LibreOffice Icon Test: Where are the women?
More than 3000 users took part in the first two LibreOffice icon tests. The demographics prove us to have gathered reliable data. What a vivid community! We asked the users of LibreOffice to take part...
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Survey Results: Tine 2.0 is grown up
The results of the Milan user survey prove Tine 2.0 to be a mature groupware system. But as in real life: Growing up also causes some pain. Demographics We are happy about the 95 users who finished our...
View ArticleUsability Engineering for Medical Devices following ISO/IEC 62366
Software in clinical environment is subject to highest security conditions. To avoid misuse we adapted the development process for the Swisslab Laboratory Information System to be compliant with the...
View ArticleNo Clairvoyance: Data-driven Creation of Personas
Personas, as well as other artifacts, should always be created data-driven and must not base on guessing. We introduce methods for the quantitative and qualitative analysis of users and show how such...
View ArticleQuo vadis, Dolphin? Preparation of the developer study.
Dolphin, the default KDE file browser, targets to be efficient and intuitive. It is designed to be most beneficial for two types of users, represented by the Personas Lisa and Simon, who are at least a...
View ArticleQuo vadis, Dolphin? Results from the developers study.
Results of the developers study Recently, we conducted a small study how developers want to improve Dolphin. First we asked about usability criteria. When forced to prioritize the developers’ goal is...
View ArticleParticipate: Are you perfectly satisfied with your file manager?
Please participate in a study about strength and weakness of file managers. Managing files is the most basic task with computers. You apply a file manager to organize your stuff, to browse for a...
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Quo vadis, Dolphin? First results from the user study.
Introduction In may 2013 we asked users about their preferences for file managers (FM). The online survey did not contain questions regarding Dolphin specifically, but addresses file managers in...
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Quo vadis, Dolphin? More results from the user study.
Introduction In may 2013 we asked users about their preferences for file managers. The online survey did not contain questions regarding Dolphin specifically, but addressed file managers in general....
View ArticleParticipate in KScreen Survey: How do you setup your screen(s)?
Screen management can be a tricky task with conventional tools: if you want to rearrange the position of your displays, change the resolution, or switch a screen on / off you need to run a complicated...
View ArticleQuo vadis, Dolphin? Motifs as replacement for persona.
Introduction The question about the target group is of essential importance not only for marketing but also for development. Usability uses several approaches to describe the target group that go from...
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KScreen: Results of the user survey
Recently, we conducted a survey about screen management tools. In order to focus the development of KScreen to users’ needs we asked about the arrangement of displays, how often settings are changed,...
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Tax Return: Now even easier!
The German tax law is known as one of the most complicated laws. It is estimated that 60% of the world’s specialist tax literature is published in German. For most topics, the wording in the tax forms...
View ArticleKDE Network Manager: Sorting the details
We have been working hard to improve KDE Network Manager and we are still not done. Next we want to put the focus on the massive amount of details that are available for the different kinds of...
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KDE Network Manager: Details sorted
Introduction In the course of improving KDE Network Manager we asked you for your feedback on the importance of details of wireless connections. Our trigger was the problem to display the large amount...
View ArticleKDE Network Manager: Understanding the mental model
Introduction In our quest for optimizing the UI of the KDE Network Manager, we now want to take the next level. As the general UI layout has more or less settled, we still struggle with the amount of...
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KDE Network Manager: Results of the Card Sorting
Introduction We have gone a long way with the redesign of the KDE Network Manager in the last year. While we are satisfied with the general UI approach we have found, we still need to actually sort the...
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Active seminar for user-centered development
How can I develop better products together with my users? Like any tool, software should simplify work. The road to success: put the users even more into the center of the development. Our active...
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Akademy: Getting Usability / UX advice for your project
After the great response to the usability sessions we did during Akademy last year, we have decided to install a dedicated ‘User Interface Design Room’ this year. You can simply reserve a time slot for...
View ArticleVote for your Keyboard Layout Switcher plasmoid
In the course of redesigning the keyboard layout switcher we got to a point where a decision has to be made with two options. The question is whether you want to have the layout switched on left click...
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Reprise of Akademy 2014: Artikulate
Even when it sounds like KDE Akademy is a just big party, we have been very productive as well. During the birds-of-a-feather (BoF) session on user experience, we discussed usability and visual design...
View ArticleWhat is KTracks?
In the last couple of months smart-watches started to receive mainstream attention. But the idea to quantify the self is known for years. While some aspects are really debatable, the advantage in...
View ArticleWhat do you require from KTracks?
Introduction In the last posting we presented the vision of KTracks, the KDE tool to track GPS based activities, and discussed personas (the target users) and scenarios in which it is applied. Now we...
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How could KTracks look like?
Introduction So far we presented ideas about the user centered development of KTracks, the KDE activity tracker. Learn more about vision, persona and scenario in this blog post. And if you didn’t read...
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phpList wants to learn more about their users
Too much to read? Here is the short cut to the survey. phpList is Open Source Software phpList is Open Source software: it is built by a community of users, developers, translators, documenters and...
View ArticleHow do Virtual Desktops make your life easier?
