[libreoffice-design] Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: new features page ...

(CCing to design team to catch their attention ...)

Hi Michael, David, all!

great suggestion. It seems it pays off to bore you with all this UX
related stuff ;-))) And David, thanks for jumping in so quickly!

@ Sophie, Marc: I'll also refer to your posts, since it seems to make to
keep this information in one mail. So sorry for mis-threading in
advance ;-)

Am Freitag, den 14.01.2011, 22:43 +0800 schrieb David Nelson:
> Hi Michael, :-)
>
> Thanks for these good ideas. Sure we can implement your suggestions.
>
> If you want to help out with screenshots, that's fine, too. I've done
> all screenshots under Ubuntu using the Ambiance theme, window only,
> with window sized to 1000x750.
>
> You can supply me with that shot and I'll do the rest (I produce a
> downsize at 800x600 in png using Gimp, and then another png at 400x300
> using Photoshop. Empirically, that seems to produce the best quality.
>
> IMHO, it would be best to keep all the screenshots to this "uniform format".

Of course! And since you refer to "empirically", that's a great example
to document it in our upcoming wiki page (screenshot requirements).
Then, all the l10n teams can benefit. Although we should think about how
to do this with open-source tools (e.g. an image-magic script which can
be written?)

Since I've looked at the screenshots on the front page, I'd like to say
that the documents look that much (much!) better than before ... also
the Start Center (btw. not QuickStarter) looks better with some more
space around (the first picture).

But, only one picture doesn't fit that good - from the marketing's
perspective. Since we try to establish "our" branding, the following
picture is (although colorful) misleading how "we" look when installed.
It might be mis-interpreted as Splashscreen [0], so you mind to remove
it? Sorry to bother you with that :-\

If we finally have some time to take a deep breath (a few weeks maybe?),
I'd like to discuss the chosen theme. It seems a bit different to those
that are "default", and (although it looks great on the computer), the
dark title bars are a bit "visually heavy" and don't match to the
LibreOffice branding (draft) [1].

> Apart from that, we can format the layout the way you want it
> (preferably without breaking out of the theme styles).

See below, please ...

[...]
> > http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.3/index.html
> >
> >        I must confess I prefer the latter :-(

I put up a small graphic to show how a structure might look like - would
be great if Ivan could have a look at that, too. I think a subtle border
(gray) would help to overcome screenshot snippets problems.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/O-PELAb4LD61S9RPTFIW8Q?feat=directlink

Don't be scared by the colors, this is what we (UX people) use to
highlight elements within other pictures or draw structures. Of course,
the color theme of the website applies here.

@ Michael: The OOo features page seems a bit messy, since the pictures
have different width - there is no harmony. Moreover, the whole page
looks like to win the "most headers" award ;-)

David, might the structure above work with the site?

> >        eg. I love the work the l10n team does; it is a vital part of what we
> > do - but it is also something that people take for granted as in "it
> > should just work in my language" - ie. they get upset only if it is not
> > there ;-)
> >
> >        Would it be possible to move that to the bottom ?

I had a look at the page, and most probably we still miss a lot of users
and their interests (the very first item is "Load and Save ODF documents
in flat XML to make external XSLT processing easier"). This is
important, but for (business process) IT integration ... Also adding our
color palette is a minor improvement for the majority (literally nobody
will ever discover it, given our current palette management).

Also Marc and Sophie added very important thoughts ... and all are right
at the same time (from an UX perspective, but looking from different
user's point-of-views).

So here is my initial "flat list" proposal how the page can be
structured:
      * All Applications --> Major improvements shared by all
        applications
      * Writer (Word Processor)
      * Calc (Spreadsheet)
      * Impress (Presentation)
      * Draw (Vector Graphics)
      * Base (Database)
      * Math (Formula Editor)
      * Internationalization
      * Developer Features and Extensibility
      * More Improvements

All but the last category should only present a few improvements to
avoid boring people to death ;-) Pre-prioritizing helps them to quickly
decide "yes, that's worth to download". Let's say 3 ... 5 items per
category like Writer. And, one highlight item (e.g. "More familiar
keyboard shortcuts") might sum up some individual features (by the way,
more familiar to whom ...).

But since we also have people who want to deep-dive, there should be a
list of "small but important" items (More Improvements). Here, single
line statements like now are okay ... no need for pictures.

My assumptions / data:
      * You know the application descriptions (e.g. Vector Graphics?)
        much better ;-)
      * Order of applications (importance) survey used; see "Which
        OpenOffice.org application do you use or plan to use?":
        http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/w/images/f/fb/OOoUserSurvey2009_Final.ods
      * We currently keep the application based grouping (although its
        likely that new users will have their problems with that names
        only). Later we should move on to something more task oriented.


Well, we still miss the selected features that should go into the
categories. Here we can use the survey question: "In what areas would
you like to see improvements in OpenOffice.org?":
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/w/images/e/e6/OOoUserSurvey2008_Final.ods

Anybody one this list who can help to analyses the most important
features based on the document above, Sophie's FR poll list (other
mail), issue tracker numbers, or user support experience?

<fun>Of course, there is a need to include that great new printing
dialog [2] - whoever helped to shape that.</fun>

> >        Then, there are some quite sexy new things we have that (IMHO) would
> > benefit from a screenshot; eg.
> >
> >        * Caolan's new title-page dialog in writer (Format->Title Page)

Ah, so he is the one to prepare for a huge mail with feedback [3] to
keep him busy ;-)

> >        * And some of our import filters:
> >                + SVG, Works, Wordperfect, Lotus Word Pro
> >                + better EMF rendering
> >                + perhaps pictures of bundled extensions (?)

The term extensions doesn't help here ... maybe something like "Improved
Out-Of the Box Experience" and naming some of the important features
that are provided by extensions?

> >        Of course, I'd love to have the relevant files linked as well, so
> > people can try that out quickly ( cf. the obsolete
> > http://go-oo.org/discover ); IMHO that adds a lot.

Mmh, seems that this list already considers a lot of my suggestions
above ;-) Cool page!

> >        David / Christophe - any objections to this sort of change ? - we can
> > make screenshots small enough that there are few-to-no associated l10n
> > issues, and even (in my view) plain, flat rectangles, without beautiful
> > green drop-shadows (or whatever) would be rather good here (?)

Very good! Shadows (if any) is up to Ivan, I'd say.


> >        I'm happy to work on collecting the shots / files together.

Last thing: Could you please keep the "New Features" (New Highlights) in
one place - currently it appears under "Download - New Features", and
"Features - New Features". Clicking on the latter "jumps" between
different categories - without the user's intention.

Okay, first iteration :-)

I hope some of the stuff helps a bit - although I'm unable to do the
feature selection stuff (sorry!), since we really have to continue with
the new MIME type icons to get that included [4]. I still have some
hope ...

@ Sophie, you mentioned the "colored icons" - does this refer to the
MIME type icons? If yes, then I'm unsure whether we should highlight
that if we ship the old icons (Sun S-curve branding, OOo branding
colors, seagulls).


Cheers,
Christoph


[0]
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/oSwkWTbgl3oUw-EYzldotA?feat=directlink

[1] http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Branding#Branding

[2] http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/printerpullpages

[3] http://www.mail-archive.com/design@libreoffice.org/msg00122.html

[4] http://picasaweb.google.com/noack.christoph/LibreOffice#


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