User: jpmcc Date: 2009-05-26 11:00:42+0000 Modified: marketing/www/planet/atom.xml marketing/www/planet/index.html marketing/www/planet/opml.xml marketing/www/planet/rss10.xml marketing/www/planet/rss20.xml
Log: Planet run at Tue May 26 12:00:13 BST 2009 File Changes: Directory: /marketing/www/planet/ ================================= File [changed]: atom.xml Url: http://marketing.openoffice.org/source/browse/marketing/www/planet/atom.xml?r1=1.1916&r2=1.1917 Delta lines: +54 -47 --------------------- --- atom.xml 2009-05-26 05:00:36+0000 1.1916 +++ atom.xml 2009-05-26 11:00:36+0000 1.1917 @@ -5,10 +5,59 @@ <link rel="self" href="http://marketing.openoffice.org/planet/atom.xml"/> <link href="http://marketing.openoffice.org/planet/"/> <id>http://marketing.openoffice.org/planet/atom.xml</id> - <updated>2009-05-26T05:00:28+00:00</updated> + <updated>2009-05-26T11:00:26+00:00</updated> <generator uri="http://www.planetplanet.org/";>Planet/2.0 +http://www.planetplanet.org</generator> <entry> + <title type="html">Ideation and what's next in the Renaissance Project</title> + <link href="http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/ideation_and_what_s_next"/> + <id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/d1a38e6f8a4c00f9</id> + <updated>2009-05-25T19:56:33+00:00</updated> + <content type="html"><p> So, the collection of design proposals and their refinement is over. Thanks to everyone who has participated and spent nights to finish either in time or a bit later. Liz will post a detailed summary about that part of the current phase later this week. With this post, I'd like to share my experience with using some ideation methods I learned in Berlin for UI brainstorming, and to give a short preview of what is about to happen in the Renaissance Project and for what reason.<br /><br />But first, letâs check what we have planned and what was in the project road map. Here is how phase two of project Renaissance was initially set up:<br /><br /><b>1.   Incorporate research data</b><br />   a.   Analyze quantitative/qualitative data to understand usage/users<br />   b.   Create personas based on the analysis<br /><b>2.   Focus on the personas' characteristics</b><br />   a.   Create scenarios for key functionalities<br />   b.   Define information architecture from the scenarios<br />   c.   Flow charts<br /><b>3.   Generate design ideas using the scenarios</b><br />   a.   Paper prototypes<br />   b.   Clickable slides<br />   c.   Dynamic prototypes<br /><br />I am still convinced that our initial plan was quite well elaborated and promising. However, looking at that now I must admit that we were not able to achieve many of the tasks that are listed here. In retrospective, we jumped right from 1a to 3b, which is of course possible but it makes many other design activities a lot harder at a later stage. Due to time and resources constraints, we spent only little time on understanding our quantitative data and almost no time on qualitative research. As a consequence, we were only partially able to generate findings that support design decisions. But still, please donât get me wrong, what we got from our research is a lot more and better than relying on pure subjective assumptions. And that is a good thing and a good start.<br /><br />However, usually you would want to start with a redesign strategy that defines your redesign scope and therefore guides any of your design research activities such as what research questions youâd like to have answers to. I would say that we were quite good at this part. But as stated above, we were not able to answer a few of our important research questions such as âWhat is important to our users and what are their goals?â, âHow do they feel using our product?â or âHow would they like to feel using it?â. In practice, these are important insights that guide your design work and decisions. Insufficient answers to these questions make evaluation of designs a lot harder. That is actually related to our upcoming activities.<br /><br />So, what is the objective of ideation? As described in one of my earlier blog posts, ideation helps to generate a lot of unconstrained design ideas. By a lot I mean masses, as many as possible. This process is all about the quantity of ideas, not the quality or richness in detail. Quantity is important since you never know where a bright idea might show up. So, learn to embrace the diversity. When you think that you have enough crazy ideas, start getting some order. Sort them, check for overlapping ideas, define groups and label them. In sum, put similar things together and give them a name. Then take your design principles that youâve defined with the help of your research findings, and start refining all the crazy ideas accordingly. At the end, you should have a nice set of designs that you want to see in action in order to verify them with real users. That is basically where weâre heading next, refinement and prototyping.