Together with Ivan Čukić we plan to overhaul the concept of Activities in KDE. We get a lot of positive feedback on the ideas behind Activities, but everyone can easily see that the current...
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Standard toolbar in Libreoffice
Recently we run a short survey about preferences in Libreoffice. In this posting, we present the results and discuss our conclusions. Introduction Our goal is to update Libreoffice’s default toolbars...
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Extracting the DNA of icons
TL;WR In the last weeks we ran a couple of tests on different icon sets with the question in mind: What aspects of an icon set actually take what impact on its usability? Ad hoc results were...
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How do you want Libreoffice Calc’s toolbar configured?
As discussed in the recent postings about Writer, Libreoffice’s default toolbars haven’t been changed in 9 years, since OpenOffice 2.0. Our goal is to update Libreoffice’s default toolbars by removing...
View ArticleOnce again: Survey on Libreoffice Calc’s toolbar
After server crash yesterday evening all should be running now. So again: Please participate in our survey: http://user-weave.com/survey/83cf7d9c7556481f847b807b9d9a4d83?12 (study closed on...
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Results of survey about Libreoffice Calc’s toolbar configuration
Our goal is to unclutter the toolbars from functions that are rarely used and to add those that are more frequently used. In order to verify improvements that we were making to Libreoffice Calc’s we...
View ArticlePlease participate in a survey about KDE’s download manager KGet
KGet is a versatile and user-friendly download manager. It has a lot of useful features and was designed to work well with Plasma and other KDE applications. KGet has a long history in KDE, the first...
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How do you use Libreoffice Impress?
As discussed in the recent postings about Writer and Calc, Libreoffice’s default toolbars haven’t been changed in 9 years, since OpenOffice 2.0. Our goal is to update Libreoffice’s default toolbars by...
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What people think about KGet
KGet is a versatile and user-friendly download manager. It has a lot of useful features and was designed to work well with Plasma and other KDE applications. KGet has a long history in KDE, the first...
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Using the Kano method to prioritize requirements
KGet is the download manager of KDE. As part of the current porting to the KF5 frameworks its functionality was taken under verification. In an online survey users were asked about their opinions,...
View ArticleWhy do(n’t) you use Activities?
With the great response on our first discussion on Virtual Desktops, we would now like to move the focus to Activities. While Virtual Desktops are a well settled concept, mostly driven by the technical...
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How people utilize Libreoffice Impress
In the last couple of weeks, we have run surveys for Writer and Calc in order to gather user feedback on optimizations we were making to the toolbar and applications. So here are the results of our...
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How to make Libreoffice Customization usable
Introduction Over the last couple of month we mooted diverse changes for the toolbar in order to update it according the usual workflow. For instance, we discussed the inclusion of Copy and Paste into...
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Rapid UI development for TrustBridge
Last year we teamed up with Intevation to create interfaces and interactions for TrustBridge. TrustBridge is a secure root certificate installer for Windows and Linux, contracted by the German Federal...
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Tracking changes with Libreoffice
Introduction Track changes is an essential feature that separates word processors from simple text editors. While change tracking is rather a collaboration tool, as it allows multiple users to make...
View ArticleDiscuss the Future of Activities and Virtual Desktops
It has been quite some time since we asked you to share your experiences with Virtual Desktops and Activities. Meanwhile we have been thinking through the enormous amount of feedback you provided. It...
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Libreoffice Design Session: Entries at Indexes and Tables
The Libreoffice UX team started last week with another type of meeting, the design session. The goal is to discuss one issue in detail along with possible solutions, mostly a mockup. This includes a...
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Libreoffice Design Session: CMIS Improvement
Topic of last week’s Libreoffice design session was the integration of content management interoperability services (CMIS). Here is the outcome of this meeting. Topic: CMIS Improvement Bug...
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Libreoffice Design Session: Special Character
The Libreoffice UX team discussed possible improvements for the dialog to insert special characters, in particular the feature of recently used items. But today we have more than one solution since the...
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Help to find better metaphors
When I talk to people about our quest to make KDE Activities work, one of the things I hear most often is: “I never really understood what they are!”. There are several reasons for that, a very obvious...
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Libreoffice Design Session: Shapes
Libreoffice Draw was treated somewhat novercally in last time. But we didn’t forget it and started to pimp its look and feel. This design session was about moving the stencils from the shapes toolbar...
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Libreoffice Design Session: Inserting a Chart
Probably everyone working with Libreoffice Calc is using charts. And maybe some wondered why the dialog to insert a chart has a wizard-like workflow for all the less relevant options. But inserting a...
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Spring break for the KDE system monitor
Recently there was a request on the forums to update KSysGuard. The dialog looks outdated and not appealing, from the user perspective. From the usability POV there are several flaws too. First of all...
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KSysGuard: What are your requirements from a system monitor?
KSysGuard has been attributed as visually outdated and suboptimal in respect to its functionality. The competitors do have beautiful layouts that makes it easy to grasp the system state at a glance....
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KSysGuard: The Green Paper
tl;dr; This blog post summarizes requirements for KDE system monitor and presents a couple of mockups to initiate the discussion at the KDE forums. Introduction Recently, we asked about your...
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