Brainstorm New Ideas: Document Check

Hi everyone,

although Renaissance keeps me sometimes rather busy, there are still some ideas to make OpenOffice.org more user friendly, making working with it more efficient and reduce potential document issues right from the start. Since we currently lack a common idea handling, I feel free to publish some of the ideas in this blog. Let's start with ... tada ...

Document Check

Idea Summary

The idea is about a "Document Check" functionality which checks the document for typical issues with regard to security, compatibility, content, understandability, graphical design and accessibility. The document check result provides central information on issues which have been found, where they have been found and - if possible - proposals to correct the issues. Usually, the functionality may be called manually by the user, but it may be also executed automatically.

Rationale

Today's documents are created for various purposes and published in different channels. Even with the numerous functions available in OpenOffice.org or being available in extensions, it still requires some experience to make sure that each document can be shared without problems. The following - rather simple - workflow shows the steps required to create or to edit any kind of document. Here, we want to focus on the step "Check".

In this step, prior the document is shared (e.g. printed, uploaded, converted to PDF), experienced users check the document for various issues. For example, a user may search for missing references indicated by the field text "Error: Reference source not found", look up non-embedded graphic files in the menu "Edit - Links...", and check whether there are hidden comments with "View - Comments". In any case, these steps require both experience and effort to look up the different places. What seems missing is a central place to check the documents for common issues prior the document is shared.

Goal: The user is able to simply check the document for common issues. Most of these issues can be resolved with the help of functionality available in OpenOffice.org.

Use Cases
The following use cases are just examples. There are some more on the wiki page...

Use Case: Keep Corporate Identity

John works in a large company which really cares about the visual style of internal and external documents. Thus, the company provides in-depth information how templates, colors and fonts have to be used to ensure high quality corporate identity. But, John finds it difficult to keep all the information in mind, when working on documents. Especially, since his technical documentation or specification documents are based on various sources and content types. Thus, after finishing each document, he executes the Document Check which informs him about potential Corporate Identity issues and also provides some hints to resolve these issues. Usually, everything is just fine.

Use Case: Documents for Everyone

Jane is a very active member in a non-profit organization. Recently, she agreed to take over the work on the internal magazin for the members and other interested people. After finishing the draft, she executes the Document Check which provides useful information on the style of the document. She is told that the document might look better when using less different font types and sizes. Additionally, the readability analysis proposes to use less complex sentence structures. Finally, the Document Check informs her about some color combinations which might make reading very difficult for people with limited eyesight (color blindness) - approx. 7% of men are affected. She didn't know about that, so she jumps to the page with a click and changes the document accordingly.

Draft Mockups

Mockup showing a document without any problems identified...

 Mockup showing critical issues. At least from the company's point-of-view...

Mockup showing one severe issue and other proposals to improve the document...

Proposed Items to be Checked

The proposed items to be checked are ... Okay, that might be less interesting for you. Not??? Then please continue on the wiki page dedicated to "Document Check"...

I hope you enjoyed the blog post. Please tell me what you think about the idea on the wiki page. And - of course - please add your own experience what items should be checked or how this proposal can be further improved.

Personally, I think this capability would be unique for office software and might just rock ;-) At the moment, it's just an idea without developer support...

Bye,
Christoph

Time Machine Reloaded - November 8th

Hi folks!

It's the right time to set the time right ... This is the last day of my little Time-Machine-Blog which still covers the adventure OpenOffice.org Conference 2009.

November 8th

It seems that the today's weather wants to ease our goodbye - in the morning it rained and the sun (lowercase letters!) was nearly gone. There were still a few hours until my flight to Germany, so we decided to store my luggage at the main station and to see as much as we can.

Yesterday I talked about the time constraints and that we were not able to get into the Colosseum. Today, we joined a tourist group which dramatically reduces waiting time and provides some more historical facts. But here, the only thing that really matters is a picture...

