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

[Mike Hall]

On 21/01/2015 17:15, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
I had to finagle with the actual page structure, so the result is a 
bit different from what you came up with, but the content is the same. 
Here it is:
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/feedback/ 

Many thanks Charles. Putting the new block on the RHS looks good.

I can live with the changes as they are, but my gut feeling is that you 
have rather weakened the welcome I thought was really important.


If you are open to further input, could I suggest the following:
- make the page into two distinct columns, with Feedback on the left and 
Welcome on the right.
- remove the Have a Question? Found a Bug? heading, which seems a bit 
redundant.
- the ? Ask a question heading and the rest of the LH column would thus 
be directly below the Feedback heading
- as a heading for the RH column, reinstate 'Welcome to the LibreOffice 
Community' as the heading, which was my key message
- the "LibreOffice community includes..." text below that, all in the RH 
column

- block 'Users also have responsibilities!' as it stands below that
- it seems to me that even without the changes suggested above, the next 
heading 'LibreOffice is a community...' conflicts with the statement 
above 'The LibreOffice community includes all users...' so I would like 
to suggest a modification from both sources to make this heading 'Want 
to be more involved? Join us!'

- below that, the text is all fine

If you want me to whiteboard the above, I will, but the suggestions may 
be sufficiently clear without the need for that. As stated above, I 
could live with the page as it is, but reluctantly because it is 
definitely not as welcoming as the initial suggestion, and IMHO it will 
make a difference to how welcome users feel and in a small but 
worthwhile way the extra changes would encourage more active involvement.


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Mike Hall
www.onepoyle.net


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

[Mike Hall]

On 20/01/2015 09:15, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:

>>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?

no reason at all:-)  I will edit the page accordingly in the next 48 hours 
however in the future you may want to get edit rights on the website in the 
future  if you wish to produce more content.
Many thanks Charles. In haste, I'm hoping the edit of the key section is 
just a copy and paste (I was careful to follow the conventions in the 
page) but it may not be obvious where my changes start and finishe. I'll 
put a couple of comments in the file to make that clear, but I don't 
have time until this evening.


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

[Mike Hall]

On 18/01/15 14:08, V Stuart Foote wrote:

Since the "improvements" are mostly static layout with no need to follow
links, a simple screenclip and posting of the image using our Nabble ML
interface would work well--Nabble hosts the image, so effectively allows you
to insert an image in the mail.

Done as here with a current clip of your suggestions,
   


which by the way I rather like.
Thanks Stuart... the design on that page may be just about complete, but 
I'll see how to use your suggestion for any follow-on work.

Mike

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

[Mike Hall]

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 +, 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 

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

[Mike Hall]

On 18/01/15 20:36, Cor Nouws wrote:

Thanks. Just as Charles and Stuart I do like it.
Only thing is that I find the word "responsibilities" a bit difficult.
To me (matter of taste, culture?) is sounds as sort of obligations and
that is IMO not what we want to suggest.
What about "Users also have important possibilities to show engagement".
Or ...
(it's obvious that I English is not my native language.)

Many thanks for the response Cor.

I'm still thinking that 'responsibilities' is probably the right word, 
certainly for those with English as their first language, though I don't 
want to cause difficulties because others use English in a different way 
(we did live in NL for 4 years BTW).


To use a UK phrase, 'There's no such thing as a free lunch', which here 
I would take to imply that if you get a great 'free' application it's 
reasonable for the project to expect a little something in return. IMHO 
the list of suggested bullet points is that reasonable little something. 
Of course it's informal and no one is ever going to be held to it, but 
it serves as a useful reminder.


If you still think it is highly likely to be misinterpreted, then let's 
look for an alternative single word (otherwise the heading gets too 
long). I've left it alone for now.


Mike



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

[Mike Hall]

*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

Comments are most welcome.

I'll probably continue making minor edits for a few days, also to 
reflect suggestions made here. Is there a better place to put this page? 
It's currently parked on my website because I don't know what else to do.


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?


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 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 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.


