Pre-New Year Planning
In 2012, let’s gets things going here again. In 3.3, “UI Group” meant CSS development, which moved the focus in a direction that was unintentional. People can be both application UI designers and front-end developers, but to get this group active again and in the area it’s intended to be producing things, we should get back to improving WordPress admin screen design. We’re going to be shifting the way the core team approaches development timing and assignments in 3.4, and a similar shift should happen here. We should ID all the big and little UI redesign/touch-ups that need to be done and put them in prioritized order (with the things slotted for 3.4 officially coming in first). Then, when we start up again after Jan 1, we should figure out who’s able to work on what.
A fair number of UI involvement has been from people who are good with front-end development and like thinking about UI and/or web designers without much application design experience, vs experienced application designers. These are pretty distinct skillsets, and though it’s possible to be adept in all of them, almost no one is by nature, and experience is necessary to be that kind of crossover hit. We should be pairing people up so that the more experienced application designers can work with those who are still developing that particular skillset. (This is how core development work is going to be structured in 3.4, too.)
It’s been a while since original introductions, and people have come and gone since then anyway. I’m going to be making some changes to this site over the next few days to try and make it a little more conducive to ongoing discussions, comping, etc. In the meantime, maybe we could all re-introduce ourselves for the new year in the comments? Name, URL, one-liner describing your experience level, note the kinds of UI design you particularly enjoy and/or think you’re good at (specify which), and ID anything in the WordPress UI that you’d particularly like to see addressed in the coming year (and if you have ideas for how to fix it already, say so). This will give us a better understanding of who’s in the mix when we get going on Jan. 3rd.
giulianovelli, and 12 others are discussing. 
Jane Wells 10:13 pm on December 28, 2011 Permalink
I’m Jane Wells, no online portfolio anymore, but blog is at http://jane.wordpress.com (though I probably post more frequently on combination of wpdevel and wordpress.org/news). I’ve worked as a web/application designer and usability person since 1999, and worked for various agencies (ex Schematic, Fluid, Spiremedia) as well as both large (Microsoft) and small (ex Green Mountain Energy, magazine publishing company) companies in that time. I’m currently the UI/UX lead for WordPress (since 2008/2.7), and I project manage the core development in addition to being in charge of the UI.
Things that really need some redesign love (in no particular order):
New “wizard” for configuring things like widgets, menus, etc when changing themes (3.4)
Plugin management screens
Theme management screens
Comments screen
Dashboard
Global dashboard for multisite
Loads of little UI cleanup tasks in multisite
Managing uploads/galleries
Categories box on post editor screen
You get the picture
I will probably want to work on the theme-switching wizard first, then media stuff, unless someone comes up with something else that is awesome that we want to refine so we can get it in right away.
Ipstenu 12:34 am on December 29, 2011 Permalink
Mika Epstein (Ipstenu, obviously). http://tech.ipstenu.org is more appropriate here.
I’m not a theme designer (I can do it, I just … don’t). What I do, all day, in between tech support for people who shouldn’t need it and forum patrol, is design and maintain an interface used by high level support staff to run ‘standard installs.’ I get the joy of balancing how to take exceptionally complex requests, pull that into a simple standard request form that NON techs will fill out (it has to be flexible to support 22 different types of requests, each with their own special requirements, without being onerous to maintain), and then transfer that information back into the complex install we end up running. Oh and make sure any upgrades or changes I make to our tool doesn’t end with the support staff putting my head on a pike for making THEIR tool unusable. Fun fun
What am I good at? I’m best at having ideas.
I’ve been doing ‘situationally based programing’ for so long, I default to ‘I don’t like that, I should change it.’ I’m okay with PHP, enough that I don’t worry much when I dig through the code to figure out WHAT it does and how to plug into it, but I’m not a psychocoder.
What UI needs works?
Widgets/menus +1
Buttons (I find myself really liking the idea of square green now)
Multisite Theme Management (the language, people, the language!)
Contextual Help (It really feels boring)
Chris 6:31 am on December 29, 2011 Permalink
Hi! I’m new, but I would love to help! My name is Chris Van Patten. My personal/biz sites are in maintenance or development, so I won’t even post those (the downside of being busy with work). My moderately up-to-date portfolio is here: http://cvp.me/web
My main focus is working as creative director of my own operation, Van Patten Media, which serves a lot of clients in entertainment, theatre, etc. We build custom themes for every client, something I’m very proud of, and have been doing it for around 6 years now. I’m incredibly picky and detail oriented. I love SASS and Compass with a burning passion.
I have only done minimal UI design before, for a few small webapps and things, so I am really not sure how I could best fit in here (I’m confident I am up to the challenge, just not sure what I do best… haven’t done enough of it!).
