Open Stack

Hi

I've just recently started wetting my feet in openstack, so my opinion 
is mostly external, and maybe naive, but I think that "everybody should 
think about UX" is not in opposition with having a team that focuses on 
it, just like it's nice to have people who focus on security, although 
obviously everybody should focus about it, and same goes for 
performances, for documentation, for community, or for any aspect of the 
project, if there are improvements to be done, it's always effective to 
have a focused effort.

UX is a broad topic, and of course people will focus on different parts 
of it anyway (subjects from logging, to web UI, to cli, to config files, 
etc have been talked about in the discussion), but thinking about it as a 
whole, as a concept, is important for the project to go forward. Of 
course a bug can (and will) ruin the user experience, no matter how much 
effort went into making a nice UI, but UX is not just a matter of being 
bug-free, so helping people design a global UX so openstack doesn't feel 
like a dozen of loosely-related projects packaged together, should be an 
important target, imho, and it's not something easy for people working 
in each project to think about, because there is a lot happening in all 
of them, and the project is kind of big.

Cheers

On Fri, Dec 06, 2013 at 11:19:57AM +0100, Jaromir Coufal wrote:
> Hi OpenStackers,
> 
> I am replying to this thread with a smaller delay. I was keeping
> very close attention to it but I wanted to let the discussion flow
> without me interfering, so I see the community opinion on the UX
> effort.
> 
> First of all, thanks Thierry to starting this thread and the whole
> discussion. I believe it was/is very valuable.
> 
> From the discussion I see some hesitations of approving UX as
> independent program and lot of (strong) opinions that this is
> important to happen. I appreciate both because from concerns we can
> learn and from the positive feedback we get a lot of support and
> also a lot of suggestions where we can continue helping. (BTW: Huge
> thanks for this, all the listed areas are very important and I am
> happy that I could have added some new items to the list of future
> spots where we can help.)
> 
> As for me, I am (of course) on the side which fights for UX to be an
> individual program from various reasons.
> 
> I share the same opinion that we (UX) shouldn't be completely
> separated team which is 'dictating'. Our purpose is to be strongly
> integrated with other projects. But on the same time be
> cross-project wise and one leg out. We should organize and
> prioritize our efforts as well as very tightly communicate with
> related project team members (coordinate on planning features,
> assigning priorities, etc). And that's what we are doing. We started
> with UIs which is the most obvious output. We have have limited
> resources, but getting more contributors on board, getting more
> people interested, we can spread to other areas which were mentioned
> here.
> 
> We are growing. At the moment we are 4 core members and others are
> coming in. But honestly, contributors are not coming to specific
> projects - they go to reach UX community in a sense - OK this is
> awesome effort, how can I help? What can I work on? And it is more
> and more companies investing in the UX resources. Because it is
> important. We are in the time when not just functionality matters
> for project to become successful. And showing publicly that
> OpenStack cares about UX will make our message stronger - we are not
> delivering just features, we care and invest in usability as well.
> 
> Contributors who might get interested in UX can be largely from
> other OpenStack projects, but on the other hand they might be
> completely outside the project experts. Experts in cloud-solutions,
> they can have huge amount of feedback from OpenStack users, they can
> be experts in testing... usability in general. This group of people
> is not interested in particular project, but in global effort of
> moving OpenStack closer to users. If we don't have special program
> about this - whom are they going to reach? Where can they start? How
> can they be recognized? Their input is as valuable as input from all
> other contributors. Just a bit different.
> 
> I don't agree much with the argument that everybody should keep UX
> in mind and care about it. Well to be more accurate, I agree with
> it, but this is very ideal case which is very very hard to achieve.
> We can't say - OK folks, from now on everybody will care about UX.
> What should they care about specifically? This is area where
> engineers are not specialized. It takes a lot of time for everybody
> to do their own search for resources and figuring out how somebody
> else does that, how it should work for user, etc. And instead of
> focusing on the architecture or implementation part, people will
> have to invest big amount of time to research other sources. Yes, it
> is part of responsibility, but... If there is anybody else helping
> with this effort, focusing cross-project, thinking user way and
> proposing solutions it's so big help and support of others work. Of
> course we can do UIs, APIs, CLIs without specialized group of
> people, but each engineer thinks a bit differently, each can have
> different perception of what is valuable for user and the lack of
> unification will raise. And that's actually what is happening.
> 
> At the moment we are not the biggest group of people, so I
> understand the concerns. Anyway, getting the blessing for UX is not
> a question of us continuing in the effort, but supporting us and
> spreading out the message - that we as OpenStack care.
> 
> I am not trying to convince anybody here, I accept the decision 'no'
> (at least for this moment). I just feel that it was not consensus
> that most of people thinks that this is nonsense. I don't see any
> strong reasons why not. In time, I believe more people will see how
> important it is and hopefully OpenStack will recognize UX efforts
> officially.
> 
> Anyway... I want to encourage anybody interested in the UX (any
> area) - reach us and help us to make OpenStack more usable.
> Everybody's hand is welcome.
> 
> Thanks all for contributing to this thread and expressing your
> opinions. I really appreciate that.
> 
> -- Jarda
> 
> --- Jaromir Coufal (jcoufal)
> --- OpenStack User Experience
> --- IRC: #openstack-ux (at FreeNode)
> --- Forum: http://ask-openstackux.rhcloud.com
> --- Wiki: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/UX
> 
> 
> On 2013/20/11 16:09, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> >Hi everyone,
> >
> >How should we proceed to make sure UX (user experience) is properly
> >taken into account into OpenStack development ? Historically it was hard
> >for UX sessions (especially the ones that affect multiple projects, like
> >CLI / API experience) to get session time at our design summits. This
> >visibility issue prompted the recent request by UX-minded folks to make
> >UX an official OpenStack program.
> >
> >However, as was apparent in the Technical Committee meeting discussion
> >about it yesterday, most of us are not convinced that establishing and
> >blessing a separate team is the most efficient way to give UX the
> >attention it deserves. Ideally, UX-minded folks would get active
> >*within* existing project teams rather than form some sort of
> >counter-power as a separate team. In the same way we want scalability
> >and security mindset to be present in every project, we want UX to be
> >present in every project. It's more of an advocacy group than a
> >"program" imho.
> >
> >So my recommendation would be to encourage UX folks to get involved
> >within projects and during project-specific weekly meetings to
> >efficiently drive better UX there, as a direct project contributor. If
> >all the UX-minded folks need a forum to coordinate, I think [UX] ML
> >threads and, maybe, a UX weekly meeting would be an interesting first step.
> >
> >There would still be an issue with UX session space at the Design
> >Summit... but that's a well known issue that affects more than just UX:
> >the way our design summits were historically organized (around programs
> >only) made it difficult to discuss cross-project and cross-program
> >issues. To address that, the plan is to carve cross-project space into
> >the next design summit, even if that means a little less topical
> >sessions for everyone else.
> >
> >Thoughts ?
> >
> 

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-- 
Gabriel Pettier
Software Engineer at CloudWatt.com 
06 85 10 36 34