</p> + <p align="center"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.de/lh/photo/GsK-H2GgDckPImDvkaJ6Sw?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1V3VpP3YHN0/ShrsxLUS46I/AAAAAAAABKs/Worq-1_xaaM/s400/IMG_1086.JPG" /></a> <br /></p> + <p>To check how that approach works in our context and what we can actually get out of it, I did a small ideation âexperimentâ for the last two weeks. The first week I spent on drawing sketches like a maniac by myself. However, through our proposal collection phase, I was too restricted in my head. It is actually hard to let things go to which one is so used to. Last week, we repeated the ideation method with a couple of colleagues with various backgrounds. We had Dev, QA, Tooling, and UX onboard. In two groups, we started brainstorming about how we would want the ideal Impress to be. For three minutes, everyone wrote adjectives attributed to the âimaginaryâ Impress on sticky notes and then we put them on the wall, and started sorting and organizing them.<br /><br />Amazingly a lot of the adjectives overlapped. At the end, we were able to define two main groups that had a lot more adjectives than others. The first group could be described as the one concerned with usability while the second group was all about positive experiences, emotions and aesthetics of the product. That happed in both groups by the way. In sum, everyone in Dev, QA, Tooling, and UX wanted the future Impress to be easy to use and âprettyâ! These are quite basic needs, arenât they? And all from people with totally different backgrounds.</p></content> + <author> + <name>Andreas Bartel</name> + <uri></uri> + </author> + <source> + <title type="html">jpmcc's shared items in Google Reader</title> + <link rel="self" href="http://www.google.co.uk/reader/public/atom/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast"/> + <id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast</id> + <updated>2009-05-26T11:00:18+00:00</updated> + </source> + </entry> + + <entry> + <title type="html">OpenOffice.org User Survey 2009 Data Available</title> + <link href="http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/openoffice_org_user_survey_2009"/> + <id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/78154ce7426b0c6a</id> + <updated>2009-05-25T19:13:27+00:00</updated> + <content type="html"><p> +The data collected by the current OOo <a title="OOo Survey 2009" href="http://surveys.services.openoffice.org/surveys/index.php?sid=69531">User Survey 2009</a> has been <a title="OOo Wiki" href="http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance:Phase_1:OOoUser_Survey2009">published at the OOo wiki</a>. + +The data is based on more than 125K submissions by our users within the last three months. + +Unfortunately the questions are in German due to a limitation of the survey tooling (we have started this new survey with the 'wrong' language this time;-). Please use the key of a question to grab for the English text shown on the right side inside the spreadsheet. Sorry for the inconvenience.</p> + <p> + +Best Regards, + +</p> + <p>Frank</p></content> + <author> + <name>frankl</name> + <uri></uri> + </author> + <source> + <title type="html">jpmcc's shared items in Google Reader</title> + <link rel="self" href="http://www.google.co.uk/reader/public/atom/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast"/> + <id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast</id> + <updated>2009-05-26T11:00:18+00:00</updated> + </source> + </entry> + + <entry> <title type="html">Value : Notes on Foss 2009-05-25</title> <link href="http://ooo-speak.blogspot.com/2009/05/value-notes-on-foss-2009-05-25.html"/> <id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4649039904546083564.post-6589002475932314814</id> @@ -220,7 +269,7 @@ <title type="html">jpmcc's shared items in Google Reader</title> <link rel="self" href="http://www.google.co.uk/reader/public/atom/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast"/> <id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast</id> - <updated>2009-05-26T05:00:16+00:00</updated> + <updated>2009-05-26T11:00:18+00:00</updated> </source> </entry> @@ -270,7 +319,7 @@ <title type="html">jpmcc's shared items in Google Reader</title> <link rel="self" href="http://www.google.co.uk/reader/public/atom/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast"/> <id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast</id> - <updated>2009-05-26T05:00:16+00:00</updated> + <updated>2009-05-26T11:00:18+00:00</updated> </source> </entry> @@ -406,7 +455,7 @@ <title type="html">jpmcc's shared