Status of the Design Team Kick-Off, and a Personal Note

Status of the Design Team Kick-Off

You might remember our earlier blog postings concerning the Design Team Kick-Off, an effort to get to know each other and to build a sufficient structure that helps us to make LibreOffice a great software ...

So, we brainstormed a bit what we'll need ... not in terms of work items (improve this or that in the user interface, add missing icons etc.), but in terms of organizational stuff (how to make decisions, how to get data about our users etc.) Although it took a while (my fault due to parallel issues), we have now a comprehensive list of what's missing at the moment ... on the What We Need page.

We don't know each of the solutions yet, but sometimes it is more important to know what to work on, than to work on anything without knowing what for ... so I hope that the Design Team continues to work on that. Until know, it was great to see all the good brainstorming.

If your team has some ideas what might be needed to cooperate, then feel free to add it to the team sections on the same page. Björn and Thorsten have been so kind to look at it from a developers point-of-view: Thanks a lot guys!


Oh, and since I've noticed a few discussions in the last days concerning "user interface design", please have a look at my temporary working space in the wiki. I've listed some of the Interaction Guidelines for the platforms we support - of course, it is just about UI elements, but it should already help to keep the focus in discussions. If you like, please move the content to a page where it makes a bit more sense (e.g. Design/Guidelines). At the moment, I really miss the time ... but why?

Personal Note

As some of you already know, our son was born yesterday :-) And that's the explanation for having been less active (especially) during the last three weeks ... and the reason for being absent for some more. I'd like to enjoy this time without working on LibreOffice.

Why? The last years, I dedicated a lot of time to StarOffice / OpenOffice.org / LibreOffice ... user support, interaction design stuff, being the OOo User Experience Co-Lead, serving in the OpenOffice.org Community Council, and helping to shape the TDF (long before LibreOffice went public). I think its fair to - this time - spend a bit more time with the family.

I'll be back soon :-)

Cheers,
Christoph

LibreOffice gets a Motif

LibreOffice gets a Motif ... a what?

Okay, let's start from the beginning. Since quite some time we have been asked to provide graphic material that fits nicely together - you may remember our earlier effort concerning the LibreOffice Branding Guidelines.

Sure, the branding guidelines tell you in detail what to do (and to avoid) with regard to our logo, the fonts, ... but a recurring element was still missing. Until now, we used the "triangle pattern" you see in the LibreOffice splashscreen, for example.

Nik took the initiative and started the "LibreOffice Motif Design Task" ... so I'm mostly quoting or referring in this blog posting to other people's work. He explained what a motif generally means:

For our purposes (it has other industry-specific meanings) a motif is a Design element that is used to bring consistency to a range of Design artifacts and sets a "mood" or "atmosphere" visually without taking up too much attention. It is a support element and should compliment the contents of every Design. As such, it usually takes the form of a background-image/vector.

If it wants to set the "mood", it's not an easy task - because it has to fit to the community and the product. So we had exciting days (although things never go as quick as you like, of course) of creating proposals, discussing them, and rating them.

To make a long story short(er), we had:

• 12 proposals by 5 people
• 14 votes
• And a clear winner: Scatter by Nik (10 votes)

Here is the basic design, which is based on the document symbol "triangle":

To prove that it'll be working, Nik provided the Scatter motif in context - although the green is a bit different, you'll get the idea:

To me, this design is a perfect example for our community. It reminds me of the diversity of the different people (different orientation, slightly different color of the triangles) while trying to archive something great together (group of triangles). By the way, Nik told me that he put a lot of effort into making something "organic".


Fine, and now? For example, Drew started to refine a postcard which had been made by Nik as an example. Here is the front:

Want to see more? Have a look at the Existing Designs Wiki Page and find out that even a professional publisher picked the motif (Thanks to them!).


Finally, thanks to all the guys who participated in creating and supporting such the fine motif design piece ... My deepest thanks go to Nik, who took care about documentation and guidance. If you want to see more, e.g. all the motif proposals, then go to the Design Motif Wiki Page.

I'm looking forward to see how our project will get "motifated". Website, LibreOffice product artwork, marketing material, ...

Cheers,
Christoph

No Light Without Shadow

Hi all!

