Joomla 2.5 was just released to kickstart 2012, so what's the status of the JUX?
JUX in 2011
Let's take a quick look back first.
Joomla.org Redesign - JUX was started late 2011 and immediately got to work on the redesign of Joomla.org, which was a fairly massive and successful undertaking.
JUX Site - Soon after the JUX site and forums were launched. The forums are the focal point since conversation is so critical to UX.
Joomla 2.5 Improvements - One effort started in the forum was to optimize the J 2.5 status module, and this feature made it into the 2.5 release! It was a small success but the beginning of something much bigger.
JUX in 2012
We have much larger goals for JUX in 2012, mainly focused on Joomla 3.0. Here's how we're getting things underway:
Joomla 3.0 Usability Feedback - a quick survey to pass around the web and Joomla User Groups to collect quick valuable feedback to guide the UX in 3.0
Joomla 3.0 Admin Concepts - with the valuable feedback collected in the survey and our JUX forums, designers are invited to take a stab at their idea Joomla admin design. To get the ball rolling I've posted my first concept in the forums. Designers have complete freedom in their approach, it's realistic to entertain concepts of frontend administration as well.
Joomla UI Library (JUI) - Joomla developers have always pushed the boundaries of available UI in the Joomla frontend and backend. The JUI would be an ongoing effort to deliver a library of UI elements to help devs rapidly deploy interfaces and layouts. As new UI elements emerge, the JUI can improve in iterations instead of forcing developers to innovate outside Joomla, which can result in non-standard layouts and disjointed workflows. Think of a UI kit built specifically for Joomla, similar to something like Twitter's Bootstrap Framework.