common thing that is compared. What exactly that is, up for debate, on a desktop I'd for example like to see 1) colours 2) buttons 3) mouse pointer, etc etc.

You can have categories for artwork just like you can have for software; e.g. the language the software is written in can be tagged, or the type of application can be tagged, or the license. You can have feedback from users, both in word and rating. (This part can be actually part of the forum here)

I think best is allowing user to pick between 1) hard categories ('browse') 2) (advanced) search 3) tag cloud. In reverse order (how logic of me ) so the user first sees tag cloud (popularity-based filtering), then can browse through, and search metadata. Should scale pretty well, concept ripped off popular BitTorrent site..

I understand your concern, but I find localization much more irritating. With good tag cloud, hard categories, and good search Application Manager would be better and not important to use 'All'. However, the mess of categories made browsing inefficient (I don't get why cannot be some operators like AND to browse several categories) and lack of tags ofcourse makes tag cloud impossible.

I would like to browse the wallpapers site on the big computer.
Whilst there, it would be cool to say "like that, and that and that and that and that" and to have my selection available on the tablet