What UI needs work:
Tags (Mainly how the new tag display seems just tacked on… and if custom_term_meta ever comes to core, it just won’t be a nice look. I’d love to see the New Tag display moved to its own page so the tag list can be a full-width table)
Categories (Ditto)
Those two (really one, ish) immediately jump to mind but I’m also in the middle of a winter trip to Italy so that’s just based on a quick survey of my WordPress test install. I’ll stay in the loop as much as I can, I would love to contribute, if you’ll have me!
arena 2:19 pm on December 29, 2011 Permalink
maybe a foolish idea,
why not considering (and managing) plugins like apps are managed on mobile phones and other stuff ?
is that a good idea ?
Pete Schuster 10:01 pm on December 31, 2011 Permalink
Hi,
My name is Pete Schuster. I’m new around these parts but I’d like to get more involved. I did my first WordCamp presentation in Philly a couple months ago, and I’d really like to make 2012 the year I got started contributing to core. You can find my work at http://peteschuster.com, and I also blog from time to time on it as well.
I’m really interested in responsive design work as well as just overall clean, semantic, and DRY code (HTML/CSS). I just started using Sass, and can really see the benefit it would have if implement in core. Its really easy to keep things separate and clean.
Anything I can help with I’d love to be given the chance to participate in. One thing that did bother me when looking at the core code when 3.3 was being release, was the CSS had no standard way of being written, which is kind of a pet peeve of mine. It’d be nice if the UI team could agree on a standard ie ( box model, borders, floats, positions, fonts, etc ) and try and stick to it so the CSS is more easy to read.
Really looking forward to meeting everyone and getting more involved.
-Pete
Helen Hou-Sandi 4:52 pm on January 2, 2012 Permalink
Helen Hou-Sandi (helenyhou around .org and Trac): http://helenhousandi.com
I am a WordPress developer, doing everything from front-end slicing and development to deep custom post type use. I do a little of everything but I would say that I’m the member of our team that’s focused on the client experience and insisting that everything be both functional AND pretty. I started out as a mostly PHP/MySQL application developer for a university (well, music conservatory), which with our limited resources meant doing everything from web application UI to basic database design to development to training and documentation. Since musicians are notoriously reluctant to use or adapt to technology, it was a challenge to design and create applications that were immediately usable by faculty, staff, and students alike. We ended up choosing to go with WordPress as CMS while I was there largely because of the usability and being able to empower more of the school community to create content. I definitely fall in the category of developer-thoughtful-about-UI, so I’m eager to work on developing this skillset.
WordPress UI I’m noticing:
Buttons (also really liking the squared off + new colors idea)
Responsive admin – would like to make mobile happen
Category and tag metaboxes
Lots of small multisite things – language, connections between network and site screens (conceptual and otherwise)
Media management (also thoughts that go beyond UI)
Amy Hendrix (sabreuse) 10:42 pm on January 4, 2012 Permalink
I’m Amy Hendrix – sabreuse on trac, irc, twitter, and most everywhere else on the internets. http://amyhendrix.net and http://sabreuse.com
I’m a freelancer doing client services, so I do a mix of design and dev. I work with a lot of small/medium business users who really stop me from falling into the classic geek trap of “but of course it’s totally obvious!” when something obviously REALLY isn’t so for them. I’d like to contribute what I can to making WordPress the kind of usable and flexible tool for non-technical users that it feels like to me as someone who knows it fairly well. I got started with WordPress in a previous job working on technology projects with university faculty (see Helen’s comment above: it isn’t just musicians); one of those projects was launching a campus multisite service, and I’ve stuck with WP ever since. I’m also part of the theme review team.
I’d love to see:
More consistency between multisite and single-install for themes & plugins
Better configuration (not site settings, but theme/menus/widgets/some plugins) experience overall – part of this, I think, is Jane’s Wizard idea, but it’s all very scattered between different menus and panels
Media, especially for galleries (which is probably beyond the scope of this post, but necessarily touches on it)
mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine) 10:21 pm on January 15, 2012 Permalink
mitcho (mitchoyoshitaka on trac)
http://mitcho.com
dev with previously accepted core contributions. not a designer but I have two eyes.
I <3 JS and would be happy to work with UX folks on implementing fixes for papercuts. Currently sitting next to @designsimply and writing a patch for the media popup's Gallery view.
Sheri Bigelow 10:37 pm on January 15, 2012 Permalink
Sheri Bigelow (designsimply)
http://designsimply.com/
I work as a Happiness Engineer at Automattic. I’m good at testing patches and writing bug reports. I have a made few small patches here and there but do not have a lot of dev experience yet. I love photography and know my way around Photoshop.
I’m interested in the UI design surrounding media uploads and galleries because it’s my personal pain point when using WordPress to post my photography, which I’m finally switching over from Flickr and old Gallery installations.
