GNOME Human Interface Guidelines

The primary role of the HIG is to enable people to design high-quality, integrated and consistent applications for the GNOME platform. It also serves a secondary role in helping new GNOME contributors to learn the project's design goals and approaches.

The HIG can be read online.

Bugs can be filed against the HIG Bugilla component.

Goals

• Convey the high-level design goals and strategy for the GNOME 3 UX.
• Communicate essential design guidelines in an efficient manner - needs to be succinct and easy to digest.
• Encourage creative and independent design practice - indicate where design choices and options are available and enable different approaches to be assessed.
• Be flexible and dynamic - the HIG should be a living document, reflecting current design practice and tools.
• Avoid unstructured data - information should be organised into a clear arrangement rather than having long flat lists of points.

Resources and Planning

• The current official version of the HIG

• Previous GNOME HIG development work

• Design page for HIG web hosting

• Relevant art:

  • iOS HIG

  • Android Design

  • Patternry

  • Nokia N9 UX Guidelines

Draft Content

Content in preparation to be added to the HIG, or ideas for additional content.

• Display compatibility (material could be incorporated into a few different places)

• Color

• Migrating from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 style.

• Full Screen Mode

• In App Notifications

• Guidelines (including advice on recommended patterns) for common types of applications, including:
  • Content applications
  • Browsers
  • Editors
  • Games

• ApplicationName

• Design Strategies

Redundant Content

• Utility Windows

• Primary Windows

• Attached Toolbars

• Content Overview - this could be turned into a "basics" page on navigation.