Please read Christoph Noack's second blog posting on his visit in Hamburg, which he begins with:

"This is my second – and last – posting which covers my two days stay “UX meeting in Hamburg”. In the last posting, I've talked about non-disruptive messages and the common goal for OpenOffice.org. Now, we will have a look at Impress and the printing improvements."

 BTW
It seems from the comments I got and notes I read on the list, that we humans are indeed more pleased to be F2F than only bits and bytes. ;-)

Kind regards,

Liz 

tags: renaissance user-experience

Last week Christoph Noack from the User Experience (UX) community took time out of his busy schedule to visit Hamburg and the Sun office for face to face (f2f) discussions on UX topics.  Be sure to see his blog post on "day one" to hear what went on. Be watching for "day two" as well.

For my part, I can say it was a very productive visit with many meetings and long talks. It is good to be there in real-life sometimes instead of just virtual. Although I have to say the sleep mode is easier to achieve on my computer than in real life. ;-)

Speaking of virtual vs real-life, what are your thoughts about non-f2f situations like webinars or conferences solely online? Is that a good or bad thing? Perhaps you could leave a comment here to tell me if you have had good or bad experiences with one or the other. What do you prefer? A mix? Which one would would you be more likely to attend and why?

Have a great day, both virtual and real.

Liz :-)

tags: renaissance user-experience

Everyone loves receiving presents, especially presents which are useful. Likewise, giving presents to others feels wonderful. An important part of the holidays is the spirit of giving. This is where OOo fits in: Not only is the OpenOffice.org office suite a great present to the world, but giving and receiving is also experienced in many more ways within the OpenOffice.org community. There are volunteers working in numerous project groups, from localizations to marketing, documentation to website maintenance, plus mailing lists.

Not too long ago, I was reading the Users mailing list and saw two nice examples of giving and receiving that I want to point out to you. The first one was the quick and kind community response to a novice user's request for help. The other was the mention of how a school was outfitted with Linux and OOo. These two examples appeared in the same thread titled "I'm Petrified", in which Helene asked for information about switching from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org, saying she was terrified to try OOo. Helene, who lives in Washington State, USA, was amazed by the large number of helpful responses she got, on and off list, from the OOo community. In her own words: "I have received many good comments and great advice from practically around the world.  I am awestruck! [...] Therefore, thank you and all the other Oo.o users around the world for your help and concern." One of the responses to her initial message was this (text shortened by me):

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [users] I'm petrified!
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:44:18 -1000

Here is a story that may help you not being "petrified" about OpenOffice.

I am retired but help a large local elementary school (800 students) with database applications. [...] Like many organizations the computers vary greatly in age. We have a mix of
Windows (Win98, Win2000, WinXP, Vista, and Mac computers.  That means it's always a problem with knowing what format to use if a file needs to move from one computer to another. But license fees to create a uniform environment are just out of reach.

My grandson, while still in school learning computer science, worked at the school as LAN manager. He proved that we could save a lot of money by converting many of our "old" computers to Linux (Ubuntu) rather than upgrade and to install open office on most of the computers regardless of the Operating system.

This has been a resounding success, the teachers had no problem with it and the students learn it easily.

[...]
Harold Hauge

The two photos here are from that school in Hawaii.

These are just two of the hundreds of similar experiences people have with OOo and the OOo community every month, in many countries all over the world. It is wonderful to be part of a huge global community where so many knowledgeable and helpful people are giving and receiving all year round.

Happy holidays everyone! Keep up the spirit ;-)

Best wishes from me and everyone at

OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun

tags: engineering user-experience

I know the holidays are drawing near and you are twiddling your thumbs, bored, not knowing what to do now that you already bought and wrapped all the presents and sent all the cards. ;-) Well, never fear! I have just the thing to keep you from falling asleep at your keyboard while watching animated snowfall.

The team made up of developers, user experience, quality assurance, accessibility and documentation specialists is hard at work writing the specification for the work-flow improvements which they plan to implement in Impress, the OpenOffice.org presentation application.

To find out what the latest plans are, take a look at the spec as it unfolds. Please remember that this is a work in progress. I'd also like to point out that the mockups are only for content. The final "look" is in the process of being designed.

If you have specific ideas to share or suggestions to make which could help the team make even more improvements in the areas being addressed, please post them to the mailing list: ui (at) ux (dot) openoffice.org.

For the Renaissance in Impress project overview, see the wiki page.

BTW, where I live, there is lovely white snow on the ground. Just a dusting mind you, but enough to bring thoughts of hot cocoa and cuddling up in front of warm fireplaces. No video-animated snowfall for me! ;-)

Best regards from me and the others on the Renaissance team.

Liz

tags: impress renaissance user-experience

As indicated in the previous posts, we have started to redesign a few really basic interactions in OpenOffice.org Impress in order to reduce the overall complexity of the UI. Currently, we focus on navigation through slides in various contexts, the visual appearance of different slide selection states and the handling of slide layouts. Today, I want to share some thoughts about a different way how to assign slide layouts.

