[Libreoffice-ux-advise] ux-advise advice

[Stefan Knorr (Astron)]

Hi Jean-Francois,

On 18 February 2012 17:22, Jean-Francois Nifenecker
<jean-francois.nifenecker at laposte.net> wrote:
> In a former part of my professional life, I had been an unofficial part-time
> programmer (Turbo-Pascal, Object Pascal then Delphi).

Do get involved in hacking if you have the necessary skills and
interest, though! That's the thing that gets the project somewhere.


> Now, I've been an IT tech (support chain) for 20yrs.
> As such, among a lot of other things, I help and train my colleagues to our
> office automation suite of choice (was MSO, now OOo, soon to be LibO). More
> importantly, I can see everyday how and why my colleagues use the software,
> what they do right and what they do wrong. To the risk of seeming overly
> proud, I think I have a broad view of our corporate workflow and I can tell
> where the local pitfalls are (wrt office automation tools). I have some
> ideas of what's wrong with the current textprocessors and in which direction
> some changes would be beneficial to their users. (hence my visit here ;)

Sounds like a good idea if you'd stay on ux-advise, I guess.


> Ok, that's neat. What makes someone a "UI expert"?

Hehe. Trick question. Currently we don't have anyone working on this
full-time and most of the people on the UX-advise list aren't UX
professionals AFAIK (Christoph Noack is, though). In any case, it
helps to care about UI, stay responsive and give constructive/reasoned
"advice". See also Michael's wise words about self-selection.

In any case what always qualifies you most in a meritocratic project
is doing stuff and doing it good (in some subjective way).


> From what I read on the second page, I can't tell where User Experience is
> dealt with: is it UX or is it Support and Training (as the helpdesk personel
> has also a wide view of user experience)?

I think you misunderstand the page. It's about people that are on the
design list also being on the user lists (where community support
happens) and also about people forwarding stuff to design where
appropriate.


> Also, I can find links from the Design pages that point to UX (wikipedia).
> This doesn't help making sense and encourages coming to [ux] while [design]
> is probably better suited. But I'm still unsure...

Officially, the design team is working on both making stuff pretty and
making stuff usable. So, I don't really see your problem with having
links to the definitions of these areas on wikipedia. Labelling them
more clearly as definitions could help, though.
Lastly, the usual avenue for people to take to ux-advise is to go
through either the design list first or to go through the developer
list first.


> 8< ------------------------------

I feel cut up. :)


> Well, I do. When a dev gets a consensus here, I'd think he gets to [design]

Ultimately, the developer makes the decision what to implement.
Relying too heavily on consensus only leads to design by committee.


> and ask for validation. Or is there a brick wall between the two lists?

FYI, I am not a developer. Christoph isn't. Most others on ux-advise
aren't either. So, no brick wall, yet occasional communication
problems (as everywhere).
The design list itself tends to focus on next-gen stuff that isn't
fully specced out. There's a place for that and it needs to happen,
even though sometimes I'd wish for more practical endeavours to be
undertaken.


> Otherwise, this would mean that design decisions are made here by devs
> without refering to anyone in the Desing team.

That happens and is IMHO not a bad thing (virtually all things done in
code will affect user experience). This project relies on the fact
that everybody acts in the best interest of it and of course, on peer
review. Of course, mistakes will happen, but that's hard to avoid.


Astron.