2 / 23 Who We Are ● Group of people who love LibreOffice & UX / Design ● No rigid structure – Just do design / UX related stuff in LibreOffice, and we'll include you ;-) ● Mailing list, IRC, bugzilla, git repository
4 / 23 Conflict Resolution ● In many cases, people have different views what is better in UX / Design ● To resolve, we try to find consensus ● If that fails, we search for: – Usage statistics / patterns – HIG – use the GNOME HIG's as the base ● Adapted where necessary – Windows / OS X ● And if even that is inconclusive, we try to do the change, and revert when it turns out problematic
5 / 23 Results Oriented ● Task is finished when in the git repository – We are not here to project crystal castles that nobody would be able to implement ● Everybody is encouraged to push his/her improvements himself/herself! :-) ● Gerrit, the (code) review system – Needs a bit of technical knowledge; still the setup is easy, low entry barrier ● Don't worry, we'll gladly help you should you have trouble setting it up
6 / 23 Effective Communication ● Avoid bikeshedding! ● Bugzilla is usually the entry point – People reporting problems / feature requests / … ● But that can easily become a long discussion – Important to get the involved people together to some faster media: IRC or G+ hangout ● Weekly G+ hangouts, with phone bridge – Everybody welcome, open to all
7 / 23 Inclusive Nature ● Maybe you don't even know you are part of the design team ;-) – We collect & report weekly about all UX / Design improvements that happened in the LibreOffice git repository ● All contributions much appreciated
8 / 23 Open to Change ● Changing user interaction is hard – Necessary to be careful about breaking of existing workflows ● But cleanups / removal of (access to) features is important ● If something looks like a good idea – Do it – and watch for problem reports – Revert if we get push-back
11 / 23 Templates ● Coding thanks to: Efe Gürkan Yalaman, GSoC ● New templates thanks to: Alexander Wilms, Edmund Laugasson, Jun NOGATA, Michael Kovarik, Péter Szathmáry, Zirk
16 / 23 More Space for the User ● More compact / better usable ruler thanks to: Dbeurle, Mattias Põldaru, Jan Holesovsky ● Sidebar condensed, on by default, better look: Samuel Mehrbrodt, Thomas Arnhold, Mirek Mazel
18 / 23 Help Appreciated: Sifr Icons ● Flat, modern, monochrome theme – Now the default on OS X ● LibreOffice has more than 1000 icons! – Still many to do ● https://github.com/libodesign/icons – Contains description how / what to do – https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75256 – https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/boards/1/topics/35
19 / 23 Improving Dialogs ● All dialogs converted to .ui files editable by Glade ● Help applying the HIG – We use the GNOME HIG: https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/essentials.html.en ● Glade 3 needed, with LibreOffice widgets catalog – Available in the LibreOffice installation ● And then just take one of the .ui files, and improve it – Better grouping, better resize behavior, ...
20 / 23 Improving Usage ● Toolbars and menubars described in XML files ● Easiest way how to change the layout of buttons is via Tools → Customize, and then to provide us with the changes ● Context menus: harder to do unfortunately – Compiled-in format
21 / 23 Programming Easy Hacks ● Collected in our Bugzilla – And categorized in many ways ● https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Easy_Hacks ● Search for Easy Hacks with “TopicUi”: – https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Easy_Hacks/lists/by_Topic#Easy_Hacks_about_UI ● Vary in complexity and in focus – Many are easy enough to start without any LibreOffice knowledge
22 / 23 Next Steps ● More! ● Better! ● More complex! – Larger user interaction reworks ● Have a proposal for the Customize... dialog – Thanks to: Heiko Tietze ● Change Tracking in progress ● All that with the user in mind – no bad surprises
23 / 23 How to Get Involved ● [email protected] ● #libreoffice-design on irc.freenode.net ● https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design ● Weekly meetings – via G+ hangouts / phone ● Or just participate in one of our Design contests! Join us – it's fun! :-)