WordPress.org

Helen Hou-Sandi 10:39 pm on July 3, 2012 Permalink
Tags: survey   

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  helenyhou 10:57 pm on July 3, 2012 Permalink

  I’ll kick off!

  • I identify as a UI/UX engineer, which means that I build interfaces. Sometimes I design them, but designing them for me means building in the browser and iterating until I think it doesn’t suck. In the WordPress/web world at large, I’m a developer, both front-end and the fun PHP/MySQL stuff. I contribute a good bit to core (I guess obviously) and am both a Contributing Developer and a team rep for development. I’m here to get things flowing even better cross-groups, whether subgroups of UI or between UI and Dev.
  • My strengths are admin interfaces that are easy to use, often without any training at all, the chase of perfection in visual aspects like colors and pixels, and beautiful code. My favorite area for making cool interfaces is content management (think custom post types and post meta). I am also very very particular/anal-retentive, which makes me one of those annoying pixel pushers. I like to think that I am also very good at not taking things personally and generally don’t get offended.
  • As above, I most enjoy working with the actual content management experience in the web interface (as opposed to site management or mobile apps or other). I think the media bits suck in quite a few places, and I think that the feeling of workflow has been lost over time in favor of power.
  • I can get lost in details, scenarios, and self-directed impatience very easily. I’m also not super great at wireframes (slow), which I would like to work on. I’d also love to get better at imagining and communicating user workflows.
  • I need the help of all of you participating
  • I love the friendliness and honesty I’ve found so far. I also love interacting with people who do things I don’t, like actual graphic design.
  • Brilliant people intimidate me all the time. I’m also scared of losing momentum.
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  Mel Choyce 1:53 am on July 4, 2012 Permalink

  • I self-identify as a designer. Photoshop is my canvas of choice. While I’m comfortable delving into front-end development and child theming for WordPress, especially for freelance work, I prefer to stick to visuals. I don’t have any back-end experience. I’m not totally sure of my identity in the WordPress world yet, but I want to become a core UI contributor and become an active member of the WordPress community. I attend WordCamps when I can, and recently spoke at WordCamp NYC. I’ve recently designed my first pay theme, which my partner is currently developing.
  • I’m good at creating interested, textured designs, thought recently I’ve been trying to focus on minimalism and super clear hierarchy. I’m a pretty decent icon designer as well. I’m really good at organizing my source files.
  • I love how easy to use WordPress is, and how enjoyable it is for me to hop right in and create appealing, organized and user-friendly sites in such a short time. I recently learned how awesome the template hierarchy is and can’t wait to have a really complex site that makes full use of WordPress’s power. I agree with Helen — the media bits of WordPress fall short in a lot of ways. I’d love to help make them better.
  • I often worry too much about small details at first. I need to learn to get something down first, and then get really particular about styles and appearance, instead of spending an hour staring at a navigation bar trying to get it *just* right. I also need to get better at exploring and creating more complex layouts and getting out of the formulaic funk I feel like I’m in.
  • Guidance and guidelines.
  • I love working with other web people, especially people from all kinds of backgrounds. I love the energy and variety of great ideas that comes from working with a diverse group. I find it easy to stay enthusiastic when working with others.
  • Getting started is really intimidating. How do I start? How can I personally contribute? If I want to do any sort of code contribution, how do I go about doing that? Trac is very intimidating, and I don’t know how I can find things I’m capable of doing. Alternately, am I capable of making any contributions? I think having design/ui things here will help me feel more comfortable with participating. Even still, I’m pretty nervous about being new and not being as knowledgeable and skilled as everyone else seems to be.
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    lessbloat 6:25 pm on July 4, 2012 Permalink

    Hi Mel! Nice to see you here.

    Getting started is really intimidating.

    Believe me, I hear ya! Hoping that we can get a few things in place in the near future to improve this, and make contributing more of a transparent process.

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      Mel Choyce 4:02 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink

      Thanks!

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  karmatosed 10:08 am on July 4, 2012 Permalink

  I want to get more involved so taking this chance to speak up and hopefully get involved in the UI team where I can be helpful.