items in Google Reader</title> <link rel="self" href="http://www.google.co.uk/reader/public/atom/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast"/> <id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast</id> - <updated>2009-05-26T05:00:16+00:00</updated> + <updated>2009-05-26T11:00:18+00:00</updated> </source> </entry> @@ -441,49 +490,7 @@ <title type="html">jpmcc's shared items in Google Reader</title> <link rel="self" href="http://www.google.co.uk/reader/public/atom/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast"/> <id>tag:google.com,2005:reader/user/06203502505240591501/state/com.google/broadcast</id> - <updated>2009-05-26T05:00:16+00:00</updated> - </source> - </entry> - - <entry xml:lang="en"> - <title type="html">After the launch was over</title> - <link href="http://www.mealldubh.org/index.php/2009/05/12/after-the-launch-was-over/"/> - <id>http://www.mealldubh.org/?p=689</id> - <updated>2009-05-12T19:06:15+00:00</updated> - <content type="html"><p>So, <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/product/">OpenOffice.org 3.1</a> with all its <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.1/index.html">lovely new features</a> is well and truly launched, with the <a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/OOo/31/prweb2388264.htm">official announcement</a> last Thursday. I&#8217;ve reset the download counter on the <a href="http://marketing.openoffice.org/planet/">Marketing Planet</a> - as you can see from the <a href="http://marketing.openoffice.org/marketing_bouncer.html">detailed stats page</a>, we were just a smidgeon short of 60 million downloads for OpenOffice.org 3.0.</p> -<p>The first reviews are also starting to appear in the press - it&#8217;s worth keeping an eye on the <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/product/reviews.html">reviews page</a> for a summary - we don&#8217;t just list the good ones <img src="http://www.mealldubh.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" class="wp-smiley" /> </p></content> - <author> - <name>John McCreesh</name> - <uri>http://www.mealldubh.org</uri> - </author> - <source> - <title type="html">Meall Dubh » OpenOffice.org</title> - <subtitle type="html">a view from a dark hill</subtitle> - <link rel="self" href="http://www.mealldubh.org/index.php/category/open-source/openofficeorg/feed/"/> - <id>http://www.mealldubh.org/index.php/category/open-source/openofficeorg/feed/</id> - <updated>2009-05-23T11:00:15+00:00</updated> - </source> - </entry> - - <entry xml:lang="en"> - <title type="html">TestFreaksâ 50 OpenOffice Tips</title> - <link href="http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/1143"/> - <id>http://www.solidoffice.com/?p=1143</id> - <updated>2009-05-12T02:09:55+00:00</updated> - <content type="html"><p>The <a href="http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/">TestFreaks Blog</a> publishes <a href="http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/mastering-open-office-50-useful-tips-to-get-you-started/">Mastering OpenOffice: 50 Useful Tips to Get You Started</a>:</p> -<blockquote><p><a href="http://www.openoffice.org/">OpenOffice</a> is the unsung software for personal usage. It offers two very convincing reasons to download: 1.) Itâs free. And 2.) It comes with 24/7 online help.</p></blockquote> -<p>Yes, both true, but there is more.</p> -<p>The article continues, with a collection of progressively more advanced tips for new users of OOo. It covers wizards for installing new dictionaries and fonts, and the Math component is discussed, as well as Calc, although very briefly. Of course it covers Writer, Impress and Draw as well, and one final tip on Base.</p></content> - <author> - <name>Benjamin Horst</name> - <uri>http://www.solidoffice.com</uri> - </author> - <source> - <title type="html">SolidOffice » OpenOffice.org</title> - <subtitle type="html">Home of The Tiny Guide to OpenOffice.org</subtitle> - <link rel="self" href="http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/category/openofficeorg/feed"/> - <id>http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/category/openofficeorg/feed</id> - <updated>2009-05-26T05:00:28+00:00</updated> + <updated>2009-05-26T11:00:18+00:00</updated> </source> </entry> File [changed]: index.html Url: http://marketing.openoffice.org/source/browse/marketing/www/planet/index.html?r1=1.1923&r2=1.1924 Delta lines: +42 -34 --------------------- --- index.html 2009-05-26 05:00:37+0000 1.1923 +++ index.html 2009-05-26 11:00:37+0000 1.1924 @@ -36,10 +36,51 @@ <a href="rss20.xml"><img src="rss2.gif" alt="Link to RSS 2 feed" /></a> </div> -<p><em>Bloggings on marketing topics by project members - see <a href="#disclaimer">disclaimer</a>.