The Paragon Working Group would like to get members of the Product Working Group (and others in the community) more involved in UX discussions. This will allow individuals outside of 2U, not only to keep taps on design updates, but also to help guide the design of Open edX. The idea is to start a cross-functional meeting for context/knowledge sharing around design. Anyone interested in getting involved?
Retrospective - What went well these last two weeks / sprint?
User
Shout out to Dean, Pierre, and many others for work on BTR testing Shout out to Maria G for working on the courses project with me and also making time for BTR Thanks to Matjaz for stepping into Release Manager role and I’m sure there’s many people I’m missing!
Sarina Canelake
Elections being completed!
Xavier Antoviaque
I got a lot done despite having to do a lot of context-switching.
Ali Hugo
We had a product wg meeting where folks of the community talked about the OSPR review cycle with promising action points. And Olive testing is going incredibly well!
Maria Grimaldi
I caught up with CC work on the LTI consumer after not being able to work on it for a while. I’m now trying to ramp up my hours to match the 20h/month commitment.
Giovanni
Please check the full report for information on:
What did CCs accomplish in the last two weeks?
What will CCs work on for during the next two weeks / sprint?
@ali_hugo This is great! Thank you for bringing it up. How would it work exactly? Would some members of the product working group join the UX one, as well as the other way around? Are there some specific points/projects that could help kickstart it? CC @jmakowski
The details haven’t been decided yet, but I know @gweinberg and @arbrandes were planning to brainstorm the best platform for these discussions. I’m sure they’d be open to your and Jenna’s ideas!
To give you some context: in the most recent Paragon Working Group meeting, it was decided that neither the Paragon Working Group, nor the Frontend Working Group meetings were the right place to have broader discussions around Open edX’s UX. I think the idea is to create a completely separate meeting for these types of UX-related conversations (@gweinberg and @arbrandes please correct me if I’m wrong).
@ali_hugo Thanks for the context, that’s good to have in mind. If the Paragon & frontend working groups aren’t the right places for hosting these discussions, how about using the product working group for that? In a way, that’s the most generic group of the 3, and it could be useful for everyone already attending the product working group to get updates about the projects in the other two there I think? (And the other way around?) @jmakowski what do you think?
Last I heard, that is still on the table, yes! The big pro is not having to attend Yet Another Meeting, or worse, not being able to attend because it conflicts with another working group’s.
The downside is that UX discussions can get pretty lengthy and technical, which might be counter to the purpose of the Product WG.
The challenge, it appears, would be to actually get the designers that make/implement decisions to go to whichever meeting we pick.
Maybe we could start by using the product meeting as a touch point, to keep each other informed of what everyone else is doing – and then branch out follow-ups and discussions as necessary outside of the meeting? It would already be a good start to get to all know each other, and be aware of respective goals/concerns?
What is the blocker on that? Given the shift of leadership on the project and the progressive adoption of better open source practices, the decision-making will inevitably progressively shift to the working groups and the core/maintainers who are active in the community - so it should be in everyone’s interest to attend them to be able to keep that ability to influence the project direction?
That sounds like a good idea to me. Let’s wait to hear if @jmakowski (or anybody else) has any objections.
Of course! The challenge, as I see it, is in percolating this idea across the organizations in our community, in particular decision makers. Not saying it’s an insurmountable challenge, or even technically a blocker: just that we may have to do some campaigning.
Thanks for all of this! I agree, I think the Product Working Group could be a forum for UX discussions, and for Paragon, Frontend and Product to align. For the record though, I do see UX as a distinct and separate thing from product, though it very closely intersects with product. The Product Working Group would not be the right space for deep technical UX discussions, but rather a space to ensure that high level UX decisions and designs align, especially when it comes to new features, MFEs, etc.
I’m happy to create a regular agenda item on the WG schedule for now. Two immediate projects that come to mind as ripe for this conversation are the MFE standardization that @arbrandes is working on, and the Modular Learning project that @ali_hugo is involved in. It’d be great to have edX+broader community UX guidance on these.
The next WG meeting is Tues Nov. 8. Is that too soon? We’ll likely cancel the next session on Nov. 22 due to the holidays, so that means the next session would be Dec. 6.
@jmakowski@ali_hugo I forgot to ask about this this morning – we did integrate an update from @ali_hugo on modular learning which was great! Do we know if other members/projects from the UX group will join too to give updates in future meetings?
Do we know if other members/projects from the UX group will join too to give updates in future meetings?