Informal Meeting "FOSS and Usability"

LinuxTag 2010, anybody?

We invite you to take part in an informal meeting to share thoughts, experiences and other information covering the topics Usability and User Experience in the Free Software world. The meeting is organized by Björn from OpenUsability.org and Christoph from the OpenOffice.org User Experience Team.

You should join if you are interested in:

• Integrating User Centered Development into the development of your FOSS project
• Wanting to add your UX expertize to a FOSS project
• Wondering how to take benefits out of community work with real users
• Some usability tips for your FOSS project
• ...

We are looking forward to see you at LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany!

Go ahead and find more information on the Informal Meeting Wiki page. And if you would like to know how this event looks like, have a look at the last year's LinuxTag blog posting.

Cheers,
Christoph

PS: Of course there will be a presentation on current Renaissance topics. I'll provide some more information soon ...

Project “Renaissance” Kick-Off

Project Renaissance, to rethink the graphical user interface (GUI) and interaction of OpenOffice.org, was announced on OOoCon 2008 and has been officially launched this week. Renaissance is a long running project and will start from scratch, so please do not expect to see something in OOo 3.1.

Some details about the project
The project is divided in three phases:

1. Research
2. Design
3. Evaluation
   

Currently we are in phase 1 where we want to understand our users before we start designing anything. We will do usage tracking to get real data what our users do. We do surveys to understand who our users are and what they think about the product and we will do a lot more of things to understand our users (i.e. focus groups, Isometrics survey ). In phase 2 we will not limit ourselves to the possibilities of our current OOo GUI toolkit. We will create a list of requirements and the development will work to create a framework that could fulfill these requirements.

The Problem
Why do we run this project?

• OpenOffice.org users complain about its cumbersome and outdated graphical user interface (GUI)
• A great deal of functionality is hidden in many overstuffed toolbars, poorly structured menus and complex dialogs
• Functions are thus difficult to access for novice users or too inefficient to use for expert users
• In addition, the GUI offers an antiquated look & feel which is hardly capable to communicate innovation and to create joy of use

Our Mission

“Create a User interface so that OpenOffice.org becomes the users' choice not only out of need but also out of desire.”

Our Goal
... to know and to understand our users as they are, and to help them accomplish what they want to, by providing efficient access to valuable functionality through a desirable user interface.

Scope of the Project
We want to rethink the interaction and visual design of OOo. We do not want to build new features.

Project Home
Project Renaissance uses the Wiki for project coordination. As we start from scratch, you will currently find only basic information around the project. Details about communication channels (Wiki, Blogs, mailing lists) will follow as soon as possible.

This is a very important project for OOo and we are really looking forward working with the OOo community! So please stay tuned and participate!

Best regards,

Frank Loehmann
OOo User Experience Project Lead

See You in Beijing!

Long time no blog post. Believe me that will change soon!

Christoph Noack, Bettina Haberer, Christian Jansen, Andreas Bartel, myself and many more UX team members will attend the OpenOffice.org Conference in Beijing next week.



Stay tuned and follow our State of the UX project presentation. There are great news!

So see you in Beijing!

Frank

Quarterly Review is done – what is next?

Some Quarterly Reviews for OOo are still running and some (i.e. the review for Calc) have already been finished.

The report of such a review consists of different sections. One section lists issues the teams are already working on and another the most important issues (i.e. a Top 20 of the highest voted issues). So now the question is how to start working on these most important issues to get things done?

I want to start the discussion on those issues as early as possible. If we have a good proposal in place, the chance to get those issues done is much higher. Furthermore we have the chance to do it on a high quality level if we do not start thinking about an issue when we have resources in development.

Discussions held in issues are often nonproductive, so I want to call for proposals, a kind of one pager, at the OOo Wiki. The issue itself just contains links to proposals but the discussion starts on the discuss@ux.openoffice.org mailing list. There could be more than one proposal for an issue, but in the end the UX team should recommend one proposal to development.

If the implementation of such an issue starts, the iTeam gets the supported proposal as a recommendation how to solve that issue. Maybe it is a good idea to have the original author(s) with that iTeam too.

Feedback welcome!

Best regards,

Frank

Quarterly review process for Calc has been started

Niklas announced the start of the quarterly review process (2008 Q2 ) for OOo Calc today. Please find a list of issues for discussion here.

Please participate and add issues you think that they are important for Calc. The wanted issues are not only usability related, so bugs and requests for enhancement are welcomed too.

The list will be discussed in an IRC meeting taking place on Monday, May 5th.

Best regards,

Frank

New Project Co-Lead: Christoph Noack

I am happy to announce that

Christoph Noack (christophnoack)

has accepted the co-lead role for the OpenOffice.org User Experience project. Christoph is one of our very first User Experience team members and has proven that he is a very good team player. He is part of the Writer Notes2 iTeam as the User Experience representative.

I am sure that the OpenOffice.org User Experience team will strongly benefit from his knowledge, his communication skills and his enthusiasm on OpenOffice.org!

Best regards,

Frank