Design/Workflow

Every week, from IRC chat to next IRC chat, is devoted to work on at least one topic. Each topic goes through a certain process depending on whether we need one single design (whiteboards) or a number of designs (contests). If a wiki page doesn't specify a deadline for a phase, the phase will be one week long as outlined below.

Whiteboards
Week 1: Call for Proposals. This week will be dedicated to submitting proposals. A proposal may consist of mockups/sketches and/or textual descriptions, and should be posted under the "Proposal" section of the whiteboard. Anyone may submit a proposal, no matter whether they are part of the team or not.

IRC chat 1: Finding Open Problems. On the IRC chat, we will try to determine the problems that haven't been solved by a submitted proposals or ones with several possible solutions, each with their own advantages. These will be listed under the "Open Problems" section of the whiteboard along with a table of the advantages of possible solutions for each.

Week 2: Proposal Analysis. This week will be spent discussing the submissions on the mailing list and adding problems, solutions, and advantages to the "Open Problems" section of the whiteboard.

IRC chat 2: Outlining the Tentative Design. On IRC chat, we will decide on the solutions for each open problem, create a basic description of the tentative design based on these, and pick someone to work on a mockup (preferably the person with a proposal most similar to our vision of the tentative design, or at least a good designer that will have time to produce the mockup).

Week 3: Shaping the Tentative Design. This week will be spent fleshing out the description of the tentative design, finetuning the mockup, finding possible bugs, and working together with the developer team to assess how the proposal might be implemented.

IRC chat 3: Checking the Tentative Design. On this IRC chat, we will discuss whether the design is ready for development or whether it still needs some work. If it's ready, we will pick a new whiteboard to work on. If it's not, we will take one more week to work on it and assess our progress on the next IRC chat.

Contests
Call for Submissions. A reasonable amount of time will be dedicated to submitting designs after announcing the call publicly. Each design should be of at least rough draft quality. Anyone may submit a proposal, no matter whether they are part of the team or not. Contributors should create an account for the wiki, but it is not mandatory.

Judging Submissions. Afterwards we will discuss the submissions on the mailing list, list the problems associated with each on the wiki, tweak them (anyone may tweak a submission and publish it under his own name below the original), and vote on them. Designs that don't adhere to the specifications will be ruled out of the voting, but will remain on the wiki in case anyone wants to tweak them to comply with the specs.

A submission is accepted if it gets the majority of votes from the design team + the contributors either on IRC or the mailing list.