<br />Last updated: May 26, 2009 05:00 AM GMT</em></p> +<p><em>Bloggings on marketing topics by project members - see <a href="#disclaimer">disclaimer</a>.<br />Last updated: May 26, 2009 11:00 AM GMT</em></p> <h2>May 25, 2009</h2> <h3> +<a href="" title="jpmcc's shared items in Google Reader"> +GullFOSS</a> : +<a href="http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/ideation_and_what_s_next";> +Ideation and what's next in the Renaissance Project</a> +</h3> +<p> +<p> So, the collection of design proposals and their refinement is over. Thanks to everyone who has participated and spent nights to finish either in time or a bit later. Liz will post a detailed summary about that part of the current phase later this week. With this post, I'd like to share my experience with using some ideation methods I learned in Berlin for UI brainstorming, and to give a short preview of what is about to happen in the Renaissance Project and for what reason.<br /><br />But first, letâs check what we have planned and what was in the project road map. Here is how phase two of project Renaissance was initially set up:<br /><br /><b>1.   Incorporate research data</b><br />   a.   Analyze quantitative/qualitative data to understand usage/users<br />   b.   Create personas based on the analysis<br /><b>2.   Focus on the personas' characteristics</b><br />   a.   Create scenarios for key functionalities<br />   b.   Define information architecture from the scenarios<br />   c.   Flow charts<br /><b>3.   Generate design ideas using the scenarios</b><br />   a.   Paper prototypes<br />   b.   Clickable slides<br />   c.   Dynamic prototypes<br /><br />I am still convinced that our initial plan was quite well elaborated and promising. However, looking at that now I must admit that we were not able to achieve many of the tasks that are listed here. In retrospective, we jumped right from 1a to 3b, which is of course possible but it makes many other design activities a lot harder at a later stage. Due to time and resources constraints, we spent only little time on understanding our quantitative data and almost no time on qualitative research. As a consequence, we were only partially able to generate findings that support design decisions. But still, please donât get me wrong, what we got from our research is a lot more and better than relying on pure subjective assumptions. And that is a good thing and a good start.<br /><br />However, usually you would want to start with a redesign strategy that defines your redesign scope and therefore guides any of your design research activities such as what research questions youâd like to have answers to. I would say that we were quite good at this part. But as stated above, we were not able to answer a few of our important research questions such as âWhat is important to our users and what are their goals?â, âHow do they feel using our product?â or âHow would they like to feel using it?â. In practice, these are important insights that guide your design work and decisions. Insufficient answers to these questions make evaluation of designs a lot harder. That is actually related to our upcoming activities.<br /><br />So, what is the objective of ideation? As described in one of my earlier blog posts, ideation helps to generate a lot of unconstrained design ideas. By a lot I mean masses, as many as possible. This process is all about the quantity of ideas, not the quality or richness in detail. Quantity is important since you never know where a bright idea might show up. So, learn to embrace the diversity. When you think that you have enough crazy ideas, start getting some order. Sort them, check for overlapping ideas, define groups and label them. In sum, put similar things together and give them a name. Then take your design principles that youâve defined with the help of your research findings, and start refining all the crazy ideas accordingly. At the end, you should have a nice set of designs that you want to see in action in order to verify them with real users. That is basically where weâre heading next, refinement and prototyping.</p> + <p align="center"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.de/lh/photo/GsK-H2GgDckPImDvkaJ6Sw?feat=embedwebsite";><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1V3VpP3YHN0/ShrsxLUS46I/AAAAAAAABKs/Worq-1_xaaM/s400/IMG_1086.JPG"; /></a> <br /></p> + <p>To check how that approach works in our context and what we can actually get out of it, I did a small ideation âexperimentâ for the last two weeks. The first week I spent on drawing sketches like a maniac by myself. However, through our proposal collection phase, I was too restricted in my head. It is actually hard to let things go to which one is so used to. Last week, we repeated the ideation method with a couple of colleagues with various backgrounds. We had Dev, QA, Tooling, and UX onboard. In two groups, we started brainstorming about how we would want the ideal Impress to be. For three minutes, everyone wrote adjectives attributed to the âimaginaryâ Impress on sticky notes and then we put them on the wall, and started sorting and organizing them.