--
Mike Hall
www.onepoyle.net


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[libreoffice-design] Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: RfD: Non-corporate user representation?

[Mike Hall]

On 21/12/2014 13:18, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:

>Would a different attitude/culture, something like
>"Users 1st", help to mitigate that?

Users do not dictate what developers do. That's not how Free and Open
Source Software works, as "the culture change" entails that users would
tell developers and contributors what to do. What would be the
incentive for anyone to do that? I have a day job. Many others do. Why
would I receive directives from random people?:-)


>At the same time it would be good
>to define the user's implicit responsibilities resulting from their
>choice to use the product. To make the difference clearer, it's not a
>case that the user needs to 'Join us!' as on the Help > Send
>Feedback...page, rather it would be an accepted fact that all
>users are automatically a member of the community simply by virtue of
>being users.

Users are users. They get rights from the software freedom conveyed by
the licenses we use. They do not get anything else, unless they want to
become contributors. Anything else is toxic for the community and
profoundly demotivational (btw: we have ten years of experience on that
inside OpenOffice.org)


>
>To make this change of emphasis visible I'm thinking of an extension
>to theHelp > Send Feedback...page, also ideally putting that
>content into the main help file so users can see it without going
>online.
>
>Below is a very rough draft, based in part on Thorsten's excellent
>summary above. I'd be happy to put more effort into a better version
>if gets support. Keeping this kind of text simple and inviting is
>always very difficult.
>==
>   Welcome to the LibreOffice Community
>
>The LibreOffice community includes all users. Everyone is welcome,
>whether as a user or if you are able to become more involved.

How about: "Everyone is welcome: see how you can become involved today!"
Otherwise  you keep on having this distinction where users are not
encouraged to become contributors.

OK, I can spend some time on this now and will work though the design 
group as suggested.


I'm still keen on a 'users first' approach and an acceptance that users 
are 'in' the community by virtue of being users. It's semantic I 
suppose, since in some sense users are clearly part of the wider LO 
community. The idea actually comes from my local hospital, which has the 
byline 'patients first' on all its correspondence and documentation. The 
patient is considered to be part of the team rather than someone to whom 
things are done. In my personal experience it makes a huge difference to 
how 'users' feel. It doesn't though make much difference to medical 
processes and treatment. So, by a similar analogy, I don't see why you 
would expect a 'users first' approach to change current processes 
significantly. BUT, in my view there is a considerable potential upside 
because it will make the user feel more valued, it will make the step to 
deeper involvement seem smaller even though in practice it's just the 
same, and it will probably make it slightly more likely that users will 
take that step, which is what we all want. I understand that it might 
seem threatening having thought about the relationship in a different 
way for 10 years. I expect hospital staff felt the same when the idea 
was first floated there, and their history is much longer than that. So, 
I plan to draft stuff along 'user first' lines and see how it looks. If 
it still seems too awful, it will no doubt get changed before 
implementation.


--
Mike Hall
www.onepoyle.net


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[libreoffice-design] Introduction

[Mike Hall]

May I please introduce myself quickly?

Following a thread in disc...@documentfoundation.org which was started 
by someone else as 'Non-corporate user representation?' I made a 
suggestion about the 'Help > Send Feedback' web page and I have been 
encouraged to continue that here. Part of that discussion I will post 
here shortly.


FWIW, I have been working in IT in various roles for almost 50 years, 
and of course I'm getting rather old now. Quoting from my bio 
"Fascinated by the way electronic communication and the PC are 
transforming the way we work and play, I am dedicated to open and 
effective systems. Once a lecturer in Engineering at University College 
London, the majority of my professional life has been spent in 
Information Technology. Early on, I helped to write commercial database 
software. Later, I was heavily involved in the development of Shell's 
world-wide PC standards. Later still, I had the opportunity to advise 
Shell management teams in the Far East and Australasia on improving 
their IT activities."


I hope this is sufficient background and that you will help me to make 
something useful of the suggestion.


--
Mike Hall
www.onepoyle.net


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