Further Background to the Panel sent before the November 17th call by Jutta:
I have a goal of putting up a strawman Sakai UI strategy document following the Austin conference. Theoretically this strategy would support as much flexibility in tool UI design with the proviso that it is possible to apply a Sakai or alternative style and to swap in and out components that digress significantly from the Sakai UI. This requires a technical approach that supports modularization of UI components and more than skin deep restyling. There are quite a few technologies that support this, some implemented in Sakai and some not. I want to explore these and the pros and cons of these in the panel, and perhaps touch on what the implications are for the architecture and APIs.
My second agenda is to work out a process whereby we can garner community input regarding UI and then translate that into implementable recommendations. One challenge is that recommendations come from such a broad range of perspectives from the very technical to the very subjective or theoretical.