<br /><br />Amazingly a lot of the adjectives overlapped. At the end, we were able to define two main groups that had a lot more adjectives than others. The first group could be described as the one concerned with usability while the second group was all about positive experiences, emotions and aesthetics of the product. That happed in both groups by the way. In sum, everyone in Dev, QA, Tooling, and UX wanted the future Impress to be easy to use and âprettyâ! These are quite basic needs, arenât they? And all from people with totally different backgrounds.</p></p> +<p> +<em><a href="http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/ideation_and_what_s_next";>by Andreas Bartel at May 25, 2009 07:56 PM GMT</a></em> +</p> +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> +<h3> +<a href="" title="jpmcc's shared items in Google Reader"> +GullFOSS</a> : +<a href="http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/openoffice_org_user_survey_2009";> +OpenOffice.org User Survey 2009 Data Available</a> +</h3> +<p> +<p> +The data collected by the current OOo <a title="OOo Survey 2009" href="http://surveys.services.openoffice.org/surveys/index.php?sid=69531";>User Survey 2009</a> has been <a title="OOo Wiki" href="http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance:Phase_1:OOoUser_Survey2009";>published at the OOo wiki</a>. + +The data is based on more than 125K submissions by our users within the last three months. + +Unfortunately the questions are in German due to a limitation of the survey tooling (we have started this new survey with the 'wrong' language this time;-). Please use the key of a question to grab for the English text shown on the right side inside the spreadsheet. Sorry for the inconvenience.</p> + <p> + +Best Regards, + +</p> + <p>Frank</p></p> +<p> +<em><a href="http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/openoffice_org_user_survey_2009";>by frankl at May 25, 2009 07:13 PM GMT</a></em> +</p> +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> +<h3> <a href="http://ooo-speak.blogspot.com/"; title="ooo-speak"> Louis Suarez-Potts</a> : <a href="http://ooo-speak.blogspot.com/2009/05/value-notes-on-foss-2009-05-25.html";> @@ -392,39 +433,6 @@ <br /> <hr /> <br /> -<h2>May 12, 2009</h2> -<h3> -<a href="http://www.mealldubh.org"; title="Meall Dubh » OpenOffice.org"> -John McCreesh</a> : -<a href="http://www.mealldubh.org/index.php/2009/05/12/after-the-launch-was-over/";> -After the launch was over</a> -</h3> -<p> -<p>So, <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/product/";>OpenOffice.org 3.1</a> with all its <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.1/index.html";>lovely new features</a> is well and truly launched, with the <a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/OOo/31/prweb2388264.htm";>official announcement</a> last Thursday. I’ve reset the download counter on the <a href="http://marketing.openoffice.org/planet/";>Marketing Planet</a> - as you can see from the <a href="http://marketing.openoffice.org/marketing_bouncer.html";>detailed stats page</a>, we were just a smidgeon short of 60 million downloads for OpenOffice.org 3.0.</p> -<p>The first reviews are also starting to appear in the press - it’s worth keeping an eye on the <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/product/reviews.html";>reviews page</a> for a summary - we don’t just list the good ones <img src="http://www.mealldubh.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif"; alt=";)" class="wp-smiley" /> </p></p> -<p> -<em><a href="http://www.mealldubh.org/index.php/2009/05/12/after-the-launch-was-over/";>by John at May 12, 2009 07:06 PM GMT</a></em> -</p> -<br /> -<hr /> -<br /> -<h3> -<a href="http://www.solidoffice.com"; title="SolidOffice » OpenOffice.org"> -Benjamin Horst</a> : -<a href="http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/1143";> -TestFreaksâ 50 OpenOffice Tips</a> -</h3> -<p> -<p>The <a href="http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/";>TestFreaks Blog</a> publishes <a href="http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/mastering-open-office-50-useful-tips-to-get-you-started/";>Mastering OpenOffice: 50 Useful Tips to Get You Started</a>:</p> -<blockquote><p><a href="http://www.openoffice.org/";>OpenOffice</a> is the unsung software for personal usage. It offers two very convincing reasons to download: 1.) Itâs free. And 2.) It comes with 24/7 online help.</p></blockquote> -<p>Yes, both true, but there is more.