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.

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.