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List:       kde-kimageshop
Subject:    Re: about free interaction design for your open source project
From:       Boudewijn Rempt <boud () valdyas ! org>
Date:       2010-08-26 7:04:44
Message-ID: 201008260904.44443.boud () valdyas ! org
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On Wednesday 25 August 2010, Matthew Jadud wrote:
> Hi Boudewijn,
> 
> On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 04:34, Boudewijn Rempt <boud@valdyas.org> wrote:
> > I'm Boudewijn Rempt, the maintainer of Krita (http://www.krita.org), a painting \
> > application for digital artists. It's a project with a largish team of developers \
> > and artists who give feedback on our application. We've recently gone through a \
> > session defining vision for our application with Peter Sikking (who has also \
> > worked on the Gimp), and we're really interested in improving the interaction \
> > design of our application and we would love to work together with one of your \
> > students.
> 
> That looks awesome. I haven't had any responses from apps of this
> sort, so thank you! Krita adds a nice dimension to the possible
> choices for the students.

> -) I thought that the MyPaint team also intended to contact you, btw.

> > As a project, we've got quite a bit of experience working with students, for \
> > instance during the Google Summer of Code, and I have been a mentor to a group of \
> > about a dozen students in Bangalore who were working on a related project, the \
> > mobile version of KOffice, FreOffice.
> 
> The nice thing about what I'm proposing is that we won't be as
> "heavyweight" as a GSoC student. That is, I'm here running the class
> and providing local support, so any mechanics (eg. interacting with
> particular tools, getting things set up, etc.) can be handled locally.

Cool!

> So you have a sense for what's going on at my end, we're going to be
> starting the semester tomorrow, and my rough plan is as follows:
> 
> 1. The students will do a rapid pass through the design and testing
> process on a website project.
> 
> 2. While rapidly touring the breadth of UI design and testing, we'll
> learn about interacting with communities via IRC, blogs, mailing
> lists, bug trackers, wikis, and the like.
> 
> 3. My expectation is that they will look at the available projects and
> begin approaching the communities/projects they're most interested in
> working with by mid-to-late September, and we will then use the
> remainder of the semester to focus in on software UIs.

Looks like a good plan to me :-)

> While I have taught this kind of course before, it is the first time
> I've experimented with putting it in the context of a living, open
> source project. That said, I want to be clear: I'm well aware of how
> open source software development works, and the students will be, too.
> We do not believe our contributions will *necessarily* result in
> changes in your project. We only ask for the opportunity to work in a
> community context where the students' explorations will not come as a
> surprise, and their work will be given a bit of consideration along
> the way. And who knows: they might decide to keep working on the
> project past the end of the term, which I would consider a win for all
> involved!

That would be great indeed! 

> My most sincere thanks. I'll drop a note shortly pointing you at the
> (hopefully up-to-date) course website, and let you know how we're
> getting on.

great, thanks!
-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
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