</p> -<p>The article continues, with a collection of progressively more advanced tips for new users of OOo. It covers wizards for installing new dictionaries and fonts, and the Math component is discussed, as well as Calc, although very briefly. Of course it covers Writer, Impress and Draw as well, and one final tip on Base.</p></p> -<p> -<em><a href="http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/1143";>by Benjamin Horst at May 12, 2009 02:09 AM GMT</a></em> -</p> -<br /> -<hr /> -<br /> <a id="disclaimer" name="disclaimer"></a> <p><em>Disclaimer: all views expressed on this page are those of the individual contributors, and may not reflect the views of the File [changed]: opml.xml Url: http://marketing.openoffice.org/source/browse/marketing/www/planet/opml.xml?r1=1.1916&r2=1.1917 Delta lines: +1 -1 ------------------- --- opml.xml 2009-05-26 05:00:37+0000 1.1916 +++ opml.xml 2009-05-26 11:00:37+0000 1.1917 @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ <opml version="1.1"> <head> <title>Marketing Planet</title> - <dateModified>Tue, 26 May 2009 05:00:28 +0000</dateModified> + <dateModified>Tue, 26 May 2009 11:00:27 +0000</dateModified> <ownerName>Marketing Project</ownerName> <ownerEmail>[email protected]</ownerEmail> </head> File [changed]: rss10.xml Url: http://marketing.openoffice.org/source/browse/marketing/www/planet/rss10.xml?r1=1.750&r2=1.751 Delta lines: +29 -18 --------------------- --- rss10.xml 2009-05-25 23:00:50+0000 1.750 +++ rss10.xml 2009-05-26 11:00:37+0000 1.751 @@ -13,6 +13,8 @@ <items> <rdf:Seq> + <rdf:li rdf:resource="tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/d1a38e6f8a4c00f9" /> + <rdf:li rdf:resource="tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/78154ce7426b0c6a" /> <rdf:li rdf:resource="tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4649039904546083564.post-6589002475932314814" /> <rdf:li rdf:resource="tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4649039904546083564.post-814228670360310856" /> <rdf:li rdf:resource="tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4649039904546083564.post-6139785145424705872" /> @@ -31,12 +33,37 @@ <rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.solidoffice.com/?p=1148"; /> <rdf:li rdf:resource="tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/5fa638c35d662dc8" /> <rdf:li rdf:resource="tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/4504d0aad9f21914" /> - <rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.mealldubh.org/?p=689"; /> - <rdf:li rdf:resource="http://www.solidoffice.com/?p=1143"; /> </rdf:Seq> </items> </channel> +<item rdf:about="tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/d1a38e6f8a4c00f9"> + <title>GullFOSS: Ideation and what's next in the Renaissance Project</title> + <link>http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/ideation_and_what_s_next</link> + <content:encoded><p> So, the collection of design proposals and their refinement is over. Thanks to everyone who has participated and spent nights to finish either in time or a bit later. Liz will post a detailed summary about that part of the current phase later this week. With this post, I'd like to share my experience with using some ideation methods I learned in Berlin for UI brainstorming, and to give a short preview of what is about to happen in the Renaissance Project and for what reason.<br /><br />But first, letâs check what we have planned and what was in the project road map. Here is how phase two of project Renaissance was initially set up:<br /><br /><b>1.   Incorporate research data</b><br />   a.   Analyze quantitative/qualitative data to understand usage/users<br />   b.   Create personas based on the analysis<br /><b>2.   Focus on the personas' characteristics</b><br />   a.   Create scenarios for key functionalities<br />   b.   Define information architecture from the scenarios<br />   c.   Flow charts<br /><b>3.   Generate design ideas using the scenarios</b><br />   a.   Paper prototypes<br />   b.   Clickable slides<br />   c.   Dynamic prototypes<br /><br />I am still convinced that our initial plan was quite well elaborated and promising. However, looking at that now I must admit that we were not able to achieve many of the tasks that are listed here. In retrospective, we jumped right from 1a to 3b, which is of course possible but it makes many other design activities a lot harder at a later stage. Due to time and resources constraints, we spent only little time on understanding our quantitative data and almost no time on qualitative research. As a consequence, we were only partially able to generate findings that support design decisions. But still, please donât get me wrong, what we got from our research is a lot more and better than relying on pure subjective assumptions. And that is a good thing and a good start.