Above, you see the inside of the Colosseum. Or let's say the remaining parts, since we already look at the basement. Many of the precious goods have already be taken away, for example the marble decorations. We have been told, that the walls have been completely covered ... and now we also know that the holes in the walls have been used to attach the marble tiles.

Although sometimes it might feel different, I think that theming the UI of OpenOffice.org is far more easy than to cover a zillion square meters with extremely heavy material :-)

Okay, we didn't only stare at holes ... we also moved on to get into the Roman Forum. To give you an idea that I had to hurry up, I will only provide one picture (Do I hear any relief for saving you some time? *g*). Funnily, the place had been a private "theater" for the emperor. Nice idea ...

That said, I had to hurry up to get to the airport. After saying goodbye to André, I went towards the main station. Due to my time buffer, I had the chance to enjoy my very last cappuccino. Sigh.

The rest went rather well and so everyone - and everything - landed safely. I mean, also my bag arrived without any further deformation :-)

Different to me. The last thing I thought was "bed, sleep, bed". Well, I had some nice dreams ...

Now

I hope you enjoyed the last days. If you have any comments, proposals or just critique, then please let me know! To me, it was a great pleasure, because i had the chance to experience some tiny details again. Details which have been covered by the whole buzz around the OpenOffice.org Conference.

Literally, see you next year! :-)

Christoph

PS: It may bother you, but for Planet readers it might be worth to have a look at the original blog posting which better preserves formatting

Time Machine Reloaded - November 7th

Hi again,

the OpenOffice.org Conference is already, but when going 7 days back in time, we are still in Italy.

November 7th

Originally, some of us planned to reside some days longer in Orvieto and to eventually visit Rome by train. Some things changed after the announcement that there will be a strike by the railway employees. Jacqueline and André managed to get some rooms in Rome and to discuss the issue with our hotel. Fortunately, the hotel personnel was extremely kind and agreed to change our reservation. Thanks!!!

We moved on to Rome - and to my surprise - the neighborhood was extremely nice. As you will see on the picture, we saw a building with an orange tree (for everyone living in warmer regions, that is something special for us).


After dropping our baggage, we instantly moved towards the center of the city to visit some sights. Here is the well known Colosseum. I provide a picture without tourists - the amount of people there is a bit annoying ;-)

Besides the Colosseum, the whole site offers a lot to see. Due to the limited time - we wanted to continue our sightseeing tour by bus - we just had a brief look at the Roman Forum. Funnily, we've met Andreas who helped us to get some "inside" pictures. Mmh, the gate on the picture lets it look like a prison ...

As I already said, we continued the tour by bus and got of at special places. One example is the "St. Peter's Square" in the Vatican City.

As you can see, it is rather large. But that doesn't guarantee that you will only meet strangers - it seems that the OpenOffice.org people are just everywhere :-) That time, we met Rene who joined us...

Once inside, we decided to take the over 500 steps to enjoy the great view from the dome of the St. Peter's Basilica. Have a look at the shadow in the center of the picture - no, that's not my head ;-)

 

The building is absolutely impressive; outside and inside. Here just a brief look on the altar ...

 

Fast forward. We continued our bus tour until it gots dark ... and cold; as you may guess on the picture below. So we went back to our hotel and finally found a nice place to get our dinner. The very last evening with both Jacqueline and André. Somehow :-(

That's it. We will finish our journey tomorrow, after a short look inside the Colosseum.

Until then, please have a nice day!

Christoph

PS: The original posting with preserved formatting is located here.

Time Machine Reloaded - November 6th

Dear readers,

even today we do fight against some time constraints. So let's have a look what happened on ...

November 6th

The last day of the conference. It might be good for you that most of the day has been spend with personal chats and discussions. That makes this posting a bit shorter...

The first presentation I attended was "A new logo for OpenOffice.org" by Bernhard of the Art team. You may remember the poster stand which had been organized for that - I talked about that earlier. If you are interested in some more information, the presentation material has already been made available here.

