KDE Visual Design Group/Akademy 2017 Takeaways

Akademy 2017 Review

Akademy 2017 was held in Almeria, Spain for a week full of discussion around the Plasma project. Our VDG team was represented by Jens Reutenberg (jensreu) and Andy Betts (anditosan). Our aim at the event was to provide help to many of the developers who gathered at the event and needed help in designing new applications using guidelines or just coming up with design ideas.

There are a few things that the VDG will be helping with going forward. Some of them are short term, medium term and others are long-term. These goals are about Plasma as a desktop. There are also other areas where the VDG can also help in individual work for developers working on specific applications.

Here are the details

Short Term Goals

• Applets, Config Dialogs - Needs a review and design
• Adding helpful animations to the boot-up process started by Andy Betts
• Renaming, when needed, desktop animations - The aim here is to brand and make effects more recognizable

Medium-Term Goals

• Tooltips, margins and spacing review - Led by Eike Hein
• General alignment and spacing throughout menus and applications - Led by VDG
• Keyboard shortcuts review - Led by VDG
• Notifications made persistent until dismissed - Led by VDG
• Highlight styles and consistency throughout the UI - Led by VDG

Long-Term Goals

• Review of current and future implementation of helpful animations throughout the desktop UI - Leaded by VDG
• Plasma Future - Design future looks and interaction for the entire Plasma Desktop - Led by VDG

Individual App Design Needs

• Mycroft Project - Needs help in designing a helpful, newer UI for the desktop client
• Babe Music Player - Needs help in defining some aspects of the UI to better adjust the application to Human Interface Guidelines
• Korganizer: need help to modernize the UI, and make it more usable.

Considerations

While the VDG is helpful in a few of these initiatives, our aim is to plan these features and changes first, then start doing mock-ups, reviewing and approving all these changes internally as a group first. We then hope to work with our developers in strategizing about the changes.

Please note that mock-ups first may not always be the ideal solution. We hope to create a space where discussion and revision are important.

Our team will be bringing these ideas to the table in the coming weeks and months.