<br /><br />However, usually you would want to start with a redesign strategy that defines your redesign scope and therefore guides any of your design research activities such as what research questions youâd like to have answers to. I would say that we were quite good at this part. But as stated above, we were not able to answer a few of our important research questions such as âWhat is important to our users and what are their goals?â, âHow do they feel using our product?â or âHow would they like to feel using it?â. In practice, these are important insights that guide your design work and decisions. Insufficient answers to these questions make evaluation of designs a lot harder. That is actually related to our upcoming activities.<br /><br />So, what is the objective of ideation? As described in one of my earlier blog posts, ideation helps to generate a lot of unconstrained design ideas. By a lot I mean masses, as many as possible. This process is all about the quantity of ideas, not the quality or richness in detail. Quantity is important since you never know where a bright idea might show up. So, learn to embrace the diversity. When you think that you have enough crazy ideas, start getting some order. Sort them, check for overlapping ideas, define groups and label them. In sum, put similar things together and give them a name. Then take your design principles that youâve defined with the help of your research findings, and start refining all the crazy ideas accordingly. At the end, you should have a nice set of designs that you want to see in action in order to verify them with real users. That is basically where weâre heading next, refinement and prototyping.</p> + <p align="center"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.de/lh/photo/GsK-H2GgDckPImDvkaJ6Sw?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1V3VpP3YHN0/ShrsxLUS46I/AAAAAAAABKs/Worq-1_xaaM/s400/IMG_1086.JPG" /></a> <br /></p> + <p>To check how that approach works in our context and what we can actually get out of it, I did a small ideation âexperimentâ for the last two weeks. The first week I spent on drawing sketches like a maniac by myself. However, through our proposal collection phase, I was too restricted in my head. It is actually hard to let things go to which one is so used to. Last week, we repeated the ideation method with a couple of colleagues with various backgrounds. We had Dev, QA, Tooling, and UX onboard. In two groups, we started brainstorming about how we would want the ideal Impress to be. For three minutes, everyone wrote adjectives attributed to the âimaginaryâ Impress on sticky notes and then we put them on the wall, and started sorting and organizing them.<br /><br />Amazingly a lot of the adjectives overlapped. At the end, we were able to define two main groups that had a lot more adjectives than others. The first group could be described as the one concerned with usability while the second group was all about positive experiences, emotions and aesthetics of the product. That happed in both groups by the way. In sum, everyone in Dev, QA, Tooling, and UX wanted the future Impress to be easy to use and âprettyâ! These are quite basic needs, arenât they? And all from people with totally different backgrounds.</p></content:encoded> + <dc:date>2009-05-25T19:56:33+00:00</dc:date> + <dc:creator>Andreas Bartel</dc:creator> +</item> +<item rdf:about="tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/78154ce7426b0c6a"> + <title>GullFOSS: OpenOffice.org User Survey 2009 Data Available</title> + <link>http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/openoffice_org_user_survey_2009</link> + <content:encoded><p> +The data collected by the current OOo <a title="OOo Survey 2009" href="http://surveys.services.openoffice.org/surveys/index.php?sid=69531">User Survey 2009</a> has been <a title="OOo Wiki" href="http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance:Phase_1:OOoUser_Survey2009">published at the OOo wiki</a>. + +The data is based on more than 125K submissions by our users within the last three months. + +Unfortunately the questions are in German due to a limitation of the survey tooling (we have started this new survey with the 'wrong' language this time;-). Please use the key of a question to grab for the English text shown on the right side inside the spreadsheet. Sorry for the inconvenience.