User experience designers

Issue

If the "Desktop Spin" is the default offering, does this mean the Desktop team defines the user experience for all of Fedora? What if some SIG disagrees?

Background

The default offering is discussed here in more detail. User experience (UX) is ISO defined as "a person's perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service." User experience is thus subjective.

Discussion

The question seems badly phrased since we can't "define" how someone will feel in using Fedora. What we can do is design the way the operating system provides interactions that we believe will result in a positive UX. Some examples of this design might include the presentation of menus, the type and number of choices offered to the user when performing a specific activity, or the frequency and manner in which notifications that are delivered to the user.

Who provides these designs? In a perfect world, our project would be chock full of user interaction designers who would drive the process of design for these types of interactions. The design would then be implemented by the programmers, who would not concern themselves with creating the designs but simply follow those agreed upon by the designers. However, like most free software projects, Fedora suffers from a dearth of designers. Given that absence, teams in Fedora often simply make their best effort at producing interactions they believe will result in a positive UX.

Most of the decisions that involve UI design are driven by the upstream communities that write the code for the UI. In the case of the GNOME Desktop Environment, on which the Fedora default image is based, many of these UI elements are written upstream. The participants in the Red Hat Desktop team work in the GNOME upstream and other communities that provide elements that produce UX. Not every team in Fedora that maintains a desktop environment drives the UI design and implementation to this extent, however. That doesn't mean those contributors cannot be involved in discussions around UI in Fedora's default image.

Certainly members of the Red Hat Desktop team are involved in the Fedora Desktop SIG, which is responsible for the upkeep of the Fedora default image. However, the business of the team is normally conducted in public, both on their IRC channel and mailing list. Community members are encouraged on the Desktop wiki page to be involved in discussions there.

Of recent note, discussions have taken place to replace specific elements of the default image, such as default applications for note-taking (Gnote) and photo management (Shotwell). In some cases these issues have been driven by Fedora community members who are not on Red Hat's Desktop team. Ideally, these ideas would be considered and discussed by a team of designers who could weigh the various factors of UI involved to produce a constantly improving result. Until such time as we can make that happen, the next best alternative is in place -- open discussion of the various options available and the predicted results of each, followed by a decision by the parties responsible for implementing the changes. This process is in many cases identical to those used throughout the Fedora Project.

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