meta/meeting-notes/2025-03-31-design-meeting.md

Visual design meeting 2025-03-31

Present: {thijs,timon}@slik, {koen,kevin,kiara}@procolix

• thijs: updated the designs as per the last meeting, supporting workspaces, dark/light themes, (implied) usage graphs, future fediverse services, updated theme
• koen: maybe categorize services using tags, e.g. fediverse, productivity, chat, video, microblogging
• thijs: so allow filtering by this too?
• koen: yes
• kiara: i like the new design
• koen: KDE's designs looks pretty, maybe also look at that
• timon: clicks mastodon install, leading to detail page
• koen: maybe allow batch selecting to install, as in current barebones technical implementation
• koen: please add icons for more applications
• timon: showing preview page for mastodon
• koen: again, minimize needed clicks, e.g. using basic vs advanced install rather than 'install' vs 'manage', then allow users to maybe tweak after
• thijs: then just do 'install' vs 'manage' as you probably don't want non-basic installs, so people can tweak after
• koen: you should be able to just use them when installed, afterwards change 'install' button to like 'go to your instance'
• koen: i like the detail page's log view, may end up long tho, so maybe add a 'show more' ellsion
• timon: fleshed out the settings view, as well as a users list
• thijs: the users list is more an example of a CRUD page, as you mentioned wanting to do SSO/LDAP before
• koen: again, distinguish stuff everyone should see vs advanced settings we by default should not bother busy non-technical users with
• thijs: you have not configured a domain yet, so cannot deploy mastodon yet - we should probably nag people on mandatory settings they have yet to set, also show progress bar for this
• koen: start simple, then show everything when desired
• thijs: different ways to not scare people off, not sure scaring people with advanced settings is the way, you could instead just show optional settings
• koen: still sounds scary
• thijs: otherwise may not notice what you can do with it
• thijs: you may not know a user's role up-front
• koen: start as basic user
• thijs: sysadmins will feel confused tho
• koen: maybe ask in the onboarding / sign-up what role you want
• thijs: onboarding, what else?
• thijs: we made sure to use only open-source fonts and icons
• koen: i see some details we will not use: e.g. pricing plans ending in 99, pricing plans worded to sell rather than offer transparency (wording shown in design: 'perfect' without elaboration as to why), pricing that needs explaining so people can understand why they should not feel ripped off
• kiara: isn't usage much more fungible?
• koen: we should show those from the panel, but there are different ways to approach this as per an operator's business model
• thijs: maybe hosts should get to choose how to approach this
• koen: agree, companies will have limited resources and may prefer to not make things too granular, tho in larger set-ups one may need to be able to better justify how pricing scales
• thijs: do we always want to add a link to the price/value breakdown for every plan?
• koen: by default yes, if you don't want that, it's open-source so you can fork if you like
• thijs: thanks - what else should we change for tomorrow?
• koen: maybe add graphs over time on disk space and number of applications deployed
• kiara: actually whether the background looks grey or white-ish for me depends on which monitor i view it on
• thijs: ok let's make it a bit lighter still
• koen: maybe also add user settings like advanced/novice, allow scrolling thru the app list, add an icon as per fediversity.eu (NGI - fediversity)
• koen: from pic 'many branches of the fediverse' use: lemmy, bookwyrm, funkwhale, friendica, castopod, writefreely, matrix, owncast, peertube, forgejo, passbolt
• kiara: this image already shows potential tags too
• thijs: we'll try and add the configurable color themes too