UI Planning

[Joe Crawford]

I have found some of my much older documents that are sitting around
on the K3D wiki.

http://www.k-3d.org/wiki/User_Feedback
http://www.k-3d.org/wiki/User_Feedback_Requests
http://www.k-3d.org/wiki/Feature_Requests
http://www.k-3d.org/wiki/ModelingRoadmap

Its kind of scattered and a bit of a mess.  I definitely want to clean
it up.  Some of this stuff is still relevant, but a lot of it is
probably outdated.  Also, a lot of the stuff I've written is very
possibly just "my opinion".

Anyway, I think we should all try to identify usability issues, and
put them all into a list.  Perhaps I can start one? I would like to
make some kind of proposal as to what to do with the UI.

Also, there been some discussion about architectural  tools versus
character modeling tools.  My thought on the matter is that at this
point, most of the UI work we need is very general, and would apply
equally well to character related work as it would to environment
modeling or CAD type work.   (I have some experience here because I
actually do a lot of CAD type work. My company often does previz work
for new architectural developments. Last year we did one for the Simon
Fraser University School of Contemporary Arts.)


>> Having a tree that is grouped by type would be very useful as getting
>> around all but the most simple scenes is getting hard. Look at tall
>> the GL stuff in a default scene, that needs grouping under GL
>> Painters. Or using multiple levels Scene -> Painters -> GL
>
> Agreed, I believe that all of this is near the top of Joe's priority
> list as well.

Yes.  Making that view function like a proper outliner is important.
We need to design a UI for this.
The explorer in XSI (or Softimage 7.5) is actually a particularly good
example, and is perhaps the kind of thing we could make.


Here's a question:

If I do some new usability testing to get the ideas up to date, which
version of k3d should I use?  Are the released versions new enough
that the UI is still mostly the same?


Anyway, to sum it all up, I'd certainly like to try to make some kind
of more cohesive proposal, and collect the developers ideas, my own
ideas, and ideas from user testing.

Tim, and/or anyone else....  is there any particular way you want me to proceed?

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[Timothy M. Shead]

Joe Crawford wrote:
> I have found some of my much older documents that are sitting around
> on the K3D wiki.

> Its kind of scattered and a bit of a mess.  I definitely want to clean
> it up.  Some of this stuff is still relevant, but a lot of it is
> probably outdated.  Also, a lot of the stuff I've written is very
> possibly just "my opinion".

Cool!  I suspect that most of it's still relevant - also, you shouldn't
be shy about expressing an opinion ;)

> Anyway, I think we should all try to identify usability issues, and
> put them all into a list.  Perhaps I can start one? I would like to
> make some kind of proposal as to what to do with the UI.

> Here's a question:
>
> If I do some new usability testing to get the ideas up to date, which
> version of k3d should I use?  Are the released versions new enough
> that the UI is still mostly the same?

Yes, K-3D 0.7.11.0 is the version to go with.

> Anyway, to sum it all up, I'd certainly like to try to make some kind
> of more cohesive proposal, and collect the developers ideas, my own
> ideas, and ideas from user testing.
>
> Tim, and/or anyone else....  is there any particular way you want me to proceed?

Sounds great!  Since you mentioned speaking with users, I'll mention an
elicitation technique that I've found to be valuable: ask "what's the
one thing that you need to use this tool in your work" ... I find that
this surprisingly simple question tends to generate interesting answers
- and it often provides opportunities to solve small problems and
generate enthusiasm that more open-ended lists of features don't
address.  While you're at it, you should consider this question yourself
... if there's some small problem that we can solve in the short term
for you, let's tackle it so you're finally using K-3D on a regular
basis, even if it's just using the pipeline to automate some process
with a script.  BTW, this is why I'm putting some effort into a
render-engine for Daniel, so he can start generating some useful results.

Cheers,
Tim

[tshead.vcf]

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---

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