11:10 AM

Take the test

posted under , , by Pinheiro | Edit This
I'm just back from the GCDS. and had a great time there with all of the KDE people and some of the gnome people as well.
I had the opportunity to finally meet the tango people and they are great :). Juts like us they the best they can to make the open source desktop rock.
My talk was about 2 things, the KDE open service, (got great feedback from several distros about it) and the making the desktop you need... (another way of saying I don't guess what the user wants and its better to ask).

So every 15 days we will be conducting icon test on http://www.oxygen-icons.org/survey/, there is no wrong anser just good ones, ask everybody you know to take it, im very interested on the opininons of the people that use the computer ocasionaly and never used kde.
The first test is about some icons in K3B, its very fast to do the test, follow the link and see all the wonderful stuff http://www.apliki.de/ did for us, find out more in http://www.usability-methods.com/en.
The first feedback was rather good and we already know ways on how to conduct the test in a better fashion specially as the specific wording for each element goes...



So take the test have fun with it, ask your friends and family to take it, there is no wrong answer, so enjoy. I will try to publish some results in the end, (winl not be as simple abut i will try at least to give a small reports, on specific issues such as localization.

4:18 PM

I have another question?

posted under , by Pinheiro | Edit This
This is supposed to be format CD/DVD etc... I know its not perfect but I'm a bit short on magical ideas for format, (or erase that also exists) and I have to do it before the week end so that the usability study can be launched still in good time, the study will test several different ideas for this icons...

This is format cd :) (I know I know its not obvious).


I have also made a new burn cd icon to put in the same test.



We had an icon for this action But i think this one is better, any way something to test also.

5:57 PM

I have a question!

posted under , by Pinheiro | Edit This
Hopefully in the next few days I should have a Usability test that I have been working on with Björn Balazs from apliki.de on the K3B icons in that study I will pose the same question I'm about to pose now.
And hopefully a few more options, that will come from the feedback of this post.
So the question is......
"Data cd" 1 or 2?....
1
2

Don't think to hard, just fire the first thing that pops in your mind, that is the best way to judge a icon IMO..also if you have an better idea please share...I will try to include it in the usability test.

P.S Ofcourse the numbers will have to be redone for each size and the document as well... Its one source file for each icon. meaning this one = 14 files 7 png's and 7 svgz's.

8:24 PM

The air we see...

posted under , , by Pinheiro | Edit This
Today the great Marco Committed air into svn.

Let me just tell you a bit about air, air is a direct descendant of the air wallpaper, I made the first sketch of it the same day I made the wallpaper, and it tries to make the people that found the Oxygen theme "to black" happy. There is no one fits all design, and hopefully with air we can make a wider spectrum of people love KDE. ( in the future I think we can still make a couple more themes)
Its still we hope coherent, there are a lot of small details that are shared with oxygen both qt theme as plasma theme. That gives it a feeling of belonging as part of the same experience.
We introduced a brand new element in plasma theming, a cropped background the is placed on the plasmoid canvas, (you will see this in the future taken to new heights as it opens a fantasist new set of opportunities to designers).
Its transparent, people love transparent stuff :) (we did some effort to avoid contrast issues, but with certain wallpapers there could be a bit of a problem, nothing much dough...(you still have oxygen theme that is very contrasted)).

We try in KDE 4.3 introduced a new way of branding KDE, were more than the KDE brand we try to share an experience, "the KDE experience" , that you can enjoy in your distribution... And work as already began with some major distributions were we are working together to create that experience for you, and maintaining mostly intact the branding of your distribution.... Its working pretty well so far...

6:35 PM

Sharing a brand.

posted under by Pinheiro | Edit This
After reading many of the comments, on Aseigo blog I reached to the conclusion that most people did not get the idea.
We don't want to kill each of the distributions own branding, we want to share, I would not slap a KDE logo on top of your distribution logo, nothing like that.
What we are after is creating something that is recognizable across the room something people can see as recognizable, a "hey that is pretty and I have seen it some ware else". I would do my best to keep a strong visual connection to the specific distro brand but in a way that one brand doesn't kill the other.
I see distros having no problem on using the icon theme, that is a huge part of the branding part, distros do in that remark little to no modifications to it, same goes to oxygen widget theme, usually the major modifications are done on the "easy part" the wallpaper, splashscren and kdm.
So if a distro can share a huge portion of the branding value with KDE, how come we can't do the same for the easy stuff as well???

Don't think this is a totally innocent move from us, more than the making the co-branding of distros I am interested I'm making bridges between the downstream artists and us, so in the future we will be all working together improving and creating a myriad of desktops and brands that people can perceive as one and many, as unique but also versatile, as one experience that comes in many flavors.

This can only be achieve if we all talk and have methods of sharing problems, and propose solutions. There is allot to gain and nothing to lose out of this experiment.

4:46 PM

3 more

posted under by Pinheiro | Edit This
As promised 3 more winners.

Simone Lazzaris sent this one, still unnamed.

Midnight_in_Karelia, great pic from Anastasiya S. Litvinenko.


Rings of Saturn by Zoltan Vass.

5:51 PM

Announcing the first 3 winners

posted under by Pinheiro | Edit This
As usual the title says it all....

In no particular order ....
Aghi by Matteo Nobile.


Altra, by the games art master It-s, Eugene Trounev (you rock)


And Finally "Evening" by Christoph Kummer

Tomorrow we will announce the 3 remaining ones . stay tunned they should be in svn in no time.

Hope you all enjoy them as much as I do.

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