[Libreoffice-ux-advise] Finding a UX dev

[Michael Meeks]

Hi Mirek,

On Mon, 2013-04-01 at 23:49 +0200, Mirek M. wrote:
> Compared to competitors, LibreOffice is lagging behind in terms of UX,
> and, unfortunately, it seems like relatively little development is
> happening in that area, often relegated to GSoC projects and Easy
> Hacks, which don't always get picked up.

	Of course, attracting resources is always hard.

> The UI is one of the most common targets of complaints about
> LibreOffice. I'm certain many would be willing to pay a developer to
> work on UX-related bugs full-time. We could draw up a Kickstarter
> campaign.

	I'm aware of some funding for a developer to work on some crazy
prototyping work for the UI at the moment. Unfortunately he has a
pipeline of work that puts that a few weeks out :-)

> So, I'm wondering, is there a volunteer developer or a former GSoC
> student who might be up to the task?

	I guess you'd want to talk to Matus, Lanedo, Openismus, Igalia,
Collabora and/or any others around the place that might have cycles for
that. Be aware that you're talking around Eur 800 / day for these guys -
and of course you'd want some sort of concrete plan to make this viable.

	Seemingly most people want to fund revolutionary improvement - which is
going to be of the order of a multi-man-year project (at Eur 150k+ per
engineer year). Not incremental improvement that fixes things here and
there.

	Beyond that - I suggest that working with Kendy / getting SUSE
hack-week people interested, going via GSOC, etc. would be a good plan.
Also - responding rapidly to people who ask question on ux-advise is
quite important I think :-)

	HTH,

		Michael.

-- 
michael.meeks at suse.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot