Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
Le 01/02/2013 21:00, Heiko Tietze a écrit : My conclusion is that no decision should be drawn based on guessing and personal preferences. It is not that simple with just age and expertise. For instance, even regular, highly experienced users of Writer that utilize keyboard shortcuts don't know the shortcut to show non-printing characters. Or do you? I don't know that shortcut 'cause I don't need to: the non-printing chars are *always* on :-P BTW, this is not a good example, for the same reason as above: once activated, there's no reason to go back. Or did I miss smthg? PS: With power users I meant those that use a particular program to a higher extend than other. Same here. -- Jean-Francois Nifenecker, Bordeaux -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
On 02/02/2013 05:41 AM, Heiko Tietze wrote: Jay Lozier wrote I did not know the shortcut. IMHO your point is that very few if any users will know all the keyboard shortcuts though they will know many of them and the ones they do know are the ones they find the most useful. Absolutely. Additionally I try to point out that expertise is a somewhat ambiguous concept. Nevertheless, one should not omit those questions from any survey... In respect of Thibaut's proposal: copy/paste are well known as Ctrl+C/V even to novices but, to anticipate more results from our icon test, the icons are confused with each other. Should that lead to a decision to remove these buttons completely? I don't think so, and neither Thibaut do I guess. In my opinion, all decisions to change something should be discussed in detail and based on data. It should be documented and referenced later. IMHO what happened s is someone, about 30 years ago or more decided on a particular set of buttons and shortcuts to use with a GUI and it became the default. The problem is not the default is bad but we should carefully consider appropriate modifications to enhance the user experience. Many of the defaults were first used on early Mac's from the mid 80's - I was a Mac user then. Moving forward the basic design and often button selections were only modified to add new features such as spell and grammar checking. The first word processing programs (often) did not have this . And when it came out (Word Perfect?); it was a big improvement. The original research on GUI designs was done in the 70's and it was focused on making computers more intuitive for users. I doubt the researchers would have considered their ideas the final word on the subject. -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/LO-Writer-UI-Analysis-tp4032977p4033881.html Sent from the Design mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
Le 31/01/2013 22:53, Jay Lozier a écrit : A question about ribbons - Is there any data differentiating the type of user and their preferences? I think this is the core question: who is the user? what population uses the software? how skilled are they? do they use the software at home, at work, as professionals or for casual work? I 100% share Jay's thoughts for that matter. My thought is that users who heavily use software may prefer menus over ribbons while those who do not use the software much prefer ribbons. And this general trend would true for all types of software. The age may be skewing the results and including more casual users in the younger cohort. The 50+ users did not grow up with computers and many of these casual users do not like to use computers at all and probably would never use anything they did not use at work (eg Windows and MS Office). I find the personality of the user vs ribbon or menu interesting. +1 -- Jean-Francois Nifenecker, Bordeaux -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
Le 01/02/2013 00:55, Heiko Tietze a écrit : Means of self rated expertise from 1=beginner, 2=average user, to 3=expert (no one wants to be a beginner, but when do you become an expert?) grouped by ribbon vs. toolbar (semantic differential; first value agree totally with ribbons last with toolbar, all other between): At a training tart, I ask the trainees to estimate their current skills wrt the software on a 0 (no knowledge) to 10 (know everything) grid. I can tell you they are *always* overoptimistic. The same question asked at the end of the training gives far more realistic answers. Of course there are some indicators that support your idea, like power user of writer (toolbars are preferred) vs. user of impress (ribbons have attraction). Power users don't prefer toolbars: they prefer keyboard shortcuts because they have understood that the mouse is evil (to their wrists) and, more importantly, breaks the workflow. -- Jean-Francois Nifenecker, Bordeaux -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
Le 01/02/2013 18:31, Jean-Francois Nifenecker a écrit : At a training tart start -- Jean-Francois Nifenecker, Bordeaux -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
