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Vision

LibreOffice on Desktop UX goal:

Simple for beginners and powerful for experts.

• Novices can start to work with LO without the need to read a manual
• In every situation the user is confronted with only a few options - but can get all on demand
• Experts will have access to all functionality
• Full access keeps usability first but might need some training

Persona

Primary (Beginner)

Benjamin is a 17 year old boy who goes to secondary school. He just started to do his home work with LibreOffice since it has been required by his school. As a beginner he expects to write text and to create presentations as on paper. He doesn’t know about themes, styles, templates, and formatting. He knows how to browse internet, play games, and use tablet & phone. He hates to do home work and to work with a desktop PC. His goal in general is to do stuff as fast as possible, accuracy is not his major concern. To solve problems he neither would read documentation nor use an trial and error approach. Things that cannot be done immediately and out of the box will not be done at all.

Primary (Expert)

Eve is 34 years old, single, vegetarian, pacifist, and open-minded in technology in general. She works as an executive secretary in an NGO for animal rights. She studied economics and sociology. During her studies she used Open Source, and understood the attitude & community culture. Her duty is to summarize and publish studies, to request and write reviews, and doing the accounting. Cooperation is an important aspect of her work.

Secondary (Admin)

Adrian is 40 years, married, two children, living in the suburbs, with a technical college education having a BA in computer science. He works as an IT expert at a company that has transferred from Microsoft Office to Libreoffice. He is responsible to keep the system running including all networking (printers, storage, backups), to provide all workstations with templates for corporate identity, and to install updates. He evaluates early versions, works with the QA team, and files bugs. Personally, he doesn’t use Libreoffice on a daily basis.

UX Manifesto

The ISO 9241-110 defines seven principles for usable interaction design:

• Self-descriptiveness (the dialog should make it clear what the user should do next)
• Suitability (the dialog should be suitable for the user’s task and skill level)
• Controllability (the user should be able to control the pace and sequence of the interaction)
• Familiarity (the dialog should be consistent with user’s expectations)
• Learnability (the dialog should support learning)
• Individualization (the dialog should be able to be customized by users)
• Robustness (the dialog should be forgiving)

Libreoffice focuses on:

• Simplicity by default with Full Functionality on demand
  Every processing has two ways of access: a very simple way with the core features only and an advanced way with all features
• Consistency over Efficiency
  Users should feel familiar with all tools rather than having specialized apps.
• Usability over Graphical Design
  Form follows function, Libreoffice respects the OS theming.

In general,

• Follow general design principles.