Re: [marketing] Follow MS Office branding with 11 single applications or go an independent way?
Original Message Subject: [marketing] Follow MS Office branding with 11 single applications or go an independent way? Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:00:08 +0100 From: Bernhard Dippold bernh...@familie-dippold.at To: dev@marketing.openoffice.org [...] During the last ten years we've been very successful in being as similar to MS Office as possible. We copied their features and their menus, used their icon colors and did everything to make it more easy to change from a certain MSO version to OOo than to their next version. [...] With the ribbon topic we started to change this as their implementation seemed to bring more negative than positive aspects. This really needs correction. The objective of planning and developing OpenOffice.org has always been - and will continue to be - to ease the migration to our product. This includes not only first-class conversion of various legacy file formats, but more important meeting the expectations of (existing and) new users. The latter is far away from copying, as we've learned throughout the years, proven by a variety of usability tests. We once stated this direction in a concept for OOo 2.0 (http://tools.openoffice.org/releases/q-concept.html), and it hasn't changed a lot since then: ---quote start--- [OOo 2.0] will change its overall appearance in order to improve the usability for the majority of non-SO/OOo customers. These changes affect the menu structure, the toolbar User Interface, the terminology, and finally the overall window layout. In general, usability is about task conformance, familiarity, predictability, flexibility, robustness, customizability, and learnability. Several minor usability improvements support the usability of SO/OOo in aspects of these usability qualities. All new features will be evaluated against these qualities by the Sun StarOffice User Experience Team. Task conformance pushes us to reconsider the necessary steps for an action and reduce the number of mouse clicks in [OOo 2.0] as much as possible. Predictability demands that we strive for a consistent user interface. We will provide a conceptual model that is predictable and consistent for all SO/OOo applications instead of conforming with the majority of competing applications. On the other hand, predictability calls for conformance with styleguides for the target platforms. ---quote end--- Also, [T]he ribbon topic as such does not exist. Do you refer to project Renaissance? And again (see above): No, the development of OpenOffice.org didn't change its direction. Project Renaissance just puts more emphasis on the methods and on research, as well as uses evolutionary approaches where ever feasible. Again, in all clarity: We don't copy. Neither colors nor applications nor features. SO/OOo has a 20+ years history (10 years as OOo) and applications and features were added to and dropped out of the suite as customers demanded and the availability of alternatives permitted us to do. I hope that clarified it a bit. As for a strategic marketing plan, it is critical this is not being based on false assumptions or strongly skewed summaries of OOo's overarching objectives. Please let's make sure we are all on the same page about this. Thanks. Lutz. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Follow MS Office branding with 11 single applications or go an independent way?
Hi all, if you think the word copy is the most important part of my mail, I don't have any problem in modifying it. Ivan's reply described my intentions in better words than mine, so please read it - this might avoid even more confusion. I don't know why misunderstanding are so easy, therefore I'll reply to Lutz inline: Lutz Hoeger schrieb: Bernhard wrote: [...] During the last ten years we've been very successful in being as similar to MS Office as possible. We copied their features and their menus, used their icon colors and did everything to make it more easy to change from a certain MSO version to OOo than to their next version. [...] With the ribbon topic we started to change this as their implementation seemed to bring more negative than positive aspects. This really needs correction. The objective of planning and developing OpenOffice.org has always been - and will continue to be - to ease the migration to our product. This includes not only first-class conversion of various legacy file formats, but more important meeting the expectations of (existing and) new users. The latter is far away from copying, as we've learned throughout the years, proven by a variety of usability tests. As mentioned above, I don't insist on the word copy. But I don't agree on your definition of our objective. Migration means coming from somewhere else to OOo - improving the working conditions for present users is our goal too, as you stated in the next phrase in parentheses. So I'd define our objective as to ease working with our product - whether the user migrates or not. We once stated this direction in a concept for OOo 2.0 (http://tools.openoffice.org/releases/q-concept.html), and it hasn't changed a lot since then: ---quote start--- [OOo 2.0] will change its overall appearance in order to improve the usability for the majority of non-SO/OOo customers. [...] This concept has been written down seven years ago for the next major release (OOo 2.0). It's focus on interoperability between MS Office and OOo/StarOffice has been controversially discussed in the past and some of the overshot adaptions (I try to avoid copy) have been corrected (like moving the page format to the file menu). It was right