After that, there has been the excellent presentation by Jacqueline and Oliver-Rainer who talked about "Lists and Outline in Writer" to be found here. Although the slides are available, you might miss the live demo unless you have a look at the video (starts at 57min).

Then, the day passed by ... unbelievably fast. Especially since there were many private discussions, even targeting critical questions with regard to the development of OpenOffice.org or the communication activities of Project Renaissance. I'd like to say "Thank you" to these people, who hopefully already know about that.

At the end of the day, the organization team offered a "town walk". Great, since there were some small sights and musuems we had not known about. On the left you see a picture which had been taken in the "Pozzo della Cava".

Time went by and it got dark outside. Let's share one of the night views of Orvieto.

Finally, we made it to "San Giovenale", a veeery old church built in 1004 (the picture on the right). I'm still somehow surprised how good the original picture looks for not having a tripod, using a consumer lens and an exposure time of over one second.

Okay, since we are discussing pictures and cameras - here is Bernhard who also tries to capture some of the nice parts of the church.

That's all for today, since I don't have pictures covering a very funny pizza (and many more things we'd tried) dinner in the late evening.

Oh, by the way, I already said that this was the very last day of the conference. So I would like to express my deepest thanks to all people involved.

Thank you for organizing, attending, chatting, improving, ...



But to me, it's not over yet. There are still two days of sightseeing I would like to share. Tomorrow, we will move on to Rome. Stay tuned :-)

Have a nice evening!

Christoph

PS: The original posting and formatting can be found on OpenOffice.org UX Team Blog.

Time Machine Reloaded - November 5th

Hi everyone,

let's go back the usual 7 days to re-experience the OOoCon 2009!

November 5th

From our point-of-view, it was "the day" of the conference. It was packed with User Experience related topics (conference program, page 2). Here are some highlights...

Ma Li from the IBM Lotus Symphony gave some nice talks, especially since he had used very entertaining and sometimes funny slide designs. Here, I can can only provide a picture shown the "default" design.

Basically, everyone talked about the same - how to better suit the needs of our users. Okay, we've also been reminded to avoid the impersonal term "user", so please exchange it with some person unrelated to OpenOffice.org but related to you. Then you better get the idea of what we are talking about.

Of course, Andreas talked about it, too. In his workshop "The role and the methods of user experience in product design" he took a more general approach why some products are more successful than others. Or let's say, what are the ingredients to develop a product which has the potential to be really successful.

After Andreas finished his workshop, there were about 10 people who attended our workshop "User Experience Done "Live" Based on Expertise and Usage Data". As far as I know, the attendees were volunteers and employees of Sun Microsystems and IBM. Since the workshop did take place in one of the usual presentation rooms, the equipment was somehow optimized for presentations instead of workshops. So we had to rely on the funny ODF note pads we brought with us - and the PLIO people, who were so unbelievable kind to provide a second data projector in the last minute. Thanks a lot for that!!! Unfortunately, there was somebody missing ... Mr. Internet Connection left the room right before and so we had only very rarely access to the Internet and the web sites we wanted to work with. What a pity, especially since some time we kept trying to get it working. However...

First, we presented our backup topics to let the attendees chose what to work on. Backup topics? Yes, because although we did some requests on mailing lists and in blogs, we didn't get any worked out proposal. Maybe our ideas were so bad that - at the end - the people in the workshop presented their own ones. So we got three excellent ideas to work on (described here). Due to the Internet connection problems, the attendees chose to work on "How to improve the quality of search results on the extension website?". Funnily, this idea had been brought in by Frank Mau (Sun Microsystems) who is also responsible for the User Feedback Data tooling. This data could have been used for questions dealing with the core product OpenOffice.org.

Frank explained the problem "offline" - if the user searches for extensions, the search results were sometimes sub-optimal which is related to the underlying search algorithm. Before starting to work on that topic, I gave a brief introduction of "user search strategies" and how this related to todays website features like: hierachical menus, tags and tag clouds, text search with synonyms. Concerning the search we worked out that a plain "text search" does not work well if a) there are far too many search results which might even be unrelated, and b) it doesn't work well if the user does not even know what term to search for (we tend to think technially, but most of our users are technically unbiased).