A German saying tells us "Wo Licht ist, ist auch Schatten" - this may be translated with "No Light Without Shadow". Well, since I perceive a lot of light with regard to the amazing progress of LibreOffice, there needs to be shadow as well.

Some of you might have noticed some "document border" discussion weeks ago. Sébastien already implemented a much friendlier document shadow for Writer (see here) on the basis of Andrew's idea in bug (or better: Easy Hack) 31251.

Since there had been some intensive discussions, I finally spend some time on this topic and wrote my first (more or less) serious specification for all the LibreOffice applications: Document Background

In short, here is the outcome if an improved document outline, a slightly revised shadow, and a gradient get combined ...

Sébastien replied that he'll working on an improved Draw/Impress shadow at the moment. I'm curious whether we can beautify and harmonize all components of LibreOffice. So far, a big thank you to Sébastien!

Back to the "Light / Shadow" topic. What if we add some more decoration - maybe some some Document Triangles ...

Where do these triangles come from? Something to blog about later ... maybe another Design Team guy will talk about it.

That's it so far ...

Cheers,
Christoph

Design Team Kick-Off Step 3: We are the Design Team

Hi all,

a while ago I summarized the Design Team's current status of work - now I'd like to talk about the members of the Design Team. Who are they, what are they interested in, and how do they look like? Here we go ...

To get to know each other, we've asked everybody for some insights like "What are you interested in?", and compiled the Design Team member list. On this list, you'll also find some links to user pages with even more stuff you ever wanted to know (or maybe not).

What I can say is, that I'm pretty amazed who we are ...

• Some members have a professional usability and/or user experience background
• Highly skilled artists are with us - also with professional background
• There are new faces with lots of fresh ideas, and also long-term community members

Not to forget the "lurkers" who are subscribed to our mailing list. Some of them mentioned they want to follow our work first ... of course! I consider them more than important, since I hope they'll help us to keep some connection across the mailing lists (e.g. mentioning not to be missed topics on the development mailing list, or on the local mailing lists). By the way, the number of subscribed users is 106 (2011-02-07)

If you want to know more, see Kick-Off Wiki Page: Introducing the Team Members.

Well, it seems we are getting ready for some serious work ... :-)

Cheers,
Christoph

FOSDEM 2011 - summary

Hello world,

as others already pointed out, the FOSDEM was a great experience ... especially since I've enjoyed to see most of the TDF guys. So here some more pictures, and finally the link to my talk.

Experience

We had interesting talks, maybe because it was simple to identify the "green people"?

The developers prepared some USB storage with the complete source code, so that the people hanging around could jump-start to develop LibreOffice. But - apart from the interesting hacks - why should they do that?

As we did some awesome marketing (tm) before, here is another one: "Clothing for Code". So, if people completed an Easy Hack during (!) the FOSDEM, then they got one of those green hoodies.

If we continue with that initiative, we have some more proposals how to call that - summary:

• Hack for a Hoody
• Fashion for a Fix
• Clothing for Code

Rather late, I noticed that I lacked a picture of our devroom ... here is the very last presentation.

Please note, that another awesome marketing tried to support Kendy to get some of the money he privately invested to bring the clothes. It seems that it worked ... he can now go home. Safely :-)

Presentation
I've added my presentation "Kicking off the LibreOffice Design Team to the freshly created Design Team presentations wiki page. So if you want to have a look at it - here are the links: ODP, PDF. A video might be available soon.

Looking forward ... so many trade fairs and conferences to go :-)

Cheers,
Christoph

Design Team Kick-Off Step 2: Current Status of Work and Collaboration

Hi all,

this post announces the second step of our official Design Team
Kick-Off. It is about what we've done so far, and how we did it - thus,
it aims to get everybody "on track" who is interested to join, or to
collaborate.

So, please read the Current Status of Work and Collaboration

Some background: A few days ago, we've agreed on how to set up our Design
Team, and we've invited other parties to join - people having interest
in user experience, visual identity design, accessibility, and user
support and training. Together, we'll aim for "Make it just work, and
look great, too!"

Here is the general Design Team Kick-Off Page.



Cheers,
Christoph