Re: [libreoffice-design] Design Tenets Proposal

Scott

On Fri, 2011-06-17 at 13:49 -0600, Scott Pledger wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> One thing that I've noticed is that we have a lot of great redesign
> proposals floating around, but we have yet to establish a true direction for
> the Libre Office platform.  Someone recently posted this video (
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9kD693ie4 ) which really made me realize
> the importance of having specific long-term goals for software design.
>  Therefore, I wanted to propose a few simple goals that I think LibreOffice
> ought to have for its design as we move forward (maybe even for the 4.0
> release)  as well as the basic tenets that I think we can use to help
> achieve these goals.  So, here we go:
>
> *The Goals:*
>
>    - *Make LibreOffice easy to use while retaining its power.*  This is by
>    far one of the biggest complaints I have when I suggest that my clients use
>    LibreOffice - they don't understand where things are in the
>    menu/toolbar hierarchy.  The best example of this is page margins.  The
>    easiest way for a lot of my customers to find this is through the
>    right-click menu.
>    - *Lead current trends in technology, don't just follow.*  LibreOffice
>    retains a layout that was first commercially phased out about four years
>    ago.  While the Menu/Toolbar paradigm is an excellent way of displaying
>    program features for less fully-featured software and smaller screens, but
>    let's face it - most desktop screens are no longer small and LibreOffice is
>    extremely full-featured.  Instead of copying another office suite, let's
>    pave the way for others to build on.
>    - *Help people to be more efficient.*  This is really important if we
>    want to get LibreOffice used in more businesses and schools, and is
>    ultimately the best way to get any piece of software adopted.
>
> *The Tenets:*
>
>    - *Allow users to focus on the content, not the UI.*  The document
>    viewport should never change size or lose/gain visibility due to pop-up
>    dialogs or toolbars.  The only exception to this is menus, as users expect
>    these to overlap their document.  One major subset of this should be live
>    previews.  For instance, you have to click through Headings 1-10
>    individually to see what the differences are.
>    - *Everything should be accessible within 3 clicks, not just the 'most
>    common' features.*  This will help reduce the clutter while increasing
>    users' mastery of the software.
>    - *Consistent UI areas (not features) across all individual 'apps'.*
>    Keep the UI as consistent as possible without sacrificing the
>    features/functionality of any individual app (Calc, Writer, etc.).
>    - *Value context over comprehensiveness.*  Users don't need to have table
>    tools up and at the ready when they only have text in the body of a document
>    selected.
>
> Let me know what you think of these and, in particular, how you would
> change/expand on these.  This is just a very very rough draft (and very well
> could be repeating itself or incomplete) of things that I see , but
> ultimately LibreOffice isn't any one man's software, but rather everyone's,
> so I invite everyone to put some thought into this and please reply to this
> so we can come up with a general UX direction for this incredible project!
>
> Scott
>
> P.S. Sorry for the re-post - I sent this just before the list changed
> addresses, so I'm re-posting it with the new one!

You brought good points about what our underlaying philosophy should be
with a good focus on the users. The point about consistency across LO so
users find the same look and feel everywhere is important. 

To some extent everyone using menus is reusing the systems first used on
the Apple Lisa and first Macs (which may have been very similar to the
Xerox originals). I forget where the keyboard shortcuts came from but
they also are based on old system used in the late 70's and early 80's.

As far as UI, my concerns are not do something because someone else is
doing it. We should try understand the reasons why others are moving to
different UIs not copy them. If we believe those issues are true with
our UI then we are probably looking at similar solutions done by others.
Then we should study the other implementations for their good and bad
points. MS and Calligra have some very interesting ideas about the UI. I
think Calligra has a better idea but I do not think they executed very
well. And after reviewing the issues we may decide both MS and Calligra
are going down wrong paths and we must develop another or refine the
current UI.

There appears to be a lot of ideas coming out of the Linux community and
from the netbooks and tablets about UI. Some will not work for us
because of the technical requirements and how the LO is used.

-- 
Jay Lozier
jslozier@gmail.com

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