Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: Finding a Purpose

"To make complex office tasks easy to everyone" - concise, short and to the
point. Love that Daniel!


On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 7:52 AM, Daniel Hulse <simplecontrast@gmail.com>
wrote:

> One thing I can think of that would be important to defining this purpose
> is
> audience. Who is LibreOffice for? Sure, anyone can use if if they want, but
> who are we targeting? LibreOffice is used by students, businesses, and
> governments, but that's not really helpful in terms of design. One insight
> that might be helpful is the fact that many of the people who use office
> software aren't very good at using and understanding computers--they know
> how to check their email, use a web browser, and do some things in their
> office software, but that's it--they aren't very good at changing settings
> or preferences, learning how to use new programs, or installing software.
> These people have to be taken into account, because if something is
> understandable to them, then it should be understandable to everyone--they
> are the lowest common denominator.
> At the same time, people should be able to use LibreoOffice for real
> work--we shouldn't be getting rid of advanced functionality in terms of
> what
> can be done with the programs, because often LibreOffice is the easiest
> tool
> that can be used for that task (for example, it is much easier to make an
> ANOVA table in Calc than it is to learn R to make one)
>
> I suppose, taking this into account, the purpose of LibreOffice would be,
> broadly, "To make complex tasks easy for everyone." At the same time,
> LibreOffice isn't and probably shouldn't be in the business of making web
> browsers, file managers, or 3d modeling tools. So what kind of tasks is
> LibreOffice meant to perform? Creating and editing documents is one
> (Writer,
> Impress, Math, Draw), and organizing and analyzing data is another (Calc,
> Base)--fairly general tasks that need to be done in a variety of settings
> and workplaces. Documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and the like are
> used everywhere for a variety of purposes, so we can't get too specific
> with
> the purpose, either.
>
> I suppose that would make the purpose of LibreOffice something like: "To
> make work easy for everyone, by providing an easy-to-use set of tools for
> making documents and presentations and for organizing and editing data."
>
> Then again, thinking this is making me question why we bundle up each of
> the
> modules and call it LibreOffice. Sure, it's good to have tools that work
> well together, but doing so in our case seems to rob the project of a clear
> focus. Then again, this is how people expect to get their office software,
> and it would be impractical for LibreOffice to not be this way, since this
> project is seen as a drop-in replacement to Microsoft Office.
>
> -Daniel
>
>
>
> --
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> Sent from the Design mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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