Re: [Libreoffice-ux-advise] Finding a UX dev

Hi Michael,

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 1:11 PM, Michael Meeks <michael.meeks@suse.com>wrote:

> Hi Mirek,
>
> On Mon, 2013-04-01 at 23:49 +0200, Mirek M. wrote:
> > Compared to competitors, LibreOffice is lagging behind in terms of UX,
> > and, unfortunately, it seems like relatively little development is
> > happening in that area, often relegated to GSoC projects and Easy
> > Hacks, which don't always get picked up.
>
>         Of course, attracting resources is always hard.
>
> > The UI is one of the most common targets of complaints about
> > LibreOffice. I'm certain many would be willing to pay a developer to
> > work on UX-related bugs full-time. We could draw up a Kickstarter
> > campaign.
>
>         I'm aware of some funding for a developer to work on some crazy
> prototyping work for the UI at the moment. Unfortunately he has a
> pipeline of work that puts that a few weeks out :-)

That sounds great. What will they be prototyping?

> > So, I'm wondering, is there a volunteer developer or a former GSoC
> > student who might be up to the task?
>
>         I guess you'd want to talk to Matus, Lanedo, Openismus, Igalia,
> Collabora and/or any others around the place that might have cycles for
> that. Be aware that you're talking around Eur 800 / day for these guys -
> and of course you'd want some sort of concrete plan to make this viable.
>
>         Seemingly most people want to fund revolutionary improvement -
> which is
> going to be of the order of a multi-man-year project (at Eur 150k+ per
> engineer year). Not incremental improvement that fixes things here and
> there.

Incremental improvement might sound minor, but it can make huge differences.
Having the Hidden Items Menu [1] implemented, for example, would allow us
to radically change the default toolbar setup while making sure that people
accustomed to the old arrangement can easily find the commands they need.

>         Beyond that - I suggest that working with Kendy / getting SUSE
> hack-week people interested, going via GSOC, etc. would be a good plan.

Yup -- will continue to do that as well.


> Also - responding rapidly to people who ask question on ux-advise is
> quite important I think :-)

of course :)

[1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62079