Design Initiative

We need to start thinking and talking about what approaches we're going to take in Drupal 8 with regards to design for mobile.

My own opinion is that we should probably be looking really closely at responsive design and how we might apply or adapt the patterns emerging in that field. The idea of "one web" and a unified design and user experience independent of device appeals to me. I don't want an impoverished mobile experience, so please don't assume what I want to see or do just because I'm on a tablet or handset.

Recently I was lucky enough to have a lengthy discussion with Jane Wells, the lead User Interaction designer for Wordpress. During the call she raised the interesting topic of cross app UI design. If you're not sure what that means let me briefly explain - in short it means that apps like Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla could use the same UI designs or patterns to give site users a consistent UX (user experience).

The Design Initiatives main purpose is to build a new theme for Drupal 8 and as part of this initiative we are preparing a Design Brief. The brief will be part of a "Designers Toolkit" which also includes a set of wire-frames. The brief itself comprises of two parts - a set of documents outlining Drupal core output (to support and clarify the wire-frames) and a Use Case Brief. Its the last bit I want to talk about here and open up discussion on. In essence what should this use case be?

As many of you will know by now the Design Initiative for Drupal 8 is underway. We're going to build a new theme for Drupal 8, however this is not the only goal of the initiative - we have two other goals: provide a collaborative environment for designers and to promote Drupal to the broader design community. In essence we're raising the profile of design and designers in the Drupal community, with a particular focus on Drupal core development.