The Challenge.

At present, OpenOffice.org Impress offers five ways how to change the layout of an existing slide. However, four of those merely trigger or point to the task pane. Consequently, there is only one “real” way how a user can pick and apply a slide layout, and there is no way doing that without the task pane. Thinking about a common scenario of creating a presentation, adding new slides, modifying existing ones, adjusting their layouts, one can imagine that switching the task pane on and off over and over again is an unwanted interruption. Keeping the task pane permanently alive is of course an option. Yet, if you want to concentrate more on the content of your work instead on the tools at hand, you’d rather prefer to disable the task pane since it consumes quite a lot of screen real estate.

Von OOo UI - Ideas and Mock-Ups

In addition, there is no way to insert a slide with a favored layout in only one step. Currently, the default work flow requires a user to insert a slide first, decide if the layout meets the expectations and then assign the preferred layout if expectations are not met. From our point of view, there should be a more elegant solution to that, too.

Another drawback of the current implementation of slide layouts is that their sheer number exceeds a practical amount that covers most use cases without getting too difficult to work with. Including the vertical layouts OpenOffice.org Impress 3.2 Beta offers 27 slide layouts. That is challenging for two particular reasons. The 27 slide layouts have to go somewhere in the UI, namely into the task pane, where they consume a lot of space. Since they are so many, it is often necessary to scroll through the task pane in order to get an overview what is available and during search. Picking one is also not always easy because in a worst case a user has to look through 27 options and then decide which one to pick. That takes time.

Possible Solutions.

Since OpenOffice.org Impress already has a dedicated “Presentation” toolbar that contains an “Insert Slide” and a “Slide Layout” button, the Renaissance i-Team started working on a solution that offers a technique to change slide layouts without the necessity to constantly use the task pane. Motivated by the visual concepts in our prototypes, we will try to add a preview pane into the toolbar such that users can directly pick a layout from a drop down toolbox, in the context of the task (insert slide, change slide layout). In parallel, we have decided to add more value to that particular “Presentation” toolbar by reducing its functionality to support the most important tasks only (insert slide, change slide layout, change slide design, set slide transition, start presentation).

Von OOo UI - Ideas and Mock-Ups

We have also considered options to handle slide layouts from various mouse context menus. However, this seems to be very challenging from an implementation point of view. Although we already have some design mock-ups, we need to explore the feasibility of that solution first on all platforms. So for now, the development team is investigating our options.

Von OOo UI - Ideas and Mock-Ups

One way to reduce the amount of slide layouts is to offer object placeholders in each layout that can be used to insert images, charts, tables and the like where usually text content would appear. That would make the need to create slide layouts with tables, images or charts separately obsolete.

Overall, these changes may seem small or less significant compared to other troubles such as the inability to create own slide layouts. However, having the goal of thinning out the current UI in mind, these redesigns and the sum of all forthcoming incremental improvements of the work flow will eventually keep us on the right track. For details about the ongoing work check out the Renaissance i-Team Wiki.

Best,

Andreas

tags: renaissance user-experience

The thinning out process for Impress 3.3 is in full progress. Please find the Project Renaissance status presentation for November/December at the OOo Wiki. The presentation provides first mock-ups of  the planned changes.

Feedback welcome.

Best regards,

tags: renaissance user-experience

I know some of you read the title and thought “Oh cool! I'm dying for a new user interface (UI). When will it finally be ready?” At the same time, some of you thought “Nooooooo! I like the UI already, even if there are a few little things here and there that annoy me. I wish they would stop this talk of a new UI.”

Before you read the more important stuff below this, let's just take a quick look at three basic questions.

1) Is there going to be a new UI for OpenOffice.org?
Yes. Improvements in interaction design (usability) will result in changes for the user interface. Good interaction design considers how fast you can do tasks which occur quite frequently and how easy you can figure out things you've never done before. BTW, "New UI" isn't a very exact term. We could just as easily say "revised UI" or "updated UI".

2) When will it be done?
Slowly but surely; over a long time; bit by bit. We will only change things if there is a good reason. And gathering and analyzing data (the "reason") takes time, as does designing improvements.

3) What is the goal of Project Renaissance?
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.

That said, the following is an elaboration on those three points and an attempt to clarify any incorrect interpretations of Project Renaissance.

There is a great deal to do within the scope of Project Renaissance, and since the OOo community regularly comes out with a new version of the OpenOffice.org office suite, each version is an opportunity to improve the interaction design. Slowly but surely. This usually involves UI changes, but sometimes may only result in performance or other intangible changes not visible on the UI. A motto for Project Renaissance is "form follows function".

In keeping with the goal of providing efficient access to valuable functionality, experience thus far has lead us to focus first on solving some fundamental problems so we can build on those solutions in later stages of Project Renaissance. One of the fundamental problems now in focus is reducing the complexity of the very large number of graphic elements on the UI. This is a big problem and so it will take time and many steps to work on it. Improvements will be noticeable here and there as we go.

