Eclipse Con 2005: Seamless UI Integration

This was a good topic by Julian Jones, the usability 'gatekeeper' for IBM's Eclipse tools.  The PDF has details but here's a quick summary:

• Don't harden UIs early.  Consider them loose and changeable until close to the final release.  Note: This implies clean model-view-controller separation and keeping a light view.
• Try out divergent ideas by shipping them in milestones (or the equivalent).  This encourages "natural selection" of good UI patterns.
• Use 'centralized planning' only where it is truly necessary.  Example: Eclipse's unified Help TOC.

On enforcing tight UI integration between disparate plugin development groups, Julian suggested that the dictatorial approach will never work and to use a 'gatekeeper' for publicizing good UI examples.  I agree.  IBM publicizes new UI features using formal walkthroughs.  He sights the PDE Overview page as an example of a good, internal UI-pattern that grew organically this way. 

The gatekeeper also manages decisions regarding ugly UI overlaps.  Currently, there is an ongoing discussion about how to resolve GEF sliding-pallettes, icon-bars, and side-bars in 3.1M5, which all effectively do the same thing but target vastly different users.