Meeting about Design Doc Types & Templates, 1 Mar 2004
Attending: MimiYin,
BrianDouglasSkinner,
ChaoLam
Goals:
- rationalize the Project Overview Table with the UIDesignArchive?
- identify a list of canonical page types & set up page templates for all the page types
- have a better policy for figuring out which pages go on Chandler vs. which go on Jungle (e.g. Workflows), and how pages get "promoted" from Jungle to Chandler
Proposal: Page Types
MimiYin and %ID_BRIAN% are proposing that the design group organize its work into the following seven types of pages:
| | "About" Page | Examples | Sections & Content | Wiki-Web | # Pages |
Overview Pages (formerly called "Design Docs") | About Design Documents (need to rename this page) | | - Summary
- Structure
- Use Cases
- name
- narrative
- "when status"
- (listed in order of priority)
- Terminology Overview
- Feature List
- name
- description
- "when status"
- Open Issues
- Notes
- Page Status
| Chandler | maybe a dozen |
| UI Component Spec Pages | About UI Component Specs | | - Summary
- Motivation
- Wireframes (with callouts)
- Open issues
- Links to relevant workflows
- "Functionalities"
- narrative
- "When status"
- interaction spec
- storyboard
- Page Status
| Chandler | about a dozen |
| Workflow Pages | (needs to be created) | | - Summary
- one or more workflows, each with the following...
- Name
- Motivation
- Narrative
- Storyboard
- Open Issues
- "When status"
- Page Status
| Chandler | dozens |
| Detailed Use Case Pages | (needs to be created) | | - Use Case Name
- Summary
- Scenario Narrative
- "When status"
- Links to relevant workflows
- Page Status
| Chandler | about a dozen |
| Glossary Entry Pages | none | | - Term
- Definition
- "See also" links
- Usage
| Glossary | dozens |
| Scratchpad Pages | (needs to be created) | | | Jungle | about a hundred |
| Table of Contents Pages | (needs to be created) | | - Summary/Intro/Purpose
- Links
| Chandler | exactly two |
A couple more proposals about Page Type
- %ID_BRIAN% also suggests that we might want to have the Design Group To Do List? be a page that has a specific page type. It seems like it could be either of two types:
- a "to do list" page, like these:
- a "working group home page", like these:
- We might also want to have simple naming conventions for different page types. Here are some examples:
| page types | example names | naming patterns |
Overview Pages (formerly called "Design Docs") | "CalendarOverview" | _____Overview |
| UI Component Spec Pages | "BookmarkBarSpec" | _____Spec |
| Workflow Pages | "StampingWorkflow" | _____Workflow |
| Detailed Use Case Pages | "StampingUseCase" | _____UseCase |
| Glossary Entry Pages | "Parcel" | _ |
| Scratchpad Pages | (anything you like) | none |
| Wiki Help Pages | varies | none |
| Wiki Infrastructure Pages | varies | none |
| Home Pages | "CommunityHome" "GlossaryHome" "WikiHelpHome" | _____Home |
| Table of Contents Pages | "GlossaryIndex" "CommunityContents" | _____Index _____Contents |
| To Do List Pages | "DesignToDoList" | _____ToDoList |
- Replace the "Workflows" row and its 7 sub-rows with the following row and sub-rows (thereby reversing our 19 Feb 2004 decision
):
- General Information Management
- Entering
- Stamping
- Collecting
- etc.
- Take "Mundane Features", "Interoperability", and all their sub-rows, and move them into their own table. Put that new table below the existing "Engineering Infrastructure" table
- Rename the "End-User Features" table to be the "Chandler Landscape" table
- In the "Chandler Landscape" table (aka End-User Features table), reorder the sections so that they end up in this order:
- General Information Management
- UI Components
- Functional Areas -- Mail, Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, Notes, IM
- Take the two existing columns for "Design Docs" and "UI Design", and replace them with three columns, titled "Feature List", "Workflow", and "UI Component Spec". Each row can have entries in one or more of these rows.
Questions and Answers
| Questions from Chao | Answers from Mimi & BrianDouglasSkinner |
| Is it okay that we have "open issues" recorded in many of the different doc types, rather than in a single place? | Yes, let's do it that way. It makes it easy to capture open issues whereever they come up. |
| How do we keep track of and process open issues? | The Project Overview Table will have links to all of the docs that include "open issues" sections. We will work our way through the Project Overview Table, stepping into each doc and resolving open issues as we go. |
| The proposal above outlines all the doc types we'll use for describing the Canoga design. How does this map to dot release planning and dot release specs? | Let's defer this issue for now. |
| Who is the target audience for each doc type? | For all of the doc types, the target audience includes both the design group and engineering. |
| Questions from BrianDouglasSkinner | Answers from Mimi & BrianDouglasSkinner |
| How do we keep track of what's proposed vs. what's approved? | For each page, we will have a PageStatus form with on of the 3 standard "page status" value. Within a page, for individual features and use cases we will have a "when" column with one of the 8 standard when values. |
| What goes in the Jungle and what goes on Chandler? | The "Scratchpad" pages go in the Jungle, and everything else goes on Chandler. |
Next Actions
- BrianDouglasSkinner: update Project Overview Table to reflect decisions listed above
- MimiYin: move 'official' UI design docs from Jungle to Chandler
- MimiYin: populate the Project Overview Table with links to the 'official' UI design docs
- BrianDouglasSkinner: create "page type bars" for the new page types, modeled on the current "This is a design doc" bar
- BrianDouglasSkinner: add "page type bars" to all the design group pages on the Chanlder wiki-web
- MimiYin: propose standard templates/formats for the new page types: Workflow pages, Detailed Use Case pages, and UI Component Spec pages