Re: [libreoffice-design] Redesign of Help > Send Feedback page

Thanks for the response  Charles - various comments below...

On 18/01/15 13:49, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
> Hello again Mike,
>
> Le dimanche 18 janvier 2015 à 11:28 +0000, Mike Hall a écrit :
> > *Redesign of Help > Send Feedback page*
> > The objective is to make users feel more welcome, to show them their
> > responsibilities and make it easier for them to find relevant help. As a
> > result, they may be more willing to provide feedback and perhaps to
> > contribute more to the project.
> >
> > A draft redesign is at:
> > www.onepoyle.net/User_Role_and_Feedback.htm
[snip]
> > In theory yes (the design team has a whole process for this, but as I am
> > part of the website team we can make the edits asap when we reach a
> > consensus. So let's work with what we have.
> >
> > So far: I love what you did. Just a few ancillary comments.
> > First line, "if you wish to become more involved" part: let's put this
> > as a direct link to this page:
> > http://www.libreoffice.org/community/get-involved/
Done
> > In the "Users have responsibilities" bullet list, the last comment about
> > telling other people about LibreOffice, we could at some point (maybe
> > not now) point to a simple repository of web banners, buttons, and of
> > course the "What's LibreOffice" page
> > (http://www.libreoffice.org/discover/libreoffice/)
That link is also the one for the first bullet point. Agree it would be 
good for this bullet to be a link too, but I couldn't think what. Agree, 
later addition.
> > I'd like to suggest changing the menu entry 'Send Feedback' to something
> > reflecting the intent of the edited page. 'User Role & Feedback...' is
> > the best I've come up with, but there is almost certainly something much
> > better. 24 characters maximum?
> Not sure. "User Role" is somewhat confusing. I'd leave it as it is,
> after all the text you have already added up is quite clear?
OK
> > Would it be a good thing to add the contents of the web page to LO Help
> > in due course? It would then be available offline and be translated.
> I'm not sure exactly if I understand your correctly, do you mean to say
> we should have these pointers on the About LibreOffice pop up window
> inside the office suite? I would really like to have that; but we would
> need to design it well, not just copy and past the contents of the page.
> Another option would be to have it on first launch or something.
I meant something prominent on the pages you get when you press F1. Your 
suggested alternatives are interesting as well. Another possibility 
would be to have them on the page you get when you first open LO without 
an open file. There's plenty of room below the 'Create:' group and it 
seems as if it might be an obvious place to put it. I'd like to mull 
this over for a few days - it's independent of the rest. Happy to do 
some basic design work in due course if you like.
> > I'm thinking of a logo for the page reflecting "Users first" but I'm not
> > a graphics designer. Any takers?
> >
> > What's all this about "User's First"? Colleagues working on LO do so for
> > a wide variety of understandable personal reasons. However, without a
> > substantial number of otherwise unengaged users, the project would be
> > likely to wither and die. Thus users are the essence of why the project
> > exists
> hmm... er. no. The project exists because people are happy to work on it
> or are paid to work on it. Never because of users. It is really an
> important distinction to have, although it is not overly helpful to
> claim it everywhere; contributors work on whatever pleases them, but
> hardly never for users. Implying this would be highly misleading (that's
> what we learned during those ten years I was telling you about).
I understand where you are coming from and I understand the way 
development proceeds. It would be good to push the culture just a little 
towards a little more QA and a little less new features and in fact 
there has been a shift in that direction (eg MABs).
> > and it makes sense to make their role and their needs fairly
> > central. This has been raked over many times, and I'm not keen to
> > restart the debate here, but any serious consideration of the
> > implications would certainly highlight the importance of very effective
> > QA on all released products.
> Sorry to have restarted it :-) you are putting your finger on something
> important, which is how do we engage users. It is important to make them
> feel welcome - because we want new contributors; at the same time we
> don't want to set false expectations, such as "users need to be listened
> at, they need to say what they want as features in the software, how it
> should be released, etc." ... because we are a Free Software project and
> not a product. Products, even the ones based on Free Software, come with
> customers, more or less paying for the product in one way or another.
> They have the right to complain, and anyone distributing that product or
> making it has a responsibility to take their feedback rather seriously.
> Free Software on the other hand is not a product and has no
> responsibility towards users beyond the rights conveyed by the license.
We think the much the same about this. You have to contribute to 
influence things.
> But hey - thank you again for your input and your ideas, this is useful
> and we're moving forward.
Editing the 'Send Feedback' page seems independent of the other ideas 
and, apart from making sure Cor is sufficiently comfortable, is there 
any reason for you not to go ahead with those changes immediately? Other 
changes can follow a later when we've had time to do a bit more thinking.
Mike


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