On 02/01/2013 03:00 PM, Heiko Tietze wrote: Jean-Francois Nifenecker wrote Power users don't prefer toolbars: they prefer keyboard shortcuts... My conclusion is that no decision should be drawn based on guessing and personal preferences. It is not that simple with just age and expertise. For instance, even regular, highly experienced users of Writer that utilize keyboard shortcuts don't know the shortcut to show non-printing characters. Or do you? Treat this just as testable hypothesis. I did not know the shortcut. IMHO your point is that very few if any users will know all the keyboard shortcuts though they will know many of them and the ones they do know are the ones they find the most useful. Also, power users tend to modify the shortcut assignments and toolbars to make them more useful while occasional users will probably do neither. Occasional users are more dependent on menus. PS: With power users I meant those that use a particular program to a higher extend than other. -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/LO-Writer-UI-Analysis-tp4032977p4033787.html Sent from the Design mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
Hi all, My conclusion is that no decision should be drawn based on guessing and personal preferences. Another aspect of this is that any preferences users might currently hold tell us nothing about how well an interface eventually works for users. All the current study tells us about is the acceptance of ribbons v/ toolbars and menus. That basically translates to How much work the marketing/community people would have to do to successfully sell the decision to go towards one or the other?. I can't remember who said this where and when, but there is a quote like: to truly respect your users, you have to disrespect them. I.e. look at how they work, not at how they think they (might want to) work. Astron. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
Hi Björn, On 30 January 2013 20:18, Björn Balazs bjoern.bal...@user-prompt.com wrote: You haven't: We did an expert rating (that what I wrote - and to add some more flesh to it:) with two experts (Heiko and me) working independently and discussing were categorization differed. Not sure if you're saying that I haven't looked careful enough or that you haven't explained it well enough. In any case, I wasn't so much interested in the who? as I was in the how?. So yes, you are right - there are issues to the validity. Take it as I said before: it is an indicator for the mentioned hypothesis and There are issues with the validity of your results/the methodology but you still want to use them as an indicator for something? Nevertheless they are valid - mostly because people re-did what was done before using (slightly) different methodology. That mostly thing is mostly the problem here: no one has tested your study with proper methodology so far. Back to our study: all raw data is freely available. Sure. I really hope to get some support here - we need to go ahead based on research (as good as we can). You see in this and other threads, what happens when we all just talk about our own preferences... Emphatically, I support what you do (I believe I wrote that before) – I just don't like this specific part of your analysis. Astron. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
On 01/31/2013 04:08 PM, Heiko Tietze wrote: Wolfgang Keller wrote MS has always been at the antipode of ergonomics. And they keep moving in the *wrong* direction. Ribbons ... are just the latest cerebral flatulances emanating from their product managers' brains. Lol! BTW: The younger (LO) users are the more they accept Ribbons [1]. Ribbon controls intend to show all at once, as Astron says. Additionally, MS wants to get rid of the main menu for touch screen use. The trade-off is that some, seldom used function were menuized, ie. placed into pulldown controls. But those menus thwart the idea of a toolbar: fast access to a few functions. The idea behind is nevertheless worth to discuss, but for the purpose of strategical decisions (where LO wants to go) and not singular improvements (simpler toolbar). [1] http://user-prompt.com/libreoffice-user-research-results-vol-4/ A question about ribbons - Is there any data differentiating the type of user and their preferences? My thought is that users who heavily use software may prefer menus over ribbons while those who do not use the software much prefer ribbons. And this general trend would true for all types of software. The age may be skewing the results and including more casual users in the younger cohort. The 50+ users did not grow up with computers and many of these casual users do not like to use computers at all and probably would never use anything they did not use at work (eg Windows and MS Office). I find the personality of the user vs ribbon or menu interesting. Wolfgang Keller wrote It has been proven over and over again that separator lines do *NOT* separate. They effectively do the *opposite*, besides adding elements that are just confusing for the eyes. Please prove this statement. At least separator's appearance should be defined by the theme. Stefan Knorr (Astron)-2 wrote I have uploaded the file to http://dl.dropbox.com/u/87946285/libreoffice/OOo31_Usage_Feedback_Data.ods Thanks a lot! -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/LO-Writer-UI-Analysis-tp4032977p4033574.html Sent from the Design mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Jay Lozier jsloz...@gmail.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
