Edit (08/10 Update): After some discussion, due to the release of the new HIG just a few days after this goal was proposed, this is being merged with T17408 A Beacon for Open Design, that encompasses the remaining aspects of this one, marking this as "Resolved".
Description
Goal: UX Integrity
Integrity can be defined as "the state of being whole and undivided".
The recent work on the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) has made the goal of KDE UX integrity that much more attainable. Currently, the guide is just that--a guide--and we propose that for KDE system elements, components, and integral apps, there should be more adherence to a predefined set of rules curated from the HIG. In other words, if it doesn't follow the rule, it is a bug.
Why UX Integrity?
The HIG's theme is clear: responsive & consistent. We agree!
Although there has been significant progress towards consistency, modernization, and accessibility of KDE's UI and theme recently, there is still room for improvement. In order for KDE to increase its userbase, it needs to respond to the plethora of form factors and display scales that vary greatly. It also needs to be able to adapt to different types of user input methods and themes, and do this all while maintaining cohesion across its ecosystem.
Since there are many devices that people use that come in different form factors that also have different display scales, KDE Plasma should adhere to a responsive UI/UX design policy that handles that variation of form factors. The KDE application Discover can be the example of what responsiveness should look like.
KDE Plasma's UI should also be able to adapt to various input methods. The user-experience (UX) should feel complete while using all the different various types of input methods. Currently, "touch mode" can feel unintuitive. KDE Plasma's UI should be treating touch input as touch input instead of tweaking the UI so that the user can use touch input as though they were using a mouse. There are also issues such as different components scaling different with different display scale settings; e.g., SDDM's display does not reflect the lockscreen scaling when the system's display scale is scaled up.
KDE Plasma's UI should feel complete, and it cannot feel complete with separate components behaving and looking differently. A good example would be with Discover and System-settings; they both have similar layouts, however, Discover has a responsive UI while System-settings does not. The display scaling issue mentioned above could also serve as an example of the need for cohesion.
What it will take:
- Creating and adopting a ruleset developed from the HIG.
- Defining what constitutes a system app & component.
- People willing to look across the stack to find use cases and componenents that violate the newly created ruleset.
- Individual apps devs would need to be on board, unless some easily accessible api for customization of each element or component is provided so they can keep whatever style or layout they want, in case they don't like whatever common style is settled.
- Porting of existing interfaces that violate ruleset.
- Fixing all bugs & features that violate ruleset.
Initial Project Team Organization
- Bug curation team
- Application developer/team
- Plasma component developer/team
- Input method (e.g., touch-mode, etc.) developer/team
Initial Roadmap
- The acceptance of this goal.
- The creation of a ruleset developed from the HIG.
- The curation and prioritization of the bugs & features that fall under the new ruleset.
- The development that will fix the bugs and add the features.
How we know we succeeded
Feedback from users, a reduction on the usage of theme-related customization options, reduced number of bug reports related to User Interface, either due to changes on the default layouts and themes or to reduction of usage of third party themes.
Relevant links
Champions
The team is:
- Diego Damohill
- Donald Menig
- XXX