[Tails-ux] Greeter mockups

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Author: spencerone
Date:  
To: tails-ux
Subject: [Tails-ux] Greeter mockups
Heyz,

>
> sajolida:
> Yes, Keynote is the equivalent of PowerPoint. With tchou we've been
> using LibreOffice Impress which does the trick as well. Our mockups
> were
> a bit rough so the content and interactions were there but the look and
> feel was not really exciting.
>


Word. A more dedicated prototyping and testing tool would be preferred,
but I have never looked beyond alternativeto.net, which doesn't make it
easy to compare packaged tools, only the software as a whole; I would
need a dedicated prototyping and testing tool as a starting point.

Illustrator has a plug-in for Keynote for directly exporting vectors,
which is important for certain animations, and prevents redrawing
*everything*. However, A pretty functional experience can be had with
raster files and hotspots, though it is quite hacky.

>
> Ok, and are there any toolkit to draw interfaces, buttons, input
> fields,
> etc. Or did you draw each element yourself?
>


From scratch. Toolkits are often sloppily assembled and it is best
(more efficient) if vector and pixel shapes to perfectly align.
However, given the UI guidelines we are following, we can easily create
a Tails UI toolkit for our community to more readily jump in,
upstreaming it as necessary given GNOME's (most likely intentional to
not be too strict) lack thereof.

>
> Yes, all this is quite bad :) And we'll definitely have to trade-offs
> quite a lot of our "ideals" on privacy, not depending on shitty
> companies, etc. if we want to use one of these.
>
> I know that tchou has more experience with them, maybe we could find
> one
> that match better our expectations.
>


I am open to this :) Though I do feel confident in our ability to
package these things into a sweet workflow environment for ourselves
(and others?). IDK what this looks like, but give me some time to
investigate.

>>
>> Spencer:
>> We could use third-party online tools, but only if they are truly
>> needed. They offered prototyping tools, VOIP, messaging, and version
>> control, all of which we already have. The one other thing they offer
>> is team/task management, which Redmine kind of does, but might be
>> overkill for our current situation.
>>
>
> What I felt would be interesting in such tools is:
>
>   - Toolkits to draw interface mockups efficiently, so that all of us
>     can propose things quickly and with a similar visual language.
>   - Possibility of visualizing, manipulating, commenting on the objects
>     directly and by different people.
>   - Possibility of testing the mockups directly without having to turn
>     them into another format (paper, clickable PDF, etc.).

>


Directly means in-app or in-format.
  - In-app is we build in Inkscape and do not have to save it in any 
other format, not too
    effective, as it requires specific software and fonts.
  - In-format is we build and test code or drawings on paper.  HTML might 
be the way to go.  We
    could place these UI elements (toolkit) online and allow them to be 
repositioned and saved out
    as testable pages (quite the labor understatement).


Given the effort involved with in-format (we gotta finish before we
begin), changing formats is most suitable. I would further define a
difference between format and medium, where changing formats is staying
within the same medium. But I think we agree that the intention is to
*not* have to recreate anything. Exporting to clickable .pdf might be
the way to go...

>
> There's a comparison of prototyping tools on Wikipedia that could be a
> start to explore this further:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_prototyping_tools
>


Will start here. tchou and the UXpert will be valuable perspectives to
have and I will reach out to ensure we don't overlook too many tools.

Wordlife,
Spencer