Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: Flat/Symbolic Icons Update
Hi All, and thanks Björn for your answer. 2013/2/26 Björn Balazs bjoern.bal...@user-prompt.com Hi Kévin, all, Am Donnerstag, 21. Februar 2013, 12:50:37 schrieb Kévin PEIGNOT: Then, about the icon guidelines, As I sayed to Mirek, we shouldn't choose if we use Gnome ones, Elementary ones, Ubuntu Ones etc, but let users choose that by a survey. Because if surveys are useless for ergonomy (user always choosing , for pure design it helps to know what final user find sexy or not. I would like to have Bjoern thoughts on this, so I CC him. Well then, here we go :) - and as Heiko correctly pointed out, we would be more than happy to support LO by any kind of user- based decision making. What we can and should do: User test the quality of each icon we use in terms of understandability. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for me this is more about ergonomy than design, even if design count. It's the same thing than knowing if a clipboard is better than a glue tube for paste. Then, making the glue tube/clipboard glossy, flat, tango etc is pure design, and doesn't change its understandability. But I am actually skeptical about making DESIGN decisions based on surveys. At least I would not do it directly, e.g. by showing three kinds of design and asking 'Which do you like best?'. I guess indirect methods are superior here. For this, we need to define our desired target groups first. Only then we can address anything concerning 'taste'. Otherwise we will just get a random sample of users in any survey (which is ok for questions like understandability of icons) - and with each survey we are in danger of getting a different subset of users. The result could be that we end up with a non-consistent design-language, because in one survey the purists 'won' while in another survey the majority likes it more 'playful'... So what we can do, is trying to research who is using LO for which reasons, doing which tasks - and then trying to identify primary users (personas), for which we then can try to find a consistent and appealing design-language. I agree, we need to define them, but I don't know how we can do this. Then If I well understood what you mean by non-consitent design language, you think we would have an incoherent icon set. I don't agree with that, because the survey would be done only once, just to decide what design, and finally what guidelines we should have for all our icons, and all icons would follow these == this will stay consistent. Then, about identifying our users, as I sayed, I absolutely do not know how to do that, do you have some methodolgy/advices ? I'm not sure knowing who are our users will directly help us choosing design language, but it will tell us who are the users that we need to take more account of the views in a survey. Then, we do the survey about which guidelines they prefer and we ask them (indirectly) which type of user they are, and we compare the results with our known users. I think it's what you meant by indirects methods, am I wrong ? Kévin Can you follow the thoughts? Cheers, Björn -- Dipl.-Psych. Björn Balazs Business Management Research T +49 30 6098548-21 | M +49 179 4541949 User Prompt GmbH | Psychologic IT Expertise Grünberger Str. 49, 10245 Berlin | www.user-prompt.com HRB 142277 | AG Berlin Charlottenburg | Geschäftsführer Björn Balazs -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-design] Re: Flat/Symbolic Icons Update
I was looking at the colored version trying to figure out what information the color provides. On the first glance it looks like an application of the four color theorem . IMHO, the content code by citrus is not intuitive. Actually, I wonder what happens to the icon of a deactivated/disabled button. Does its gray shade fades out further? -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Flat-Symbolic-Icons-Update-tp4038749p4039098.html Sent from the Design mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: Flat/Symbolic Icons Update
Hy Heiko, As I sayed, I changed my mind while color coding the icons, I don't think any more it's such useful (also, if someone really think it's an important thing, only user testing can help us). Anyway, I think having more than one color in the icon palette is important, monochrome would be wrong : LibO is a software with A LOT of icons, and colors (no mater which ones) will help differentiate each of them. It's not like a file explorer toolbar, with few icons, where it's easily possible to choose monochrome. There are plenty of icons (useful or not, it's another subject). So I'm really sure we should use colors. I also think few icons could be color coded, as insert table in writer should be green (the traditional color of tables (excel, calcs etc), but that's a detail. Then, about the icon guidelines, As I sayed to Mirek, we shouldn't choose if we use Gnome ones, Elementary ones, Ubuntu Ones etc, but let users choose that by a survey. Because if surveys are useless for ergonomy (user always choosing , for pure design it helps to know what final user find sexy or not. I would like to have Bjoern thoughts on this, so I CC him. Kévin Le jeu. 21 févr. 2013 10:58:12 CET, Heiko Tietze a écrit : I was looking at the colored version trying to figure out what information the color provides. On the first glance it looks like an application of the four color theorem . IMHO, the content code by citrus is not intuitive. Actually, I wonder what happens to the icon of a deactivated/disabled button. Does its gray shade fades out further? -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Flat-Symbolic-Icons-Update-tp4038749p4039098.html Sent from the Design mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[libreoffice-design] Re: Flat/Symbolic Icons Update
