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

Hi guys,

        So - this thread turned amusing, before I could even get to it. Perhaps
one of our problems is a workload, and hence response time mismatch
between people.

On Fri, 2011-01-14 at 22:55 +0100, Christoph Noack wrote:
> great suggestion. It seems it pays off to bore you with all this UX
> related stuff ;-)))

        So - first; smiley aside - when I read this I feel like my interest in,
work on, and experience with UX in the past is being ignored. That is
unfortunate, and I am sure not your intention, yet it happens :-)

        My impression is that UX is really important, too important to leave
just to designers ;-) and that educating developers to understand and
consider UX in what they do is critical. There are IMHO a vast class of
UX problems that are so 'obvious' when considering some simple use-cases
such that they can be tackled without external help. I see a vast amount
of the UX role as winsomely educating developers, so that they can think
for themselves - hopefully (as you say) that will happen over time.

> Since I've looked at the screenshots on the front page, I'd like to say

        Separately, I love your praise for what David has done; and I too think
it is a huge improvement :-)

> 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

        Ok - it is a nice graphic. Unfortunately, not all our features are
graphical in any way. "More familiar keybindings" eg. ;-) do you think
your layout works well for that ? Also - who is going to provide this
extra body text (in addition to the short description ?).

> Don't be scared by the colors

        :-) of course not.

> @ 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 ;-)

        Yes - totally agreed; I said I prefered it not because it was good, but
because it is better - and that is saying something :-)

> 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

        Which sounds fine; at least I'm happy with it.

> 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* here is the problem - we need someone to do this prioritisation
work. Thus far, I did some fixing and better ordering of the categories,
clearer explanation, and slightly better prioritisation of the data, but
it needs more work.

        Furthermore, it is my conviction that the people doing the work should
substantially make the decisions about it; the advice above could be
seen as stretching into micro-management - deciding all the 'fun' stuff,
and yet leaving all the donkey work to someone else :-) This is *really*
not a good place to go. Reading the level of detailed demand here -
personally I feel de-motivated to improve the web-site from where it is
already :-) I also feel like there is more detail underneath, and that I
am going to need to ask advice on any minor change I make myself - in
short I feel like I've been demoted to a raw typing machine - if even
that :-) I am sure that is not your intention either ! :-) indeed, it is
a tragedy if giving good advice in too much volume, via de-motivation
results in no improvement at all.

        So - the points you make are all good - I agree with them; but are
perhaps over-detailed; personally I would prefer to see some far less
detailed suggestions, presenting the same data - but in a much more
free-form way leaving the person doing the work lots of room to do as
they choose. Hopefully - that means even less work for you to do on this
topic :-) I imagine that carefully writing long and detailed E-mails
takes a lot of time; on the other hand - if you're passionate about
detail in this piece - personally I'd prefer to see you do the textual
re-arrangement yourself - ie. do the whole thing to get it exactly how
you like.

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

        Oh - did we miss some key features ? [ that seems highly probable ], if
so what ? again we need the work put into the list there I guess.

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

        Caolan is plenty 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 ...

        Sure - but the idea of showing some pictures of them is perhaps
sensible ? :-)

> > >        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!

        Glad you like it; the discover page was created by applying pure
common-sense by developers.

> > >        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.

        Hmm; looking at the things we need to screenshot some more - I don't
believe we can avoid the l10n problems; so we will need the files
linked / nearby for any l10n.

> 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.

        So - I appreciate these jumps are ugly, and I asked expressly for this
myself and David kindly added one. We already had one for the Developers
tab - it was a personal requirement that we have a top-level
'Development' tab.

        Here is the reason for this jump: I won't bore you with a great long
user scenario - but existing OO.o users will hit the site, and -before-
downloading, will want to know what new features they will get: as in
"why bother".

        Which tab will they hit ? - they are interested in "Features" - they
hit that; and immediately get presented with a long (and lovely) blurb
about things they already know about suitable for new users but not
them.

        Adding the "New Features" link - (personally I would have had it on the
left of 'Writer' since I believe it is far more interesting to most
people), allows them to find what they are looking for.

        Do you disagree with the user scenario or use-case ?

        Of course; we have another user scenario, of people who are signed up
for LibreOffice, and wish to post-rationalise their decision while they
download, explaining the existing location: this is also a common use
case I suspect.

        So - I am not a UX guy, but I'd like these two scenarios to flow
smoothly. The tab/link seems to (partially) do it, at the cost of some
jumpiness in the tab metaphore. Perhaps there is a better way.

        Ultimately I think you're going to have jumpy tabs if you use explicit
web-style links to other pages, and also force readers to read
lower-down too: perhaps not what we want. Potentially we could put the
content in two places [ not sure silverstripe will like that though -
may be very manual ].

        Thoughts appreciated.

> 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 ...

        This is great work :-) and much appreciated, and I realise there is
very little time here.

        Anyhow - I hope this was not too critical, and you can see the rational
behind it.

        Thanks !

                Michael.

-- 
 michael.meeks@novell.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot


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