Some recent changes

[Máirín Duffy]

On 10/20/2009 01:12 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> The timing and lack of notice is the more important issue, here - the
> fact that it doesn't seem like a really vital change is more an
> aggravating factor in the lateness of the action.
> 
> As a poster in the forum discussion put it:
> 
> This seems to be a major change to gnome as it has been the same since
> FC3.

To be fair:

- It is an improvement. It does open Fedora up to a wider body of
desktop users.

- It shouldn't affect current users. Even if the button disappears on
them, there is a straightforward & easily discoverable GUI way to add it
back, and that only needs to happen one time.

- For the developers involved, it is *not* major change - it's really
more of a decision or call, not development effort involved. You and
Rahul are coming from the users' POV, though - it is likely perceived a
major change to them. Small effort, big impact.

This has been the shortest Fedora release cycle yet, hasn't it? I can
relate to trying to get as much polish as possible with what time is
left with the major features under folks' belts.

I know the schedule is important, but more times than not in the various
projects I've worked on, it's the small usability tweaks that get
dropped, the schedule is used as the justification, and it is a really
disappointing loss of an opportunity to make a big positive impact.
Sometimes, also, these kinds of tweaks do need to be made towards the
end part of the implementation cycle as sometimes initial designs for
features evolve between initial requirements, spec, and implementation -
usability tweaks you would have proposed early on aren't always
applicable anymore.

Moving forward, for F13, could we propose a feature called 'small effort
/ big impact polish'? We could brainstorm early on these sorts of
changes we might make to the desktop default configuration and enumerate
them on the wiki? Maybe if they are clearly communicated up front using
the Features page, at the beginning of the cycle, folks could get more
used to the idea / know its coming with a little less stress / perceived
risk. The 'implementation' work for this 'feature' during the cycle
would be less actual development and more doing any research /
comparative studies / usability testing needed to help make a call on them.

In short, I don't want us to lose out on big impact polish changes, but
I also don't think the ends always justify the means. I do understand
the concern that discussing these sorts of changes openly will turn into
a useless flame-fest, but if we can apply just a little bit of structure
to that (maybe a designated feedback period is scheduled into the f13
feature, for example) the feared flame-fest could be avoided.

~m