for that state of our program, as it make it really easy to migrate from MS Office to OOo. This concept worked quite well, as it raised OOo's market share from a marginal market share to the main competitor of MS Office. But with our considerable market share, the public interest in open formats and the improvements in the new major release OOo3, it must be allowed to ask if this *main* focus of OOo2 is still valid. I don't know how this topic has been discussed in the marketing project back in 2003, but from my POV the main objectives of OOo are one of the central marketing topics at all. Also, [T]he ribbon topic as such does not exist. Of course it does - I didn't refer to OOo, but to public recognition: OOo didn't follow MS Office to their Ribbon concept. That was the point I wanted to mention: We don't need to be compatible in areas where our concepts are better than the competitors. And this leads back to my main topic (see subject): We don't need several single applications (or links that simulate them) - OpenOffice.org is one integrated office program and we should promote it as one. Do you refer to project Renaissance? No - you seem to be a bit oversensitive in this point. In the opposite: Renaissance is one of the proves showing that ease of migration is less important than ease of use and work. Therefore it follows the (unwritten ?) concept of OOo3: We don't need to be comparable to MS Office, we can be independent and even better! And again (see above): No, the development of OpenOffice.org didn't change its direction. But it did change the main focus - and I want to support this change... Project Renaissance just puts more emphasis on the methods and on research, as well as uses evolutionary approaches where ever feasible. ... like Project Renaissance does. Again, in all clarity: We don't copy. Neither colors nor applications nor features. So we come back to my topic: The application colors (even if we didn't copy, but adapted them to every new release of MS Office - see [1]) are based on the MS Office colors and refer to their product implicitly. My question was and is still, if we need the simulation of different applications or if it would be better to focus on the singularity of our product. [...] As for a strategic marketing plan, it is critical this is not being based on false assumptions or strongly skewed summaries of OOo's overarching objectives. ... and on concepts valid for a previous version of OOo. Please let's make sure we are all on the same page about this. I thought we are (even if your mail shows a nearly opposite position to Lars) Best regards Bernhard
Re: [marketing] Follow MS Office branding with 11 single applications or go an independent way?
On 2010-3-14 11:00 PM, Bernhard Dippold wrote: During the last ten years we've been very successful in being as similar to MS Office as possible. That's very unfortunate that there are some camps that managed to get inside the community that think that way. Or say that they think that way. It has been a barrier to making a good product. Please, Bernhard, you know better than to troll the list on topics unrelated to OOo. If you want to compare OOo to some products let's take a step back and look at what's leading the market as far as being a good product. One that stands out would be iWork, which apparently gets a lot of its inspiration from the now defunct Lighthouse Design's presentation graphics package Concurrence. However, that is more a UX discussion than a marketing discussion. /Lars - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Follow MS Office branding with 11 single applications or go an independent way?
On 3/15/10, Lars Nooden larsnoo...@openoffice.org wrote: On 2010-3-14 11:00 PM, Bernhard Dippold wrote: During the last ten years we've been very successful in being as similar to MS Office as possible. That's very unfortunate that there are some camps that managed to get inside the community that think that way. Or say that they think that way. It has been a barrier to making a good product. Please, Bernhard, you know better than to troll the list on topics unrelated to OOo. If you want to compare OOo to some products let's take a step back and look at what's leading the market as far as being a good product. One that stands out would be iWork, which apparently gets a lot of its inspiration from the now defunct Lighthouse Design's presentation graphics package Concurrence. However, that is more a UX discussion than a marketing discussion. I agree, and also don't think that MS Office marketers are such a great force of nature. Basically because most of the success of Office respond to a different environment from a competitive one. I am not sure MSO marketing is a good model to follow. I rather look into the marketing of a more competitive industry like video game console, cars, or fast food or social networks, domain merchants. And yes this is talking about specifically branding and marketing. The risk however is that there is an area that really is not compliant with FLOSS. Between corporate culture, and just lawyery mentality about protection and regulations that the FLOSS just doesnt adjust. This goes along with my personal issue about the art license, which has a call home clause http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Talk:Art/Logo/License /Lars - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org -- Alexandro Colorado OpenOffice.org Espantilde;ol Support this 31st March - Document Freedom Day http://www.documentfreedom.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
Re: [marketing] Follow MS Office branding with 11 single applications or go an independent way?