We've always said that Renaissance is a long-term project. Unfortunately, many people got the wrong impression from the really real-looking prototypes (probably because our developers are really good at coding). Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your preference, those prototypes were exploratory---just ideas we were trying out, not the real solutions. What they, and the design idea collection before them, did, was supply us with a lot of feedback that is invaluable in the continued unfolding of the Renaissance work. "Unfolding" describes not only the work but also what happens whenever we start to work on an improvement.

For an excellent explanation, I would like to quote UX Architect, Matthias Müller-Prove:

"Most, if not all UI problems get larger during the time you are working on them. To a certain extent this is natural because you get more deeply involved and gain a better understanding of the issue. You discuss the topic with colleagues and incorporate their point of view into the design. You discover new aspects that somehow match your topic. [...] The challenge is to keep the chunks of UI problems you address manageable. At the same time you have to keep an eye on the overall structure of the product."

If you have a minute, you really should read the entire text on The White Water Lily Effect.

So, fully aware of the challenge to keep the UI problems we address manageable, our current focus is the task-oriented optimization of interaction in Impress, due to be out in version OOo 3.3. More unfolding of Project Renaissance will continue, bit by bit, step by step. This is one of the first bits to reach the implementation stage.

To get a better idea of what "task-oriented optimization of interaction in Impress" means, to see which issues are in this "manageable chunk" so far, and to follow how the work is progressing, see the new pages in the OOo Renaissance wiki.

Best regards,
The Renaissance Team

tags: impress renaissance user-experience

As Christoph Noack opened a time capsule, let me do the same. Mine goes back 2 months to Sept 17/18/19 when specially invited members of the German-language OpenOffice.org community came to Hamburg. The visitors pictured above, plus me and Marcus Lange from Sun who joined the photo, were (l to r): Marcus Lange, Florian Effenberger, Daniel Stoni, Christian Lohmaier, Elizabeth Matthis (aka Liz), Thomas Hackert Uwe Altmann (not pictured: Gerald Geib, Volker Merschmann)

It was so wonderful to meet face to face people otherwise only known from email and to be able to thank them for their dedication and support. They each traveled here at their own cost (from far corners of Germany and even from Switzerland), which further shows their enthusiasm and dedication to our thriving open source product. On Thursday evening, those who were already in Hamburg met at a pub (Max&Consorten) for a first get-together. Afterward, most of us concluded the evening with a round of beers and more talk at my home---which I jokingly called "Motel Matthis".

Friday started out with a heartfelt word of welcome and thanks from Michael Bemmer, Senior Director of StarOffice/OpenOffice.org Engineering, and unfolded with a series of talks and snacks, including lunch and several smaller group meetings about special topics, until concluding at approximately 5:30 PM.

There were entertaining and informative talks by Stefan Taxhet on OOo in general, Gerd Weiss on infrastructure---including a personal tour of the server rooms to underline some of his points about the hardware, Andreas Bartel on Renaissance and Uwe Fischer on documentation, as well as tours of the engineering facility and opportunities to say hello to many of the OOo developers in real life.

At the end of the very busy but fun day, those of us who still had time went out to eat together at an Italian restaurant (maybe this was to get in the mood for the OOoCon in Italy!) and, several courageous visitors even spent a second night at Motel Matthis! This time Uwe made sure we had enough beer to let us talk long into the night. Thanks, Uwe!

Some comments I received after the visit are:

thackert: "It was interesting to become acquainted with some people I'd only known the mail address or nick of, and to hear really interesting talks as well to "sightsee" SUN. All in all a nice trip and - the best of all - a really nice stay at "Motel Matthis" with a perfect hostess (Liz!)"

floeff: "Thank you very much to everyone who made this visit in Hamburg possible! I'd never been at Sun Hamburg before, and it was a really nice day meeting old and new friends, getting insight on how the OpenOffice.org development works, and after all, we also had a lot of fun and a real great time. Liz is a wonderful hostess and we all enjoyed some very special days in a community that more and more becomes a real family."

VolkerMe: "Thank you again for such a nice day, which was very much too short for me. The opportunity to have personal talks with the engineers at SUN was so interesting, I wasn't able to discuss everything, so I hope I can come back another time. And although it has been said so often: Thanks Liz for hosting the meeting, for the well-prepared accommodation and for being our always smiling guide!

Saturday came too quickly and I had to say goodbye to my delightful guests. I hope to organize another visit to thank additional and like-wise dedicated community members in 2010.

Kind regards,
Liz

tags: community user-experience

Do not miss your opportunity to enter Christoph's time machine, if you could not attend this years OOoCon in Orvieto. Even if you have attended, it gives you the possibility to see the conference from a non-developers point of view. Enjoy!

Best regards,

Frank

tags: ooocon oooocon2009 renaissance user-experience

Thinning out process for the existing OOo user interface has started. Focus for OOo 3.3 will be on Impress. Please find the October status update presentation for Project Renaissance at the OOo Wiki (1 MB).

Feedback welcome.

Best regards,

tags: renaissance user-experience