  • I primiarily am a designer but also a front end developer. My focus as a designer is building communities. I tend to thrive designing content heavy sites. I usually end up doing theme work of some format. I also take my love of content heavy front sites to the back end and have worked with plugin developers and developers creating interfaces for them.
  • My strengths are making sense of dense content and creating paths for users. I am heavily into the psychology of users and really enjoy seeing how users use sites. I also have a soft spot for wireframes and maps as they hook into my love of interfaces and data displays.
  • WordPress for me is like a toolbox that gives a strong foundation to the sites I work with. I would third the media area as a pain and trouble. I also think the Dashboard is a missed opportunity for a useful area for users.
  • My coding weakness is JavaScript when it comes to scripting – it’s something I’m working at getting better with but unlike other languages always seems hard one for me. I also am learning that sometimes pixel poking to an inch of their life gets in the way of the project and releasing sometimes just has to happen.
  • Guidance really is a big one as new to group. I am fairly comfortable with trac so that’s not an issue.
  • A chance to give something back UI wise to WordPress. I’m also looking forward to listening to people’s opinions and learning myself by doing that.
  • Really it’s a case for me of getting it done and the first standing up step (which I’m doing here ).
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    helenyhou 12:33 pm on July 4, 2012 Permalink

    Hooray!

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      karmatosed 2:06 pm on July 4, 2012 Permalink

      Thank you.

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    lessbloat 5:44 pm on July 4, 2012 Permalink

    Howdy. Great to have you!

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  lessbloat 6:29 pm on July 4, 2012 Permalink

  Intro: I love clean, usable, bloat-less interfaces. I’m a huge fan of iterative design, polishing everything until it’s just right, and measuring changes to gauge what sort of impact they’ve made. I design (UX, UI, Sketch, Wireframe, Mockup, Polish), and code (HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery). I can get my hands dirty with some PHP if needed, but prefer to stick with my strengths.

  Strengths: User testing, UI brainstorming (sketching, mockups), UI design, Front-end dev, A/B testing, Bug fixing. I feel at home with, and enjoy all of this.

  Interests: Helping people, making their lives easier, simplifying complex workflows, polishing rough edges.

  Weaknesses: I’m rotten at Illustration and icon design. I’m always interested in diving more into mobile web design (i.e. browser, not native app design).

  Areas I need help: I’m completely new to all of this, so I need all of the help I can get!

  What appeals: Working with smart people on fun and interesting challenges – honestly, this is my dream job! Add on top of that that our work impacts the lives of millions of people – it’s pretty amazing.

  What’s intimidating: Everything! But I’m just going to dive in, and do my best to get up to speed.

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  Aaron Jorbin 3:29 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink

  -How do you self-identify in the UIX world? In the WordPress/web world?
  Interactivity engineer with a firm belief that design isn’t done until there is nothing left to remove.

  -What are your strengths in UIX/design/development? What do you like to do within those fields?
  Javascript and eliminating options. Testing is another passion.

  What parts of WordPress interest you most? What do you love and what do you hate?

  • The license

  What are your weaknesses and what skills would you like to improve upon?

  • Fonts, Colors, White Space

  What tools/help do you need to get something contributed back to WordPress core?

  • Nacin

  What appeals to you about this working group?

  • Making WordPress better and continuing to democratize publishing.

  What, if anything, intimidates you when it comes to getting going with contributing?

  • Finding Time.
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  sara cannon 5:23 pm on July 6, 2012 Permalink

  How do you self-identify in the UIX world? In the WordPress/web world?
  – I’m a designer. I love minimal clean design and I believe in decisions not options.

  What are your strengths in UIX/design/development? What do you like to do within those fields?
  – I love typography and believe that to be a strength – as well as responsive principles

  What parts of WordPress interest you most? What do you love and what do you hate?
  – I’m interested in taking the admin down to mobile responsively and improving on media. I will also like to see the admin become more skin-able & open itself up to easy color schemes.

  What are your weaknesses and what skills would you like to improve upon?