Hi Heiko, @Astron: I was looking for OO's tracking results some time ago. The data is not accessible anymore. It would be great to have good data to analyse and even better if it comes from LO. Oh. Didn't check the link if it's still available. Sorry. I still have copy on my local disk, though. Given how it used to be public (and presumably freely licensed? hard to check when the page is deleted now), giving it away shouldn't be a problem, I guess. I'll upload it later today to my Dropbox (not sure if uploading to TDF wiki is appropriate). Sadly, for LibO, we don't have similar data and likely won't get it soon. The code to collect the usage data was Java-based and didn't seem useful initially – it has been gone now for some time (since ~3.4). :( [1b] http://user-prompt.com/more-is-worse-about-detail-in-icons/ Please don't refer to this particular post for proof of anything any more – you admitted to rationalising after you had the results in this case. As such, this part of the icons study is imho rather useless. (Your efforts in analysing our UI are more than welcome in general – LibO 4.0 shipping with floppy icons again is a direct result of your work – I am only taking offence with advertising this particular post.) Astron. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
Hi Björn, Sorry for stepping in here. The results are just what it says in the post. Yes, we did an analysis of data that was not gathered for this kind of analysis in the first place. As it cannot be used to proof any hypothesis (no statistical study can anyhow - read Popper on this topic) - the data cannot falsify the hypothesis that more detail is worse than less detail - but it can falsify the hypothesis that there is no difference between more and less detail icons in this particular setting. This is a value. So, first of all, the hypothesis makes some sense to me, logically. However, the problem here is that the categorisation seems pretty random: low-detail icons have small text on them, have delicate lines, contain many elements, etc. You don't seem to have published how you categorised the icon, either (maybe I haven't looked hard enough). If you look at the comments below the post, I am clearly not the first to have noticed. This is, btw, not the only concern about the validity of the more-is-worse analysis. So, all the study proves is that some icons are more readable than others – which is useful in itself of course. Esp. as Heiko did not cite the study to proof anything. Sorry about overreacting there. Astron. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
The basic question is where LO goes. Microsoft has done a step forward with Ribbon controls MS has always been at the antipode of ergonomics. And they keep moving in the *wrong* direction. Ribbons as well as the totally ridiculous Windows 8 GUI - try to accomplish *any* work with it, you'll rather end up tossing the screen through the closed window of your office - are just the latest cerebral flatulances emanating from their product managers' brains. (that is the opposite to your idea) and maybe we find the other way with simplification at Google's tools. Google's just equally ridiculous and dysfunctional crap. *Never* take products made by managed corporations as examples to follow. I guess LO is used for its conventional user experience. That means all functions reside in the main menu and some have fast access at the toolbar. Those items need to be grouped (small separator lines between) No. It has been proven over and over again that separator lines do *NOT* separate. They effectively do the *opposite*, besides adding elements that are just confusing for the eyes. *Never* use them. Use *exclusively* whitespace to group objects. Sincerely, Wolfgang -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
Hi Wolfgang, all, On 30 January 2013 18:37, Wolfgang Keller felip...