OpenOffice User Survey 2009: Performance Findings

Today I post the performance finding from the OpenOffice.org User Survey 2009 (OOoUS2009). The OOoUS2009 can be accessed via the registration landing page of OOo linking to our LimeSurvey tooling.

Currently more than 64K users have started the survey and more than 44K finally submitted their votes.

The survey has a performance part asking our users how satisfied they are with OOo's current performance. Performance is something that is perceived differently from person to person. It depends on the system environment used to run OOo, personal skills, the tasks that are performed with the software and external interferences like time pressure. Therefore we have also asked for the overall performance satisfaction with the computer system used by the user to have something that we can compare with OOo's findings.

We have asked our users to rate on the following performance relevant tasks using a 5 point scale from very bad [(-)(-)] to very good [(+)(+)]:

• starting the office suite
• creating new documents
• opening and saving documents
• working with the word processor (Writer)
• working with the spreadsheet application (Calc)
• working with the presentation application (Impress)
• working with the drawing application (Draw)
• working with the database (Base)
• working with the diagram module (Chart)
• working with the formula module (Math)
• closing the office suite
  

In general the overall satisfaction in terms of OOo's performance is good. 3/4 voted positive (+) and very positive (+)(+) on:

• working with Writer (84%)
• creating new documents (83%)
• opening and saving documents (81%)
• working with Calc (80%)
• closing OOo (80%)
• working with Impress (75%)

Furthermore very few people (4%-13%) rated negative (-) and very negative (-)(-). Neutral (o) ratings are hard to rate, but I think we could say that those users are not (really) satisfied with OOo's performance too. Otherwise they would have chosen a clear positive rating.

Compared to the overall system performance rating we can identify the following tasks that are rated significant worse:

1. Program start-up
2. Base
3. Math & Chart
4. Draw

Impress could be named as no. 5 but it is not really significant and 75% rated it good or very good.

Please see also the state of the Renaissance project presentation for March (performance part: 19ff).

For a deeper analysis, i.e. what tasks people did who have voted negative on OOo's performance, requires additional tooling and some more time.

Feedback welcome!

Best regards,

Frank

An overview of Project Renaissance presentations can be found at the OOo wiki.