Want to get involved? See the handbook and optionally drop into #design to chat. Most active design work happens in the block editor project, consider dropping into Needs design or Needs design feedback.
There’s a WordPress Component Library in Figma. Duplicate to edit, direct access is reserved for the design team.
These are the weekly notes for the design meeting that happens on Wednesday’s. You can read the full transcript on our Slack channel and find the meeting’s agenda here.
Meeting was lead by @boemedia
There will not be a Triage or Design meeting next week (17-19 June) due to most members traveling to WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe in Berlin.
There may be some #design channel activity on Thursday 20 June during Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. at #WCEU.
Triage will resume on Monday 24 June after #WCEU.
@mapk cannot attend our #design meeting due to a schedule conflict. GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ updates will resume after #WCEU.
We moved to a ticket review https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/14744, which @boemedia will comment
@hedgefield reported that the 13xp body text used by WordPress is becoming too small for accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) reasons. As resolutions and monitors are increasing, most of the web has embraced 16px as the default standard for text. He would like to explore further, perhaps during #WCEU Contributor Day (aka creating a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party instead of fiddling with the inspector) so we can see where the bottlenecks are.)
For example some columns in the post overview would be fine with smaller text for the less important properties to save space.
@boemedia asked if someone would be available to develop such plugin and @clorith was mentioned. He collaborated on Site Health with @hedgefield.
@azaozz cited the “design experiments” new plugin that could help out. https://github.com/WordPress/design-experiments
@boemedia suggested to open a ticket and if it is not discussed during #WCEU, perhaps could be brought to the table at a later #design meeting.
Next ticket that was introduced by @pbiron https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/44900, will be added to the call for design to be explored during #triage at a later meeting.
@azaozz brought the attention to another ticket that deals with “inclusive design” around user’s name settings. This is a very culturally diverse topic and there is a link to a really good article on w3.org about it. I’ve tentatively set it for WP 5.3, would be great if we can do something for the User Profile screen
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6148
Although the topic is an interesting one, we recommended he gather more information as to what are the user needs in reference to name fields and perhaps a discussion with #polyglots is a good start. There is a link from W3.org that discusses the issue https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names
These are the weekly notes for the design meeting that happens on Wednesday’s. You can read the full transcript on our Slack channel and find the meeting’s agenda here.
@kjellr let us know that The ability to Group and Ungroup selected blocks was merged in today. Also, temporary “Snackbar” notices have been introduced.
A reminder that the experimental Gutenberg widgets page is live and in the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party, feel free to leave feedback or follow along.
@mapk would like some more thoughts on category labelling and grouping for blocks.
And finally: @joen’s “clickthrough” PR to help improve nested block interaction is sorting out some technical details, and will land soon.
For further reading on these points, check out Friday’s update.
@karmatosed reminded us of an additional plan to run a usability testing table for Gutenberg at WCEU, as planned at the WCUS table last year.
@melchoyce mentioned there are lots of chatter going on regarding block directory and the comments are helping updating designs in Figma. A new post on this will be up at the end of the week, in the meantime, keep commenting on GitHub.
On the same topic, @marybaum volunteered as a copywriting organizer to audit all the new strings. The audit will be helpful when handling the temp strings to dev, as G 5.2.2. is expected to launch by June 25 or 26. And testing of the new strings should start by early July.
@karmatosed came up with plan based on feedback for the design table at #WCEU.
Morning
Late afternoon
Participants are free to sit in any group and change in between if they want to learn about something else.
@kjellr developed a plugin that will allow us to experiment with designs. Figma is great for making static comps and simple prototypes. TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. is great for getting polished code published. But as a design team, we don’t have a great place for work that lies in between those two poles. This plugin + repo is a place to try out half-baked ideas in the context of WP-Admin
It works as a plugin – download & Install it – and can be used to:
As designers, we are exploring how to build a better text hierarchy for WP-Admin and Gutenberg.
Today we discussed italics and @kellerj mentioned a ticket with examples as to why Avoiding italic text is better for accessibility and readability and there are also talks about changing the use of italics in Gutenberg.
Our next steps are to define when the use of italics is appropriate – @melchoyce and to get a definite consensus on the text treatment for help text underneath form fields
@drw158 gave an update on the library organization in Figma and they are almost done with all of the base UI components in WordPress/components.
Feedback and evaluation would be great (accuracy, consistent naming, constraints testing, etc). Next documentation will be added and deprecate the existing libs and publish new ones. @karmatosed mentioned that deprecated links need to be fixed or relinked also in the handbook.