After some discussion it was raised that there were - literally - no resources to realize huge changes for the Extension Website. Keeping that in mind, we worked on some tiny but powerful proposals how to proceed (see here). If there would be a little bit more support, we also discussed how to re-arrange the elements on the website to provide access to the elements which were rather suited for the search (e.g. moving the tags a bit up). Finally, we had some intermediate result to further work on after the workshop.

Time was running - and still no internet connection - so we proposed to further inform about User Feedback Data and how to use it in the daily work. Agreement - and so Frank Loehmann gave a short presentation and I added a bit more "playing detective" with the source code browser OpenGrok to better understand the raw data. This could also be used for reference in the further analysis in the Project Renaissance.

Result: The workshop itself was quite interesting, especially for me :-) There has been positive feedback after the workshop, so most likely we will offer it again to further strenghten the cooperation in the community.

If you want to know more, here is the workshop wiki page, the videos / video streams and the presentation material.


And what is a day without a closing event? We enjoyed the party which has been organized by the NLC. Many thanks to the whole team!

That's it. You may now enjoy your very personal espresso - just go on. We'll see each other tomorrow!

Cheers,
Christoph

PS: Not to forget the reminder for the planet users, who want to see this posting well formed.

Time Machine Reloaded - November 4th

Hi TimeMachineFriends,

we already explored the November 2nd and the 3rd, now it is time for the first day of the conference ...

November 4th

The first "real" day of the conference started in an unbelievable room in the Palazzo del Capitano, which mixed both historical and technical elements. Here, we heard the welcome speak and the keynotes - especially the first one was very interesting to me.

If you are interested in any of the talks, the video streams can be found here. Unfortunately, they don't work well on my computer, so I cannot further comment on it...

However, you may notice that some of the folks (especially the people from the German community) have been quite busy during the talks. Maybe they already typed a live-transcript? ;-)

After the that, we moved on to hear Louis speaking about the state of the project in 2009. And - really great - he referred to Project Renaissance!



What a luck - Andreas and Frank gave a nice talk about the project right after. Unfortunately, the presentations files are not yet available, so you may prefer the video streams of the morning talks.

From my point of view, Andreas prepared a great presentation "to inform, to clarify, to motivate". Some people might have missed some examples, but from my point-of-view, the focus on the topic was quite right. Although the Q&A session afterwards showed, that we have to invest even more effort into communication.

For example, on person asked why we didn't work on "Macro Recorder" improvements so that everyone would be able to automate his tasks. To explain it a little bit further, Andreas talked about identifying and re-designing tasks which are important for the majority of users. For example (my example), inserting one or more pictures is a task which today requires many steps... Using the macro recorder would just mean to automate inefficient tasks which are still inefficient when used manually. And since selecting and positioning pictures still have to be done manually, that wouldn't change (or improve) that much. However, you might have a look at the videos for the Q&A.

Looking ... that reminds me that Bernhard from the Art team took the opportunity to present some of the logo ideas in one of the halls - the picture on the left. This hall did also accommodate the company booths.

After that day, we moved on to enjoy the dinner which - as usual - gave the opportunity to have nice chats with the others. For example, I would like to thank Frank Mau for his patience to explain of the OpenOffice.org tooling to me.

Besides the talks, I noticed some great wall decoration featuring some nice pieces of wisdom. You may notice that the following one seems closely related to usability and user experience in general.

That's it for today. Still, we didn't get any proposals for our workshop, so it seems quite necessary to finalize our own ones to be fully "backuped". We are really much looking for our workshop...

As usual, for the planet readers, you may better enjoy the "well formatted" posting on the OpenOffice.org User Experience blog.

