LibreOffice

Toolbar functions should be labeled consistently starting with a verb which is followed by noun or adverb. We present recommendations to label the functions on Libreoffice’ standard toolbar.

Metaphors determine the association between a function and its icon. But sometimes these metaphors are misleading or ambiguous. With your help, we want to improve the metaphors used in Libreoffice.

LibreOffice’s icons are sometimes confusing. We present some quick and easy changes that improve functionality.

The LibreOffice design team announces the start of a new online icon test. You are invited to participate!

In the development of icons, the metaphor plays a vital role to ensure reliable perception and comprehension. We introduce seven guidelines that help to create a balanced set of icons with high usability.

Functions without natural pendant need special attention, even the well known copy / paste. Designers have to analyze intrinsic functionality instead of simply visualizing computer nomenclature.

We show on the example of the Navigator and two other functions that toolbars should not be toggled on and off by a button in the main toolbar.

It is common practice to assign left and right with sequential steps in processing. It might be surprising that these simple functions may cause problems, but it shows the relevance of psychological knowledge to usability.

Which function do you expect when you see a pencil? To draw something or perhaps fill the background… But in the context of a word processor?

A statistical analysis shows that icons with less detail score better in terms of usability.

Antiquated metaphors in icons can work better than modern, but complicated ones. This can be shown on the example of the ‘save’ icon.

More than 3000 users took part in the first two LibreOffice icon tests. The demographics prove us to have gathered reliable data.

On the occasion of the large scale usability test of the LibreOffice Writer icons, this article explains how subjective and objective measurements can help to understand the quality of an icon-term relationship.

The LibreOffice design team announces the start of a new online icon test. You are invited to participate!

Please invest 4 minutes of your precious time and help us to improve the quality of the icons we use in LibreOffice!

With the start of User Prompt, Users and Usability of Free Software will win. The business model includes efforts in the Open Usability e.V. as well as releasing and developing a new Open Usability platform as Free Software. All employees will support Free Projects during part of their working time.

I have been attending the great LibreOffice 2011 Conference in Paris and held a presentation about the problems of finding the gold in the input user provide.

This is the last post about our LibreOffice survey done with UserWeave and we sum up the main findings. Find out about the users of LibreOffice and how motifs can help you to create better personas.

Do users want Ribbons? This post about the software preferences of LibreOffice users answers this and other intresting questions and is part of the results of our extensive user research.

Impress is for people that want to impress and Base and Calc will become extinct? Read about the users and the usage of LibreOffice applications as part of the results of our extensive study of LibreOffice users.

Motifs have the potential to make the creation of personas easier and more scientific. We have done some research together with the users of LibreOffice and show how to work with motifs.

More than 5400 people took part in our LibreOffice User study. The results give insights about who the users of LibreOffice are and how motifs can help to describe them.

On the joint KDE / GNOME Desktop Summit the developer community showed great interest in working closer with their users.

The first user research survey for LibreOffice has just been closed. About 5400 participants exceeded our hopes and expectations by far.

The relationship of developers and designers is full of misunderstandings. Projects fail, e. g. due to the struggle among different views on the same subject. Communication can be frustrating for both sides. But there is hope. In this article I want to share and discuss factors that facilitate a ‘Designer with Developer’ rather than a ‘Designer vs. Developer’ in FLOSS projects.

User Prompt is happy to be part of the planet LibreOffice!

“Universal Design” addresses an unrealistic goal. There is no way to create anything that fits everyone. But Free Software offers different hope to reach the same goal: adaptability.

LinuxTag 2010 is about to start and we will – together with the OpenOffice.org User Experience team – hold an informal meeting on Usability in OpenSource.

Usability is not achieved by doing some tests. The spirit of the development has to foster the continuous improvement. An answer to thesis from Sam Dean and Matt Asay.