Usability Team

Those attending were:

• Jens Hoffmann – The leader of HCI and redesigner of TYPO3.org
• Michiel Roos – Release Manager of DAM, author of the fabulous nc_staticfilecache extension
• Benni Mack – Core Developer, responsible for the ajaxed pagetree, DAM developer, Release manager 4.4
• Uschi Renziehausen - Tester, Motivator
• Oli Hader - Release manager 4.3
• ben van ‘t ende – Organiser, Motivator, Member TYPO3 Steering Committee

Not attending: Patrick (preparing his FORM presentation), Steffen (playing piano in Dusseldorf). The others not attending were not at T3DD09 at all.

The importance of the User Experience was elevated by the fact that Jens Hoffmann was added as core developer for TYPO3 Version5. During the core meeting that preceded the actual developer days it was decided that all changes that affect the interface will have to be approved by our team by means of the "+" mechanism. At least 2 of the members of the team will have to approve of the change. Lucky for the team Benni Mack was assigned the honorable task of Release Manager for TYPO3 version 4.4. During the meeting we discussed these fortunate events. Uschi mentioned a number of problems there are with the backend. It is mainly that the colors in the backend have low contrast. The layout also has some things that need to be improved. Basically it comes down to the fact many things are hardcoded in the backend. Benni mentions that fixing one backgroundcolor for instance in the list module means all other modules need to be investigated as well. Ways of coding the different modules varies, which only makes this task more difficult. The discussion in the team got pretty heated. Jens very clearly stated that we need to act according to a global vision and not randomly fix things. The whole team definitely recognized that this makes sense. We also agreed we are not going to fix things ourselves or commit patches. All technical work is for the core team. We as a team can only indicate where the problems are and maybe suggest a solution.!>http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v3859/60/108/1303566977/n1303566977_420038_3796361.jpg!

The team wants to be more visible. For that we decided to make better use of the Forge project pages we have and which is directly accessible from the homepage of http://forge.typo3.org. This article for one is an example of improving communication ;-) We also decided to meet again to discuss and decide upon the road we are travelling. The meeting will take place from 26th of june to 28th of june in Frankfurt, home of DKD.

Jens plans a User Experience Week where projectmanagers, developers and designers work together intensively for a whole week to tackle usability and layout issues. The volunteers will need to be sponsored by companies. The location, food and drinks also need sponsoring. The week is planned from the 14th to the 21th of november.

Jens and myself also discussed if the name UX/UI would be a good name for the group. We are thinking usability would be better. We have not decided on that. What do you think?