Hi Lars, Bernhard, all, On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 3:25 AM, Lars Nooden larsnoo...@openoffice.org wrote: On 2010-3-14 11:00 PM, Bernhard Dippold wrote: During the last ten years we've been very successful in being as similar to MS Office as possible. That's very unfortunate that there are some camps that managed to get inside the community that think that way. Or say that they think that way. It has been a barrier to making a good product. Perhaps... but what would OOo's market share would be if it decided to largely ignore what Microsoft Office was doing? How successful do you think OpenOffice.org would be if it hadn't tried to emulate Microsoft Office and market itself on that basis - at least for a certain period of time? I think Bernhard makes a very valid point, which is: yes, OpenOffice.org was this way in the past, but now it is sufficiently mature, well-known and regarded enough to stand on its two feet. Please, Bernhard, you know better than to troll the list on topics unrelated to OOo. I don't see how Bernhard's message is trolling. Microsoft Office remains OpenOffice.org's biggest competitor, so any major development there will likely have some bearing on OOo. There has probably been a large minority of users who have switched to OOo because they didn't like the ribbon, for example. We certainly should not be ignoring what others are doing (and that includes everyone: iWork, Symphony, KOffice, AbiWord, etc.) because what they do has a bearing on OOo, just as what OOo does has a bearing on them (as the discussions on this list point out quite often). At the same time, we should realize that OpenOffice.org is a unique product (a widely recognised one at that) that can set its own directions and conventions. This is the crux of the matter as I see it. If you want to compare OOo to some products let's take a step back and look at what's leading the market as far as being a good product. One that stands out would be iWork, which apparently gets a lot of its inspiration from the now defunct Lighthouse Design's presentation graphics package Concurrence. However, that is more a UX discussion than a marketing discussion. Of course, other projects should be involved, but IMO it's a marketing discussion as much as a UX one. Regards, Ivan. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
[marketing] Follow MS Office branding with 11 single applications or go an independent way?
Hi all, OOo branding is what I'm trying to improve, but working on that topic I stumbled across the MS Office branding page [1] that raises a quite important question for me: During the last ten years we've been very successful in being as similar to MS Office as possible. We copied their features and their menus, used their icon colors and did everything to make it more easy to change from a certain MSO version to OOo than to their next version. With the ribbon topic we started to change this as their implementation seemed to bring more negative than positive aspects. Now I looked at the MSO 2010 icons [2] at their branding page and noticed that there are eleven (!) applications with different names and distinct program codes interacting with each other to a certain extent. Our product starts as a single application being able to handle with many different file formats. Just like a good player for photos and videos and music it is not only able to open different files of the same type but different file formats. What OpenOffice.org has done up to now is to copy the visual approach MS Office users are used to. Do we still want this? What should stand against these eleven icons? We don't have different applications - as a little trick we just created links to the main application opening a dedicated file format, called them Writer or Calc and added an application icon to them. In the past it was one of our main marketing strategies to be so compatible with MS Office that people would not even notice that they worked with OOo. Now it's different: OOo is well known all over the world. People decide to use OpenOffice.org - not a costless replacement for MSO they don't even know by name. Would it be reasonable in this situation to change our marketing towards our all-in-one application instead of keeping on to copy MS Office colors and applications? - OOo has never been so modular that installing parts of it would have saved a reasonable amount of disk space or memory (with every new generation of computers this point becomes less relevant). - Interoperability between Writer, Calc and Impress/Draw has always been better than between Word, Excel and PowerPoint. We didn't use this topic in our marketing as prominent as we could. - In other areas (players, browsers) file formats become less important. People know about the application to open their files, but don't mind if the file is a video, an image or a sound file. In contrary, they feel displeased if the player for their photos doesn't open the videos from their camera. - MS Office icons cover a variety of colors from pink over different violet, blue and green tones to yellow and orange [2]. Even if their main apps kept the known colors, they are less distinct than previously. Additionally they are moving away from the four color logo to a single color logo (orange) [3]. Together with an improved interoperability they move away from their independent applications towards an overall suite - do we want to follow as we are already in front of them? - People know OpenOffice.org, but are not really aware of Writer, Calc, Draw and Impress. If we want to be compatible with the single MS Office applications we would need to focus our marketing activities to avoid people saying your Word application or your Excel. I think it is more appropriate to tell our users that they don't need to focus on the file type: It's just OpenOffice.org that can be used for texts, tables, drawings, presentations and so on. We moved away from the integrated application approach in the past towards MS Office's single apps to use their monopoly for us. It was easy to say We are quite the same as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but free. Now I'd like to think about something like: We are the right application for all your office documents - our strengths are ... (standard open file format, integration, open source, extensions ...). And additionally you don't have to pay any license fees neither now nor in future. Just download, work and enjoy! I wouldn't even mention the names of the MS Office applications, because this would be free promotion for them... If we would go this way, it should be based in our new strategic marketing plan. What do you think - is this a reasonable way to go? Best regards Bernhard [1]: http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/archive/2009/12/11/office-2010-visuals-and-branding.aspx [2]: http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/office2010/WindowsLiveWriter/Office2010VisualsandBranding_BEDE/ProductIcons_2.png [3]: http://blogs.technet.com/blogfiles/office2010/WindowsLiveWriter/Office2010VisualsandBranding_BEDE/OfficeBrand_compare_2.png - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@marketing.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@marketing.openoffice.org
