Don’t Rationalise
Continuing at a tangent from yesterday’s blog post about design I wanted to quickly address a problem with non-material contributions (i.e. vocal and political contributions) as opposed to programming, design, support, education or any of the other thousands of material contributions in the community ecosystem.
The default seems to be that between weakly relational members of the community we organise ourselves with three tactics: knowing the best people, shouting the loudest and have the most convincing argument.
If your voice isn’t being heard then perhaps it’s because we have far to many rambling personalities posting huge emails to mailing lists or huge posts using complex words like ‘polemic’ several times.
But if all your trying to do is communicate what you want from the computer, what you really aspire to have in the design of the software then it’s best to keep it short and sweet. I don’t think we always need to rationalise our desires and make essays out of them.
Some people do this: “I’d like to see the window buttons on the right again because it would make my life easier.”
Your aspirations?
Tags: communications, community, design, organisation, Ubuntu
I’d like to see Ubuntu go global menu because my grandma isn’t skilled with a mouse and sometimes I use wiimote, game pad, and graphics tablet input.
I don’t think that really works.
I would like to feel like Ubuntu Brainstorm actually works.
I would like to see Mark “Less Is More” Shuttleworth fired by new CEO for his lack of design skills, and his “I’m not a dictator but this is not a democracy” aka “I know what’s best for you all” attitude!
I would like to see values such as freedom respected. One can have new designs without condescension. I originally liked the left side but was taken back by the “mac branding”. Mark or Steve they seem to be merging. If its a good design let the user choose.
I use Mint – a push from 10.04 no doubt -, and often the new release is postponed if its not ready even as users may object. Point being its not that there is a conflict between designers and users but the condescension involved.
Much of this is growing pains, Ubuntu has gotten to big, and as a result a contradiction between community and designers.
Eric:
What about brainstorm doesn’t work? The problem isn’t the tool. Brainstorm as a tool does exactly what it is designed to do. The problem is its not being used to drive decision making by those who are in a position to chart the technology or design roadmap.
It just sort of exists out on its own, without a direct association with decision making at any level So as a result its not being used effectively. Sort of how I can take a perfectly good screwdriver it and use it ineffectively to hammer in nails. perfectly good tool…being misused. But man is it fun to pound in nails with a screwdriver. I’m sure people have fun voting and commenting in brainstorm even knowing its not a very good use of ones time.
There’s never been any promised commitment to make use of the ideas or the voting records for anything. Never been a commitment to use it as a crowdsourcing tool to get feedback on any upcoming decision or design choice in a timely manner. Was there an organized effort to even review popular ideas at the last couple UDSs? The last such review I can find any evidence of was in 2008
-jef
Wow.
This saddens me entirely.
The long story short is that, as with all design, without isolating WHO you are designing for, you are voting and creating random noise, just as Martin hints at.
Voting is perhaps worse because it tickles our nerves in a way that makes us _believe_ it is information, when in fact, it is nothing more than a yin yang noisefest between various design audiences. Nothing but paradox and weak design will come of it.
I will say it loudly – all Brainstorm sites are a complete waste without getting demographic and audience details.
http://troy-sobotka.blogspot.com/2008/08/brief-example-of-why-voting-doesnt-work_04.html