Update update update: Andrea Pescetti of the Italian N-L provided a link to downloadable OGG video files of the talks. You find it here.

Time Machine Reloaded - November 3rd

As I said yesterday, let's push some buttons on the Time Machine to - again - go back 7 days. Let's re-experience some of the precious moments during the OOoCon...

November 3rd

I try to shorten this posting a bit - the day itself was quite nice, although you may miss some thrilling stuff. In the morning, we sat together in the lobby of our hotel to work on some mails and our presentations. You may notice that the time buffer for the presentations has been already close to zero...

After that, we continued our sightseeing tour - having excellent weather conditions. Thus, we had been able to enjoy the "Duomo di Orvieto" and the city's surrounding; but see for yourself.



To warm up for the conference, I did a short stop-over at the "NLC meeting". There, procedures and issues with regard to the translation had been discussed. Very interesting, especially since the look at the wider picture helps a lot ... important for UX topics which also heavily deal with texts and terms.

By the way, since many people believe that UX work is just the work on the (graphical user) interface, we went on to have a look beneath the surface :-) "Orvieto Underground" - a labyrinth of caves and tunnels...

Although some people might have wished that we would have stayed there forever, we were guided back to the surface. So we could join the first party were officials of the city welcomed us. Thus, thanks for the warm welcome, the cold beverages and the delicious goodies!

We finished our day in a bar... I'll skip the pictures - you know - low light conditions make it really difficult to work with the camera :-)

Tomorrow, I'll shed some light on the start of the conference and the status presentation covering Project Renaissance. Keep on reading!

Bye,
Christoph

PS: As usual, if you miss some formatting, please have a look at the original post on the OpenOffice.org User Experience Blog.

Seven Days Time Machine

Hi everybody,

some of you might have been at the OpenOffice.org Conference 2009 or already read some of the (few) blog comments. I'd hoped to provide similar insights like I did in my blog comments covering the OOoCon last year (first posting). Time for changing that!

But is a wrap-up sufficient? Surely not, since many little things happened which are worth mentioning... So what about a "Time Machine" to travel back 7 days? This would be a great chance to re-experience the great time we've had at the conference...

November 2nd

One of the best things being at the OOoCon is to meet other people who share the same ideas. Thus, I have been more than happy to meet André Schnabel right after my breakfast. Even better, he joined me to do some sightseing in Orvieto. There, Andreas Mantke was already awaiting us.

Our hotel was located outside the city, so we moved on until we - astonished - noticed that the center of the city was really sitting on a huge rock. See for yourself...

Once in the city, Andreas joined us and we started exploring. Of course, we wanted to see the famous "Duomo di Orvieto". It is somehow funny to go through tiny alleys and then - suddenly - a very huge building appears.

Don't worry, I'll post some more pictures when the weather improves. It was even a bit foggy that day...

Inside the building everyone will notice how well it is built and how good it was preserved over the centuries. Mmh, that seems similar to what we aim for with regard to ODF - being understandable even after a looong time. Moreover, being independent from the software which was used to create the documents.

Why this sudden change of subject? Because we noticed something noisy going on. So we went inside a building and found the people of the ODF|Plugfest celebrate their lunch break. Did you ever wondered how this looks like? Here are the action-packed photo ;-)



















The good thing is, that we've also met Oliver-Rainer Wittmann (on the right) who kindly supported us with a map and some leaflets covering touristic highlights. Thanks a lot!

I'll spare you the rest of the day ... except for the arrival of Jacqueline Rahemipour. After meeting her at the train station, we did one of the best things you can do in Orvieto - getting an excellent meal. You may have noticed the praises by Louis :-)

The choice was easy, since we had already promised to visit a pizzeria proposed by Stefan Weigel. Why? He had to cancel his trip right before the conference, which is still such a pity... we've missed him. However, a picture to prove that we've been there. You will easily recognize this to be a real "Italian" pizza...