@gmx.net wrote: MS has always been at the antipode of ergonomics. And they keep moving in the *wrong* direction. Ribbons as well as the totally ridiculous Windows 8 GUI - try to accomplish *any* work with it, you'll rather end up tossing the screen through the closed window of your office - are just the latest cerebral flatulances emanating from their product managers' brains. Wow, you're noticing you're quite harsh there, right? I don't think you're entirely justified here: Microsoft do a lot of user testing and research, even if their execution is occasionally lacking a bit (as with Office 2007 and even more so with Windows 8). Also, the concepts behind the Ribbons and the Metro/Windows-8-style are completely different – the former shows everything at once to ease creation of content, the latter tries to hide everything that would distract from consuming content. So your observation that you can't really work with Windows 8 actually means that its designers have mostly reached their goal. It's of course debatable if that's a useful goal – especially considering how the Windows–Office tandem used to be Microsoft's moneymaker. Note how Office is still stuck on the desktop of Windows 8 (save for One Note). *Never* take products made by managed corporations as examples to follow. I am not sure this attitude helps. Use *exclusively* whitespace to group objects. That's probably a good suggestion, but where do we take all that white space from? Astron. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 11:45 PM, Thibaut Brandscheid randal...@web.dewrote: Hi all I took some time to mock-up how Writer could look. 1. Without less used icons and without the separator color == I locked the two toolbars to get rid of the grabbing area and removed the color of all vertical separators, except the one in the lower right corner, to separate the zoom amount from the horizontal zoom slider. Image: http://ubuntuone.com/56vCLYWwuluBmdoa7Mi7Vz Buttons removed: * 'Document as E-mail' button * 'Edit File' button * 'Page Preview' button * 'Spelling and Grammar' button * 'Show Draw Functions' * 'Navigator' * 'Gallery' * 'Data Sources' * 'LibreOffice Help' * 'Styles and Formatting' 2. Reordered toolbar icons == To save place and re-balance the UI I moved the less used 'Apply Style' drop-down menu to the upper right. Image: http://ubuntuone.com/3ydcBWGX78PFF30OH6KFLJ I already like the result and would be happy if LO would ship with such default toolbars in Writer. All suggested changes - except the removed color of the vertical separators - are done by simple LO toolbar manipulations. The toolbars don't miss IMHO anything, but are short enough to be always displayed - even on a small netbook screen (would need to be checked). The upper toolbar, left side - btw the most valuable place in every program - has the basic file and print stuff there, the rest of the upper toolbar contains less used actions. The lower toolbar contains all the needed day-to-day buttons - but not much clutter. But there is still space for improvements... 3. Further reordered + more drop-downs + other UI elements removed === For the third try I changed the UI (and therefore the UX too) more drastically, without reinventing Writer. Image: http://ubuntuone.com/3Q9Nve4ZCHUMiSL0B8OLue Cleaned-up, reordered or removed UI elements: * The bottom toolbar got cleaned-up * I removed the buttons beneath the scrollbar * The 'Table' button moved to the lower toolbar * The 'Nonprinting Character' button moved to the lower toolbar * The less used text formatting options got collapsed into a drop-down * The list buttons got collapsed into a drop-down * Added more space between the text formatting and the list drop-down button Compare the image with the current default UI... I think my last mock-up is much better. It is more clean, has less lines, still looks like LibreOffice, but is much more easily to catch with the eyes. All day-to-day tasks can be found in the lower - better targetable - toolbar. Plus a lot of clutter has been reduced. The toolbar at the bottom of Writer looks cleaner - an average user will have no problem to recognize every displayed information. That's it for now Kind Regards Thibaut -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: LO Writer UI Analysis
Hi Thibaut, I share your desire to clean up the toolbars (in fact, I've made a proposal myself [1]). However, I don't agree with all the changes that you've proposed (especially not with moving the style dropdown to the Standard toolbar, as it applies only to text and should thus be shown on the Formatting toolbar, based on ux-natural-mapping [2]). Rather than argue about which icons should be shown and which ones shouldn't now, I'd rather propose something that would allow us to make wide-reaching changes to toolbars without upsetting users as much. I'd like to propose making an optional hidden items menu (read the proposal at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/User:Mirek2#Optional_Hidden_Items_Menu), which would allow us to hide lesser-used toolbar items without sacrificing discoverability. Perhaps we could propose that as an easy hack? It might also be good to have a responsive layout for toolbars [3]. The initial implementation could be as simple as deducing the icon size based on the window size. I believe that could be an easy hack as well. (Adjusting the icon size based on toolbar size would require some deeper thought, analysis, and user testing.) [1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Whiteboards/Toolbars [2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design/Principles [3] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/User:Mirek2#Responsive_Layout -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
