A Gift From Me To You

Thus far, I have created three installments of photography wallpapers for Ubuntu:
Wallpaper Set 01
Wallpaper Set 02
Wallpaper Set 03

Thanks to you, this blog has been gradually getting more and more popular. I am ever more excited with the clear trend toward art and design awareness out in the bold wilderness of Free Software.

I was hoping to offer a sort of token gift for the loyal blog followers out there and I thought I'd offer up some high resolution (2560x1600) wallpapers. A few of the goals:

1. Keep with the Ubuntu tonal range of earthen browns while at the same time fight against monochromatism.
2. Keep things organic and mature.
3. Create a set that would work well together tonally.

Click here to download all four of the images in a gzipped archive. I will hopefully get some variations created for the readers out there with dual head systems in a properly cropped and high resolution presentation.

And there you have it. A small gift from me to you. Thank you all for your support, emails, comments, cross posting, and casual reading...

Boring technical details for those who care: Shot with a Canon 100mm 2.8 macro. Post processed using UFraw. Smoothed using GREYCstoration. A simply stunning tool for photographic work with deep arcane mathematics and algorithms - the code should be a part of every Free Software project that needs denoising algorithms. Mingled and twiddled with using GIMP, Inkscape, and Imagemagick.


Ubuntu Wallpaper Gift Set by Troy James Sobotka is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Surpassing Apple: Step Three - Set a Tone

This blog posting is the third in a series. The full series as it currently stands is:
Surpassing Apple: Step One - Animate Everything
Surpassing Apple: Step Two - Get an Audience
Surpassing Apple: Step Three - Set a Tone
Surpassing Apple: Step Four - Vision and Desirability
Surpassing Apple: Step Five - Think Cinematic
Surpassing Apple: Step Six - Cultivate a Culture

So let's assume we have some of the fundamental elements of immersion in place architecturally. Let's assume we hunker down and decide on a clearly stated and desirable audience. What's next?

Step Three: Set a Tone

In grand holistic terms - what is the overarching tone Ubuntu should aspire to set? This is most certainly tied implicitly to Step Two, as without a point of perspective, all tones become as paradoxical as the stories in Kurosawa's Rashomon.

When we talk about tones in terms of other disciplines, the manifestations are generally quite easy to spot; Disco. Punk. Classical. Romantic. Action adventure. Science fiction. When we speak in terms of design tone, we ask ourselves what tone should Ubuntu set and adhere to? Is it quirky fun? Is it brooding sleek? Is it naturally organic? Is it funky?

Obviously if we forget about our audience, we are no better off. When we have considered who our audience is going to be we should place all viable options on the table with regard to tone. What tone provides the best fit between our audience and the core of Ubuntu? What is Ubuntu tonally in an idealistic presentation? What keys might we cite as being cornerstones of a deeper tone?

As an interesting side experiment, think of some common campaigns currently on the market. The revamped Mini Cooper campaign? Ketle One's blackscript campaign? The latest Nike spots (note the Canadian twist on the Canadian site)? McDonalds? Who are the audiences for the spots you have observed? What is the tone? Is the tone working in conjunction with the audience they have set out?

Thank you kindly for reading. Apologies about the posting lag - the past week has been a whirlwind.

Surpassing Apple: Step Two - Get an Audience

This blog posting is the second in a series. The full series as it currently stands is:
Surpassing Apple: Step One - Animate Everything
Surpassing Apple: Step Two - Get an Audience
Surpassing Apple: Step Three - Set a Tone
Surpassing Apple: Step Four - Vision and Desirability
Surpassing Apple: Step Five - Think Cinematic
Surpassing Apple: Step Six - Cultivate a Culture

As any regular reader of this blog will have heard at least a hundred times before, the next step for Ubuntu to surpass Apple in the user experience arms race is...

Step Two - Get an Audience

We don't have one. We like to bandy about "Linux for Human Beings" and then throw said human beings under the bus when it comes to design. Ubuntu, and the rest of Free Software as a whole, needs to select an audience. I am not speaking of the typical audience that was the principle composition of the past -- we all know Free Software's roots in the uber-hacker and closet shut-in. I am speaking of the future and the 'audience we want'.

Don't say everyone. It's entirely foolish and foolhardy to suggest for a second that this mythical everyone exists.

Why do we need an audience? Quite simply, choosing an audience defines the perspective. Without an audience commonly spoken words such as 'pretty', 'beautiful', 'usable', 'useful' and other terms simply don't exist.

Once we have an audience, we can apply a connect-the-dots mentality far more swiftly and far more easily. Defining our audience at the very least provides us with the foundation to succeed at this colossal task.

