Let's do the Math

This time I'd like to point to something which is in early stage of development. The "OpenOffice.org Usage Feedback Extension" [1]




The OpenOffice.org Usage Feedback Extension is an extension that collects anonymous data about how OpenOffice.org is used. This information is used to better understand how people use OpenOffice.org.

Our plan is to have this extension final on release date of OpenOffice.org 3.0.

As mentioned above, the data will be used to do some statics on the usage of OpenOffice.org. For example: We can better figure out how frequently specific menu- and tool bar items are used. The collected data will help us to create a decision base for user interface changes. It allows us to decide better on defaults, or items displayed by default.

The anonymously collected data will be published in form of diagrams/tables on a page on OpenOffice.org.

As always, feedback and comments are welcome.
Directly here, or on the discussion page of the Extension Specification.

There is momentary nothing to download, but this will change soon.

Stay tuned.

[1] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/OpenOffice.org_User_Feedback_Extension

OOo User Experience Project Lead Meeting in Hamburg

Sun Microsystems User Experience team had a meeting with Christoph, our OOo User Experience Co-Lead. Christoph stayed in Hamburg to meet his Notes2 iTeam, so we used this opportunity to prepare the upcoming quarterly review for Writer and to discuss general UX related things.


From top left to bottom right: Christoph Noack (OOo UX), Éric Savary (Sun QA), Max Odendahl (OOo Dev), Mathias Bauer (Sun Dev),
Christian Jansen (Sun UX), Andreas Martens (Sun Dev), Frank Loehmann (Sun UX)

I think the meeting was very productive and we also had much fun showing Christoph and Max a little bit of Hamburg at night. After dinner we went down to the harbour to have a look at the Hamburg Cruise Days. Nearly every ship/building was illuminated with blue light.


Blue illuminated Rickmer Rickmers and Disneys Lion King musical hall in the back.

I hope we can repeat those face to face meetings beside our weekly telephone calls.

Usability and handedness – is it considered at conceiving software?

Within the software products / tools I have ever installed and worked with I have never discovered one, which pointed explicitely to the consideration of handedness.
So it seems, that one is working with software, which is mostly (always?) designed for right handers.

Is this assumption right?

How to satisfy handedness?

To meet the need of right and left handers at conceiving software one needs to know and be able to identify, which hand is supported in which way.

Does it really suffice to switch the mouse keys and mirror the menu and toolbars?

What needs to be considered at conceptual design of software therefore? In my opinion this is a topic really worth mentioning.

Your feedback is welcome.


Best regards,

Bettina

Improving the Usability: The new Extension Manager as an Example

I would like to introduce the new GUI of the Extension Manager.
The aim of this refining was to ease the use of this tool and giving it an appealing look.

The problem:
This dialog has formerly been rather overcrowded with all functions available at the same time and thus difficult to understand how to use.
The user was forced to consider too many steps before getting results, while beeing in the context of extensions which at that days were not in common use for every user.

The solution:
Which buttons need to be available all the time and which are only relevant for a selected extension? According that assignment the buttons got arranged and their visibility reduced, so that the user has certain functions only available if needed. That should help to keep the user's focus on the work flow.
We also reduced the number of further dialogs coming up on top of the Extension Manager at certain actions by integrating it within the UI.
Well, not many ways exist to arrange an appropriate UI for the purpose of handling extensions, the result shows similarity in the style of the well known Firefox.

Here are some pictures showing the old and new Extension Manager:


The old UI


The new UI: Adding an extension


The new UI: After adding an extension

Congrats Firefox Team

Well done. Especially I like the download site(s)....and of coarse the product.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

http://www.mozilla-europe.org/de/firefox/

http://www.mozilla-europe.org/de/firefox/organic/


--Christian

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

iPhone 2.0

At today's keynote, Steve Jobs presented the all new iPhone to the masses. No worries, this ain't gonna be another blog post about the product as such. Instead, I want to point out how Apple managed to really listen to the their customers and improve the iPhone exactly there where it failed to meet their needs. This company's ability to gather, interpret and appropriately use feedback is state of the art.

Read the whole keynote here.

Best,
Andreas

PS: This is what Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, Bertrand Serlet, said about Snow Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X "In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system."