Open source design 2.0

Flock Uploader Screenshot

So I’ve decided to take a more aggressive approach to the interface and interaction design of Flock. It’s risky, a bit unorthodox and is something that will take some practice, but since it worked fairly well while I was working on Spread Firefox, it seems only logical that I pursue a more transparent, collaborative and inclusive design process.

So what does this means? Well, basically a whole lotta Flickr!

I’ve already posted a couple screenshots of what the Flock Photo Uploader should look like (compared with how it’s been looking in recent builds). This accomplishes a bunch of things, beyond getting the design process out in the open.

For one thing, it allows me to communicate the intended appearance of features to many developers at once (instead of having my designs vanish on one of the nine levels of Bugzilla hell). I can add notes, a description and all that other good stuff that your typical Flickr photos have, but I can also link them to actual bugs in our system with tagging. For example, . This means that if other people have uploaded mockups to Flickr as well about the same bug, we can all see and compare each other’s work and, going one step further, if anyone has blogged about that bug, we’ll be able to discover that content with Technorati. Truly distributed bug squashing!

Now, obviously we’ve already got groups on Flickr for Flockbugs and Flock Experience Design. Those are the two obvious places to go to see discussions on these topics. The problem becomes very quickly, however, that all this information is in Flickr and not shared in our developers’ native environs. So I’ll be working with Daryl to add a feature in Drupal that will aggregate this information (primarily based on tags). We’ll obviously be able to show full mockups as well using the Flickr API and then hook in data directly from the bugzilla bug (that’s the hope anyway).

Finally, I’ll be working with Gandalf on a Flockzilla Contributor Dashboard — designed from the ground up to make it easy to keep tabs not only on what’s going on in Flock development, but also on your own task list. This will again aggregate information from all kinds of disparate sources and will support your involvement based on custom community roles (designer, bug killer, developer, interested blogger and so on). This tool will of course feature into the planning for CivicForge but for now it makes sense to address our internal use cases. But at least we’re starting somewhere and trying to find new ways of opening up open source design to a wider pool of eyes!

Flock taking over downtown San Francisco

Flock Dedication Photos

Michael Christian’s beautiful 42 foot high sculpture Flock (not to be confused with the open source browser by the same name), which he created for Burning Man 2001, has migrated to San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza across the street from City Hall. Here are some photos I shot at last night’s dedication ceremony led by Mayor Gavin Newsom flanked by a group of local children. As part of the ceremony, Flock was illuminated by blue lights from below and as a special surprise, City Hall was lit up with blue lights as well to provide continuity with Michael’s sculpture.

Laughing Squid » Flock Dedication Photos

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Gems from Sean Coon

Tara pointed me to a great post on the power of tagging and the creation of grassroots, semantic content creation on Connecting*the*dots. A couple excerpts:

So what’s the connection between geo-political events and blogging and the tactical fervor of Web 2.0? (social bookmarking, tagging, open source, open content, etc.) In a nutshell: everything.

He calls tagging:

a tactical [strategy] in the battle of the information age. … The effort, I believe, is based on the desire of individual voices to be heard amidst the shelling of the mainstream media.

…

The legitimization of the individual (creative and political) perspective is being sustained in the 21st century by the conviction of the blogosphere, …The concept of social dialog and the elemental foundation of Capitalism are beginning to shift in exciting ways.

…

Blogs are beginning to bridge the social and communication gaps between nations. My peers are thinking differently when developing this medium, even in traditional business development circumstances. The tactical approach to producing, managing, sharing, finding and using information objects — defined from the bottom up — is finally getting it’s due.

connecting*the*dots: Tag! We’re It! Part II

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