[TYPO3-hci] Team future

[Kasper Skårhøj]

Hi Folks,

We are at some cross roads with this team and we need to figure out  
what to do. The original announcement for the team purpose was posted  
by me on the core mailing list the 16/5. It was tied to the official  
4.5 roadmap, aiming for usability. The implicit promise was, that the  
team would speak with authority on what was going to be developed for  
the upcoming versions.

In the meantime I have lost faith that this team holds such  
authority. I'm worried about how we get our results implemented. We  
could simply ask core developers for a quote on a description of the  
work and pay out association money. Or we could try to motivate them  
otherwise. These models could work, but I think they are moving away  
from the root causes of what drives our style of Open Source. With  
this conviction I would either have to step down as team leader or  
change the purpose of the team.

No matter who continues the team the ground rule is; You are on your  
own. The team can claim no special rights to have their results  
implemented in the core (yes, this is a change from the original  
intension). Possible ways to get implementation done is through  
teaming up with interested core developers or otherwise lobbying for  
adoption. This is how it always worked for eg. the "CSS styled  
content" team and accessibility initiatives. This ground rule also  
means there is no exclusive right for the team to be _the_ usability  
team. Realising this, it becomes an open market where everyone is  
free to gather like-minded people on alternative HCI teams to work on  
solutions and push them into the core on the same terms.

When I look at the contribution of this team, I see a typical pattern  
which is in disaccord with the my originally posted questions:

> Shortterm: How can we innovate on TYPO3s usability in a network  
> community? How do we identify true solutions from a pond of opinions?
>
> Longterm: How can we (the team) sustain an improved usability and  
> consistency in TYPO3 over the next generations of the software?

- The shortterm questions were never answered. When I posted an  
article recently on usability and open source it didn't lead people  
to suggest solutions to overcoming the usability problem developers  
have.

- Nobody seems to have suggested how true solutions could be  
identified from the pond of options. Obviously, usability testing  
could be an answer. The lack of interest in this topic recently lead  
CBS researchers to shut down their initiative to get that ball  
roling. They will still do it, but they realized that they had to  
hand-pick the participants. I was not surprised.

- Sustaining usability in coming generations was also never discussed.

However, what really did kick-off was the collection of "personal  
itches" from all over the place and that has fed into the wiki now  
which is great as a knowledgebase.



My proposal for this team is to continue along the bazaar road where  
everyone tries to push his own agenda and look for possible synergies  
with others. If there is one thing we can obtain easily, it's  
inspiring each other with ideas and perspectives. If there is one  
thing we cannot achieve it is reaching a common agreement on every  
detail. So I propose this as a forum for exchange of opinions and  
informal creation of subgroups with common agendas. It's in this  
light I propose my 4.1 suggestions.


If there are still people left who wants a more cathedral-like team  
as I originally intended please speak up and we should decide who  
gets to keep this team/list and who creates a new one.

I hope you all understand that I chose this direction because I  
truely believe there is no better way to go. Since I respect the  
right of others to have a different vision I want to enable you to  
pursue that on your own initiative and I will also respect the  
majority opinion on this matter.


- kasper

"Necessity is the mother of invention"
-------------------------------
kasper2006 at typo3.com | +45 20 999 115 | skype: kasperskaarhoej |  
gizmo: kasper_typo3