Icons from dashicons GitHub have been added and there should be a new library called ‘WordPress MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress.’ for Meta components in Gutenberg.
On Thursday, June 14th, WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe 2018 kicked off with contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. in Belexpo Centar in Belgrade, Serbia. It was the first time @joshuawold and myself co-lead the design table on this scale. With over 30 people signing up for contributing to WordPress design, we were pretty excited to start the day!
So how do you prepare for contributor day as table leads? As Monique had some experience from leading a design table at smaller WordCamps and Joshua had none, we were looking to find a way to prepare and make contributor day for design succeed. We had a few pre-contributor day chats with @karmatosed, an experienced design table lead. She really helped us to get started, thanks again for this. Besides Tammie, Milana who was involved in organising WordCamp Europe reached out to us and provided us with answers to questions we had. Besides this, we reached out to other table leads to see if they would benefit from having a designer at their table during contributor day to work on specific questions.
Two questions often asked are:
As a new contributor (I’ve only been active for less than a year), these were questions I had as well. Working on WordPress design isn’t often as tangible as resolving tickets and fixing bugs. It’s often more about discussing stuff and giving feedback on issues from a designers eye perspective. Sometimes, issues are years and years old and may never be implemented at all. This can be discouraging and frustrating, so one thing we worked on was setting expectations.
With design not being one of the first choices of people attending contributor day, we were still pleased with the 20+ people who took the effort to join the design table.
So a big thank you to Volker, Michiel, Marius, Tim, Estela, Davide, Ivan, Jayman, Tsotne, Roberto, Vincenzo, Rich, Daijel, Giuseppe, Jasper, Vasilis, Ana and all the others whose names we didn’t get. We loved working with you and hope to see you around online or at other contributor days.
Contributors to the design table at WordCamp Europe Contributor Day discussing some ideas
To have a quick start for attendees who contributed before, we decided to split the group in two: while Joshua onboarded new people, Monique discussed some existing tickets with contributors with more experience. To save some time and make people more familiar with SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., we asked the contributors to introduce themselves in our Slack channel. Unfortunately, the wifi broke, which sort of sabotaged our ideas. However, Joshua started a sketching excersise to get the new group going. In the meantime, Monique remembered a ticket that was discussed with the accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) team online. Together with the accessibility experts present in Belgrade, Tim, Jayman, Vasilis, and new contributors Rich and Jasper worked on some suggestions for a new way to display update notifications in a more accessible way. Together with Davide and David Needham from the training team, Estela gained some new insights on the infographic she had already been working on online.
So instead, we went for a different approach: we broke the group into two smaller groups and asked them the following questions:
What’s your biggest WordPress frustration?
This resulted in some overlap, from where we got smaller groups of people started discussions and working on some ideas to improve parts of the WordPress user experience and user interface:
Why do you love WordPress?
What do you need to contribute?
After lunch, wifi still wasn’t back online, which was a bit of a problem, since we wanted to introduce people to giving feedback on WordPress tickets from a design perspective, as this is a big part of the work we do. However, we still got the group to work on 4 tickets and moved the following forward: #35554, #40218, #29875, #42649.
We gained some valuable insights during our first time as design table leads we’d like to share here.
Again, thanks to everyone who attended. If you have anything you’d like to add to this post, please feel free to add a comment.
Dashicons got a huge push forward on contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe. Members of the WordPress community interested in design and, more specifically, iconography, met to discuss the state of the icons that appear throughout the WP admin experience.
We started by reviewing each issue listed in the repository for Dashicons, many of which were requests for new Dashicons. In the spirit of keeping the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. set of Dashicons as lean as possible, most of the requests were closed. However, several issues warranted action, and are now being resolved.
Dashicons is evolving. From its earliest inception, to a major redesign, to now, Dashicons is filling a demand for icons that communicate fundamental ideas, render clearly on all resolutions, are accessible by and inclusive of everyone.
New projects are constantly emerging as WordPress grows. And new WordPress projects need new Dashicons. Take Project Gutenberg, a major focal point in this year’s #wceu, for example. There are many areas where the iconography it utilizes could be improved. That’s where we need your help—to define the appropriate design and function of new icons that are needed, and to examine and critique the icons it currently uses.
Get started by visiting the Dashicons Github repository, and joining the discussion in the #design-dashicons channel on Slack. Come join us!
You must be logged in to post a comment.