Since we prove to be a real community, Jacqueline was so kind to share some pieces - hunger, anybody? The blurry picture is definitely caused by my shaking hands awaiting to eat ;-)


Okay, this was my first full day in Orvieto. Stay tuned for the next day - working, more sightseeing and - of course - the first party. What else should we do?

Time Machine "off" and back to now: I would like to take the opportunity to express my deepest thanks to anybody who was involved in making the OOoCon 2009 such a great success.

Read you tomorrow,
Christoph

PS: I know that the OpenOffice.org Planet sometimes has its own ideas how my blog postings should look like. It might be better to have a look at the original post on the OpenOffice.org User Experience Blog.

cappuccinOOo and more

The OpenOffice.org conference will start in a few days. It's high time to prepare for the stay - e.g. by consuming Italian style food and delicious coffee specialties. Today, I've added the second entry in my little series of "OOo logo interpretations": Two cappuccino and one espresso, per favore! :-)


Do you think I'm idling at the moment? If yes, then please consider to keep us running by submitting ideas to our workshop...

User Experience Done "Live" Based on Expertise and Usage Data

Up till now, nobody officially responded to our annoucement earlier this week. Maybe the reason is that we are question and issue free with regard to usability - which would be really great. But I really see the necessity for support when working with our software, trying extensions, reading websites, noticing user requests etc. Please, take that opportunity by either contacting us directly, or adding your ideas and questions to the wiki page.

I'm waiting for your input. Most presumably, I'll be awake for some more hours - I really had to consume the drinks mentioned above ;-)

We'll see us at the OpenOffice.org conference. I'm really much looking forward...

Christoph

Commercial Break - Workshop "User Experience Done Live!"

Hi everyone,

the User Experience Team currently prepares a workshop - which requires your participation to make it a "real" workshop :-)

Are you a developer in the context of OpenOffice.org? Great! Will you be attending the OpenOffice.org Conference 2009 in Orvieto, Italy? Even better!

You and everyone interested in User Experience (UX) design are invited to participate in this UX workshop.

Bring your questions which have impact on usability to be worked on "live" - supported by the members of the User Experience team. Together we will identify potential issues and develop promising interaction designs to even better satisfy your users' needs.

Something for you? Please read on in the OpenOffice.org Wiki.


We'll be glad if you join!

Christoph

Questions, Answers and an Interview

Question: What's happening in Project Renaissance at the moment?
Answer: The team answers frequently asked questions!

After our first prototyping phase, a lot of questions have been raised concerning the goals of Project Renaissance and its current state. After spending an incredible amount of time to address these comments individually, we now know about the commonly asked questions on mailing lists, in personal mails or in blog comments.

These questions have been collected and discussed with all the people involved in Project Renaissance, so you may consider these answers to be somehow official. You can find them on our fully revised FAQ page (link below).

But, plain text is missing a personal touch... So I'm very happy to announce that the FAQ page also features a video with Florian Effenberger (OpenOffice.org Marketing Co-Lead) who interviews Andreas Bartel (Project Renaissance). Enjoy it!


So check out the Project Renaissance Frequently Asked Questions in the OpenOffice.org Wiki!

And please: If somebody has answers with regard to Project Renaissance, please guide him to our FAQ page or just drop a message at the ux-ui mailing list (ui@ux.openoffice.org)! Thanks!

And now? The next few days we will publish more information about the current state of User Feedback data. Stay tuned ... and have a nice day!

Christoph

LinuxTag WrapUp

The LinuxTag in General

From 24th to 27th the LinuxTag, “the most important place for Linux and open source in Europe”, took place in Berlin. I was able to join the other German community members on Thursday, the second day of the event. So there were still two and a half day to go; filled with (strong) discussions, presentations … and fun.

The fun (first). What luck, I was on time to join the LinuxNacht (the Linux night) – yummy dishes, live music (very good but also a bit loud for people who wanted to chat). Professional pictures of that event can be found – among others – in the press pictures corner. Here is one example...