Andrew Searles 1:14 am on January 16, 2012 Permalink
I’m new to the Group. Talked with Jane over WordCamp Bham. I’d like to fine a place where I can help out.
Designer. I’m comfortable in the Common front-end stuff. CSS HTML JS stuff like that. I have a good understanding of server side stuff. Enough to do what I need to do.
I want to see uploads do more while simplifying at the same time. I like the way we handle it now but I think it could be better. Galleries too. I’m feeling responsive admin right now, too. I don’t know why, but that’s a place I can help. Talked a little with jane about this. It looks like we need to start with specs on it. maybe that’s something I can help with.
PS #wpyall
Robert 7:12 pm on January 22, 2012 Permalink
I know it’s not perfect, but in your previous posts i took your drop down menus from wp, and made some re-design in my free time, for 20 mins of work of mine I think it’s better, of curse that can be improved as well. I truly think that the current way of how you implement your drop downs are not good, however that’s the best I could do for the situation: http://i.imgur.com/cO0qU.png
Zach "The Z Man" 6:31 pm on January 30, 2012 Permalink
What’s happenin?! My name is The Z Man AKA Zach Abernathy (thezman84)
http://www.redclayinteractive.com/
http://www.zmandesigns.com/
I’m new around these parts, but would love to be more involved in the WordPress scene. I’m currently employed as the Development Director for Red Clay Interactive. I love all things CSS/HTML/front-end development. I have been using WP since 2005, and have been actively developing in WP since 2007. As part of my job I work to transform WP and take it to the next level by using it as a full-scale CMS for small businesses all the way to large enterprise businesses. I am a HUGE advocate of what WP can and will do and the amount of potential it has as a CMS platform.
As far as UX/UI goes, I’m so so when it comes to that sort of thing. When it comes to coding said UX/UI designs, that’s right in my wheel-house. I am extremely passionate about CSS/HTML development and my daily job is not a job, it’s a hobby that I turned into a career. I absolutely love what I do.
I want to help in any way, shape, form that I can.
As for what I think needs some love:
“wizard” like enterface for custom fields (ie: custom fields template plugin) w/o having to rely on a plugin
upload buttons across the top of the_content field (see http://make.wordpress.org/ui/2011/11/20/button-button-whos-got-the-button/)
responsive design for mobile support w/o having to rely on an app
Thanks for letting give my shoutout. I look forward to helping and being needed
giulianovelli 1:11 pm on February 18, 2012 Permalink
My name is Giuliano, from Rome and I would like to join the team. I am a self trained designer and front-end coder (mostly html/css but when needed js too). I mainly work for an agency so I haven’t a personal website right now. I’ve worked for small and big projects alike, and used WP many times in the past. In recent years i had to use others, more complex CMSes but recently I revisited WP and liked all the new stuff.
I am thinking about making themes in my free time and because of that I am studying a lot the WP conventions, UI and the likes. When I discovered of your UI team I instantaneously loved the idea, and i think it would be a great occasion to help the community and learning by observing and interacting with experienced people like you.
Hugo Baeta 12:50 am on March 17, 2012 Permalink
Hugo Baeta (hugobaeta)
http://hugobaeta.com / http://justhugo.com
I work as a Social Designer at Automattic. I’m a Social Designer, because I work for Team Social
It basically means I’m in charge of crafting some UI/UX problem solving on WordPress.com – often actually working over what is in core, other times crafting new experiences.
I’m obsessed with standardization and good branding in any design, and I enjoy sitting down with a pad of paper and sketching ideas to solve UX problems.
Like Sheri said, above, I’m also very interested in the whole image handling of WordPress, as I too love photoblogging. Other areas that come to mind include: The Visual Editor, Information Architecture (the amount of options in the menu are growing at an alarming pace, it would be good to think about it in the near future again), and the visual design of WordPress core. Also, I’ve seen WP grow so much over the last few years , maybe it’s time for another ‘Crazy Horse’ experiment again? (yes, Jane, I was actually at WordCamp SF 08 – my first WordCamp – where you and Liz Danzico presented ‘Crazy Horse’ – it was an amazing presentation and work you guys did!)
I’ve always wanted to dedicate some time to help out in Core, I hope I get the chance to! I can contribute around 2 hours a week, so let me know how I can help.
Chelsea Otakan 7:50 pm on March 21, 2012 Permalink
Hi there,
Chelsea Otakan (Chexee on and offline) http://chexee.me
I’m Chelsea and I’m a member of the Dot Org team at Automattic. I’ve been hanging around the UI group and contributing for a little over a year. I’m a web designer who has been using WordPress to complete my designs for the past 7 years and am recently exploring the world of UX and software design.
I’m really interested in exploring and solving UX problems as well as designing UI elements.
Things I’d like to explore:
Flow and design of media
Refinement of small elements like buttons and tabs
Simplifying the settings panels
Layout capabilities integrated into the post editor