Does our audience's system have sixteen to twenty users on it typically? Does that audience profile require the design of a GDM that supports that scenario or would it be considered secondary to another aesthetic and useful design decisions?

Has our audience long been yearning for a user switching and presence agent? Are they pining for yet another way to manage their online status? Are there perhaps more desirable interface elements for our audience?

What is 'usable' for this audience? Does our audience share the same mindset as the Ubuntu usability steward with regards to instant messaging or do they seek out an entirely different set of criteria? Is the language colloquial or formal and does that work when considered with our audience and goal? Does a network manager need verbose granularity and selection or does our audience just want to connect to the network without deciphering AES, TKIP, WEP, WPA, etc?

Finally, when it comes to the aesthetics and presence, what is a 'best guess' as to what will communicate effectively for this audience? Is it Wal-Mart photography with questionable typesetting? Does cliched stock photography really set a tone that speaks with our audience? Should the choir chant 'just change the default wallpaper' or should the wallpaper be considered the lynch pin of the presentation when our audience has a first point of contact with our system?

Thank you once again for your dedication to reading this blog. I appreciate all of the comments and email.

Surpassing Apple: Step One - Animate Everything

This blog posting is the first in a series. The full series as it currently stands is:
Surpassing Apple: Step One - Animate Everything
Surpassing Apple: Step Two - Get an Audience
Surpassing Apple: Step Three - Set a Tone
Surpassing Apple: Step Four - Vision and Desirability
Surpassing Apple: Step Five - Think Cinematic
Surpassing Apple: Step Six - Cultivate a Culture

Since Shuttleworth went out on a limb and challenged all of the Free Software zealots to surpass Apple, I thought I would chime in with some blog dribble. If he is serious about this pursuit, it is going to take him to let go of his rumored conservatism with animations[1]. This isn't just for Mark though... it really should be a rallying call to every single individual with the care and means to change Free Software for the better. This isn't about meeting a goal, but rather surpassing it by an order of a magnitude.

Step One - Animate Everything

I mean it.

Everything.

Every button, every progress bar, every menu, every icon hover over and click, and every other interface element we touch. Every individual element should be placed in the designer's hands to fully control the final presentation.

We should have the potential for gradual lighting glows on window decorations. Smooth transitions on a button as it changes depth into a recessed state. Binary radio boxes should smoothly flip from checked to unchecked. Icons might subtly come alive or augment their saturation over a number of frames. Menus might unfurl with a stylized flow as they reveal themselves. Selected items should gracefully fade up with pure elegance. Separations and divisions in windows should flow smoothly out of their frames and back again.

While it is true that library xxx or yyy might be able to do this, it is still not at the forefront of our design dilemmas. We should push ahead and provide a consistent framework to achieve transition effects and animations and ensure that every desktop ships with the capability by default. "Animate Everything" should become the de facto standard.

In short, we don't live our lives at one frame per second. Every singular moment we spend in Free Software should be the culmination of countless frames in our ultimate immersive experience.

Of course this could easily be abused to death -- stirring up gaudy and nasty themes from our past. With this power would come great responsibility. We could easily mishandle the power and end up with utterly useless window fire burns as seen in Compiz or the wacky anime-uber-tech themes we see for Fluxbox. Our role shouldn't be to worry about how 'ugly' or 'useless' something is but rather to provide the agency for design excellence. There will be many nasty results from the impact of 'Animate Everything', but, given a few individual creative power houses, we stand to push computing deeply into the realm of seamless experiences.

Ages ago I wrote a blueprint up on transitions that has since been lost in the dust of the past. The net goal was to drive our cumbersome and sticky interface into the realm of cinematic immersion. I firmly believe we are moving every aspect of our daily lives into the realm of the computer, and as such, the division between 'using a computer' and 'complete immersive experience' will become blurred with the desire for a more humanistic flair. Little did I know that a couple of years later everyone would be lusting for an iPhone in all of its merry transitioning glory. Had we taken notice earlier, perhaps we would have had a leg up on the iPhone and all of the transition heavy interfaces to follow.

Some of the 'old guard' are probably adamantly against this. If we expect to forge ahead however, the old guard will need to be trumped by the new thinkers. It will take teamwork and group thinking, but I firmly believe we can achieve it.

Thank you all for reading.

[1] There is a relatively stable rumor that Mark Shuttleworth is against animated progress bars in Ubuntu. I have heard this from several realible sources. As much as I can believe the rumor, I have no further grounding to offer as fact on this matter. As such, it is purely a rumor.