Kévin PEIGNOT-3 wrote Hy Heiko, As I sayed, I changed my mind while color coding the icons, I don't think any more it's such useful (also, if someone really think it's an important thing, only user testing can help us). Anyway, I think having more than one color in the icon palette is important, monochrome would be wrong : LibO is a software with A LOT of icons, and colors (no mater which ones) will help differentiate each of them. It's not like a file explorer toolbar, with few icons, where it's easily possible to choose monochrome. There are plenty of icons (useful or not, it's another subject). So I'm really sure we should use colors. I also think few icons could be color coded, as insert table in writer should be green (the traditional color of tables (excel, calcs etc), but that's a detail. Then, about the icon guidelines, As I sayed to Mirek, we shouldn't choose if we use Gnome ones, Elementary ones, Ubuntu Ones etc, but let users choose that by a survey. Because if surveys are useless for ergonomy (user always choosing , for pure design it helps to know what final user find sexy or not. I would like to have Bjoern thoughts on this, so I CC him. Kévin To anticipate Bjoern: we'd please to support you :-). But what do you expect from a survey? Methodologically, one should draft a hypothesis, find questions to reject (sic!) it, and give alternative hypothesis the opportunity to promote. If you ask users whether or not they like flat/gray icon design you will get strange and less meaningful results. If you run an icon test (as introduced by User Weave) gray icons will get lower values - they are not known yet and lack of the color identifier. For instance, we compared Gnome users to KDE users in our last study and their preferences for icons of both set (actually we examined a set and asked afterwards about OS). It's not what we discuss in detail but basically Gnome users make advantage of Tango icons and KDE of Oxygen. Please treat this as just my impression but statistical proved results. Finally, you could let users compare sets. That's possible, but is this really the question you ask? Actually, my question was about the new set in respect to the disabled state, i.e. when controls and icons are grayed out. Regardless from any design aspect - that's your expertise - I wonder if pure gray is applicable at all. You might convince me with the argument (and perhaps a picture) that buttons/icons get a shadow in light gray which is well perceptible... -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Flat-Symbolic-Icons-Update-tp4038749p4039133.html Sent from the Design mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: Flat/Symbolic Icons Update
2013/2/21 Heiko Tietze heiko.tie...@user-prompt.com Kévin PEIGNOT-3 wrote Hy Heiko, As I sayed, I changed my mind while color coding the icons, I don't think any more it's such useful (also, if someone really think it's an important thing, only user testing can help us). Anyway, I think having more than one color in the icon palette is important, monochrome would be wrong : LibO is a software with A LOT of icons, and colors (no mater which ones) will help differentiate each of them. It's not like a file explorer toolbar, with few icons, where it's easily possible to choose monochrome. There are plenty of icons (useful or not, it's another subject). So I'm really sure we should use colors. I also think few icons could be color coded, as insert table in writer should be green (the traditional color of tables (excel, calcs etc), but that's a detail. Then, about the icon guidelines, As I sayed to Mirek, we shouldn't choose if we use Gnome ones, Elementary ones, Ubuntu Ones etc, but let users choose that by a survey. Because if surveys are useless for ergonomy (user always choosing , for pure design it helps to know what final user find sexy or not. I would like to have Bjoern thoughts on this, so I CC him. Kévin To anticipate Bjoern: we'd please to support you :-). But what do you expect from a survey? Methodologically, one should draft a hypothesis, find questions to reject (sic!) it, and give alternative hypothesis the opportunity to promote. If you ask users whether or not they like flat/gray icon design you will get strange and less meaningful results. If you run an icon test (as introduced by User Weave) gray icons will get lower values - they are not known yet and lack of the color identifier. For instance, we compared Gnome users to KDE users in our last study and their preferences for icons of both set (actually we examined a set and asked afterwards about OS). It's not what we discuss in detail but basically Gnome users make advantage of Tango icons and KDE of Oxygen. Please treat this as just my impression but statistical proved results. Finally, you could let users compare sets. That's possible, but is this really the question you ask? Yes that's it (sorry, My english is clearly horrible) The idea of the test wouldn't be to ask users if they like or not the flat icon set. It would be to present them a few icon sets in situation, perhaps as if it was screenshots, something like that : https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Symbolic-test.png : a few icons you see often. We would present them all on the same screen, maybe aligned one below the other, and we ask them which one they prefer, (generally speaking, not for a special OS), or to put a note to each one. We should have Gnome styled icons, maybe KDE styled icons, flat monochromes ones, flat colored ones, maybe flat icons less rounded, maybe Faenza ones etc , and actuals icons maybe etc (this is too choose later), but for each design, the same icons, with the same symbol have to be used, just the design change. I'm not surprised Gnome users prefer Gnome icons, KDE users KDE icons etc etc. But we don't have to choose the icon set for Gnome users, not anymore for KDE users or Unity users. But for all our users. That's why we should make a public survey (just my idea). Then (just a though, you know this lot better than me if it's useful and possible), ask also each user what OS they use, to be able to ponderate the results according to our representative users (If 90% of the answers came from Gnome users, we should discriminate these ones and ponderate users of Windows, as it's our most important OS (in term of number of users). Actually, my question was about the new set in respect to the disabled state, i.e. when controls and icons are grayed out. Regardless from any design aspect - that's your expertise - I wonder if pure gray is applicable at all. You might convince me with the argument (and perhaps a picture) that buttons/icons get a shadow in light gray which is well perceptible... Honnestly I'm not sure, but I think, that as these icons are disabled, it's not very important if the color isn't there any more, and we just have a lighter grey : the user shouldn't have to use it. Then, removing the color would put in evidence even more the icon is disabled. If you want I will do a picture soon (I can't today), with active and inactives icons. Kévin -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Flat-Symbolic-Icons-Update-tp4038749p4039133.html Sent from the Design mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will
