User:Eben

Useful Bits IRC Nick: eben #sugar Server: freenode EST This user's time zone is EST.

Bio

Eben Eliason is a lead UI designer for the OLPC project, and the primary author of the OLPC Human Interface Guidelines.

His (entirely unrelated) website is www.interdimensioinmedia.com

Tasks

Organize/prioritize Trac Tickets		It's been a while since I've really been through trac thoroughly. I've consulted it in the creation of this list of tasks, but I need to do a better job of prioritizing the tickets, closing or reassigning those that don't apply to me, and also prioritizing the tasks listed below (they are not prioritized, at present). I also hope to do a better job of mapping tickets to this task list, and vice-versa in the process.
Add Fedora logo to Sugar		We've agreed to include the Fedora logo in our Sugar distributions. I've added some thoughts to the ticket (Trac #8767) , but I'd like to get some more feedback and finalize a plan so this doesn't become a last-minute problem.
Add more stock icons		Our stock icon library makes it easy for activity developers to achieve the Sugar look and feel without wasting lots of time making their own icons. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, having a full stock icon library will make many legacy GTK apps look and feel like Sugar, without even being "sugarized". Scott has done a nice job of locating a number of missing stock icons we should support, and I hope to finish those as well as extend our basic set further. (Trac #8296)
Refresh HIG		The Sugar Human Interface Guidelines are a valuable resource for both developers and all interested in learning more about the design and interaction paradigms of the Sugar UI. Unfortunately, it has gone largely untouched since it's authoring over a year ago. I aim to complete a full pass over the HIG, updating images, ideas, and guidelines where appropriate, and noting categories in need of additional work and attempting to enlist individuals to assist in completing them.
Overlay chat designs		We've long anticipated that an overlay providing integrated chat facilities into all activities would be a powerful feature. There's even a button on the keyboard for it. Until now, only some first-round sketches have been made, but SugarLabs is pushing forward with this idea in hope of extending the reach of collaborative features in Sugar, and we have a volunteer willing to develop it as long as we find a design. I aim to create both short term and long term visions for this functionality. (Trac #3310)
Improve "get involved" page		In the rush to push the revised laptop.org website live, we ran out of time to properly flesh out some of its pages. One in particular that's also of particular importance to expanding our community and scaling our efforts is the get involved page, which I've agreed to spend time with to ensure that it provides a friendly and complete point of entry for any and all who wish to become involved with OLPC.
Prepare grassroots assets		Aaron has asked me to research and prepare some assets for a grassroots page of the new website, under the Participate section. This includes information about creating custom screensavers, personalizing email signatures, and printing business cards and other promotional materials.
Improve software update design		The software updater is a great thing, but it's young and could use some additional attention. This includes making one-click system updates possible. Perhaps there are ways in which we can integrate the work with the desires of Peru/Uruguay so that a push update model can is also supported.
Identity security designs		Michael has poked me recently regarding my thoughts on designs for securing identity within the neighborhood view. Specifically, we need a way to indicate people who aren't who they appear to be—both people who appear to be someone we know, but are actually someone else impersonating them, and people we know who have changed their outward identities (colors, etc.). This may also entail a more detailed specification of the friend creation process, including the ability to manually add friends, and the addition of friend-invitations/notifications. (Trac #8842)
Security settings module design		We haven't put any real time into a security module for the system settings yet. I have a ticket open for it, though. This should provide, among other things, a place for obtaining developer (I think we have a better name for this now) keys, from start to finish, without needing Browse or copy/paste. (Trac #6428) , (Trac #1502)
Update Journal designs		A number of small details have changed since we created the most recent Journal sketches. I'd like to revisit the Journal in two parts: one which provides a short list of easily attainable features with high impact, and another that represents a more complete long term design. The long term mockups will include improved tagging and browsing as demonstrated by Scott's prototypes, the exposure of metadata in detail views to make the Journal a useful tool for inspecting files, and assisted filtering/deletion to mitigate overflow (Trac ##8041) .
New collaboration sketches		Scott has proposed a number of potentially interesting additions to collaboration, designed specifically to offer collaboration even when our real-time synchronous collaboration falls short. I'd like to take a quick pass at a few of these ideas—"View Alice's Journal", "Share Alice's Screen", "Watch this activity", others?—to see if they have legs, and so that there is a visual target that volunteers can look to if they'd like to take on some of these new concepts.