The work. Besides providing help and support for everyone at our booth, there were numerous talks given by our community members. In the whole program, there were 10 presentations planned for OpenOffice.org. Remarkable, I think.

Unfortunately, I missed the change to attend other projects' presentations. The one which I remember best was the one I held ;-)

Project Renaissance

The presentation itself did run rather well, except the application which demonstrates the dynamic prototypes. It froze completely – before I was able to demonstrate anything. Fortunately, one of the attendees tried it for himself and announced that it works smoothly; except the button I clicked on :-) Besides this little issue, the software is absolutely amazing – try it!

After the presentation, there has been an interesting Q&A session – one question by a representative of the administration of a German city should be mentioned. It seems that there is some uncertainty for both large businesses and government what kind of influence Project Renaissance might have on the re-training effort of their users. Why is that important? Many people rely on what they know from previous software versions, so changes in general might have influence on the people's efficiency. If the change is huge, then re-training is necessary – costly in large scale deployments. I answered that it is currently planned to integrate interface elements step-by-step. So we will be able to provide a well tested system which will improve the efficiency in the long run. Even if these organizations upgrade the software after years (it is usual to stick with one version for a long time), then the improvements intended for all users will have a positive impact on their employees.. Fortunately, I got the feedback that the question was “well answered” - which hopefully is an indicator that the Renaissance really cares about things that. We definitively should not forget about that.

Another feedback I got from one of our own community members was about the goal being communicated a bit unclear. Although UX loves to be precise, being a bit less abstract might help here – when compared to mission and goal statements . Maybe we should include the Design Directives (which Andreas developed some months ago) in all future presentations:

• Discover essential functionality at first glance: a clearly structured UI with self-explanatory icons and labels
• Gain in experience on the fly: explore and use more advanced features with less mouse clicks
• Create eye-catching documents in less time: don't feel like struggling with styles and formatting, just pick a beautiful template

So these directives might be a nice complement to the presentation slides (German) which are now available at Project Renaissance presentation page. Also available is a short article about Project Renaissance which was written during (!) the talk by a nice guy from the German Linux Magazin.

Other Projects and Contacts

Of course, one of the central ideas of such an event is to meet other people. There were numerous very interesting people... For example, there was Björn from OpenUsability.org. We talked about e.g. how to promote OSS so that more usability expert join these projects. A real pleasure to talk to him, so I hope we will stay in contact!

Other nice contacts have also been established with people from KDE. André and I visited their booth to have a look at KOffice 2.0 which has been released recently. Although the underlying technology seemed to be very capable, we wondered whether the software is intended for end-users. An example: The software lacks some features although the buttons are there. It “halted” once and behaved a bit strange – when looking from an end-users point-of-view. Later, it was explained to us that the 2.0 codeline is a “platform release” which means to be targeted at developers. Okay, that cleared things up... (By the way, further information in given in the blog post "starting the 2.0 series".) Personally I have to say that the KDE folk is absolutely nice and I'm really much looking forward to meet them again.

UX in the Physical World

Similar to one of my blog posts of the last year's OOoCon, I noticed two nice UX related real-world-examples. First, the urban railway service in Berlin did chose a nice label for their recycle bins for collecting paper...

Did you notice it? It seems that the symbol for paper wasn't clear enough, so they added the word “Newspaper”. Due to the space restrictions, the seem to have it shortened to “New”. Looking at it now, it seems that only new paper is accepted. The good thing is, there is no need to ever empty the recycle bins :-)

Another thing we discovered were the salt and pepper shaker at the LinuxNacht. Some weeks before, a good friend of mine told me about the problems to identify the salt – is it the one with one or more holes? A simple problem for somebody having a job in the scientific research. So how could this be addressed?

Still having salt and pepper in mind, I would say that the current LinuxTag was well spiced. I would like to express my deepest thanks to the “LinuxTag Crew” and the LinuxTag e.V. (a non-profit organization) for managing the whole event together with Messe Berlin. See you next year!

Christoph