  • weakness = js/jquery (y’all might want me to just stick with CSS)

  What appeals to you about this working group?
  – I love it when people come together on open source and use all their talents to make it great

  What, if anything, intimidates you when it comes to getting going with contributing?

  • not knowing the decision process makes me hesitant to commit time sometimes (ex: working on a random ticket that will just be overridden as a no-go later)
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  Isaac Keyet 1:51 am on July 7, 2012 Permalink

  How do you self-identify in the UIX world? In the WordPress/web world?

  UI designer, but getting more interested in UX design than perfecting pixels. Still find it very hard to do designs that are not 100% pixel perfect. In the WP world I help design the WP apps, but I’ve never been that involved in WP development itself.

  What are your strengths in UIX/design/development? What do you like to do within those fields?

  I know front-end well (minus JS), responsive web design, and work almost solely with mobile devices so I’m familiar with mobile-only and mobile-optimized interfaces.

  What parts of WordPress interest you most? What do you love and what do you hate?

  Looking at WP’s UI from an outsiders perspective and improving what we didn’t know was broken. There’s tons of low hanging fruit that we never seem to get to (which I hate). I love WP’s attention to usability as a driving factor though.

  What are your weaknesses and what skills would you like to improve upon?

  I’m not a developer and having me mess around in php or js/jquery will most likely do more harm than good – either way it’ll take me 10x longer than if a dev did it. I don’t believe in Da Vinci’s though, and I think the only way to be really good at something is to have “something” be very specific. So I’d like to get better at optimizing for mobile and touch devices, and overall UX design in itself.

  What tools/help do you need to get something contributed back to WordPress core?

  I could use a getting started guide that took some of the fear away.

  What appeals to you about this working group?

  A lot of talented people lookin’ to kick some butt.

  What, if anything, intimidates you when it comes to getting going with contributing?

  Knowing what to work on, when to work on it, how to work on it, what to expect when it’s done, who to talk to, where to post for feedback… You know, all the things.

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  Cliff Seal 7:08 pm on July 18, 2012 Permalink

  -How do you self-identify in the UIX world? In the WordPress/web world?

  I’m a UX Designer by day, thanks to spending so much time both designing (web/print) and head-down in WordPress developing themes and plugins. Literally, 6 out of 7 days of the week, I see at least 3 different WP Dashboards. After years of this, and now, beginning to do UX for a SaaS product every day, I’ve come to realize how much I enjoy the psychology component of design and executing solid principles with code.

  -What are your strengths in UIX/design/development? What do you like to do within those fields?

  Strengths in a broader sense are definitely research and user (em/sym)pathy. I love trying to step inside a user’s perspective, collect data, see what others have done, and find a way to make mundane things fun (because they’re easy and enjoyable).

  Specifically, I’ve been diving into plugin development lately and experimenting with WordPress as an ‘application platform’. Strength here is definitely that I have more experience as a developer than your average designer—but I love yielding to smarter people in either field.

  -What parts of WordPress interest you most? What do you love and what do you hate?

  My WP love is two-fold: it’s intuitive for clients, and it’s powerful for me as a developer. But, I’m interested in seeing the admin area become both more intuitive and more customizable. I know we’re making significant headway on it, but it’s more difficult to code a beautiful, specialized admin area than it should be. I think a substantial branch of the WP community will continue to develop in it as an app platform, and solid UI conventions and implementations will be invaluable.

  -What are your weaknesses and what skills would you like to improve upon?

  I need more experience and knowledge when it comes to designing a completely new UI element or concept. I’m trying to absorb principles and wisdom as fast as I possible can.

  -What tools/help do you need to get something contributed back to WordPress core?

  Sometimes, just a bit of direction in regards to where I can be of service. That’s why I’m hopping in on UI!

  -What appeals to you about this working group?

  It seems to be the area of WP where I can contribute and learn the most, simultaneously.

  -What, if anything, intimidates you when it comes to getting going with contributing?

  Not being familiar with the process of contributing to WP (discussion, Trac, etc.).