</p> + <p> + +Best Regards, + +</p> + <p>Frank</p></content:encoded> + <dc:date>2009-05-25T19:13:27+00:00</dc:date> + <dc:creator>frankl</dc:creator> +</item> <item rdf:about="tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4649039904546083564.post-6589002475932314814"> <title>Louis Suarez-Potts: Value : Notes on Foss 2009-05-25</title> <link>http://ooo-speak.blogspot.com/2009/05/value-notes-on-foss-2009-05-25.html</link> @@ -248,21 +275,5 @@ <dc:date>2009-05-13T09:11:30+00:00</dc:date> <dc:creator>Frank Mau</dc:creator> </item> -<item rdf:about="http://www.mealldubh.org/?p=689";> - <title>John McCreesh: After the launch was over</title> - <link>http://www.mealldubh.org/index.php/2009/05/12/after-the-launch-was-over/</link> - <content:encoded><p>So, <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/product/">OpenOffice.org 3.1</a> with all its <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.1/index.html">lovely new features</a> is well and truly launched, with the <a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/OOo/31/prweb2388264.htm">official announcement</a> last Thursday. I&#8217;ve reset the download counter on the <a href="http://marketing.openoffice.org/planet/">Marketing Planet</a> - as you can see from the <a href="http://marketing.openoffice.org/marketing_bouncer.html">detailed stats page</a>, we were just a smidgeon short of 60 million downloads for OpenOffice.org 3.0.</p> -<p>The first reviews are also starting to appear in the press - it&#8217;s worth keeping an eye on the <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/product/reviews.html">reviews page</a> for a summary - we don&#8217;t just list the good ones <img src="http://www.mealldubh.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" class="wp-smiley" /> </p></content:encoded> - <dc:date>2009-05-12T19:06:15+00:00</dc:date> -</item> -<item rdf:about="http://www.solidoffice.com/?p=1143";> - <title>Benjamin Horst: TestFreaksâ 50 OpenOffice Tips</title> - <link>http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/1143</link> - <content:encoded><p>The <a href="http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/">TestFreaks Blog</a> publishes <a href="http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/mastering-open-office-50-useful-tips-to-get-you-started/">Mastering OpenOffice: 50 Useful Tips to Get You Started</a>:</p> -<blockquote><p><a href="http://www.openoffice.org/">OpenOffice</a> is the unsung software for personal usage. It offers two very convincing reasons to download: 1.) Itâs free. And 2.) It comes with 24/7 online help.</p></blockquote> -<p>Yes, both true, but there is more.</p> -<p>The article continues, with a collection of progressively more advanced tips for new users of OOo. It covers wizards for installing new dictionaries and fonts, and the Math component is discussed, as well as Calc, although very briefly. Of course it covers Writer, Impress and Draw as well, and one final tip on Base.</p></content:encoded> - <dc:date>2009-05-12T02:09:55+00:00</dc:date> -</item> </rdf:RDF> File [changed]: rss20.xml Url: http://marketing.openoffice.org/source/browse/marketing/www/planet/rss20.xml?r1=1.750&r2=1.751 Delta lines: +27 -18 --------------------- --- rss20.xml 2009-05-25 23:00:50+0000 1.750 +++ rss20.xml 2009-05-26 11:00:38+0000 1.751 @@ -8,6 +8,33 @@ <description>Marketing Planet - http://marketing.openoffice.org/planet/</description> <item> + <title>GullFOSS: Ideation and what's next in the Renaissance Project</title> + <guid>tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/d1a38e6f8a4c00f9</guid> + <link>http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/ideation_and_what_s_next</link> + <description><p> So, the collection of design proposals and their refinement is over. Thanks to everyone who has participated and spent nights to finish either in time or a bit later. Liz will post a detailed summary about that part of the current phase later this week. With this post, I'd like to share my experience with using some ideation methods I learned in Berlin for UI brainstorming, and to give a short preview of what is about to happen in the Renaissance Project and for what reason.<br /><br />But first, letâs check what we have planned and what was in the project road map. Here is how phase two of project Renaissance was initially set up:<br /><br /><b>1.   Incorporate research data</b><br />   a.   Analyze quantitative/qualitative data to understand usage/users<br />   b.   Create personas based on the analysis<br /><b>2.   Focus on the personas' characteristics</b><br />   a.   Create scenarios for key functionalities<br />   b.   Define information architecture from the scenarios<br />   c.   Flow charts<br /><b>3.   Generate design ideas using the scenarios</b><br />   a.   Paper prototypes<br />   b.   Clickable slides<br />   c.   Dynamic prototypes<br /><br />I am still convinced that our initial plan was quite well elaborated and promising. However, looking at that now I must admit that we were not able to achieve many of the tasks that are listed here. In retrospective, we jumped right from 1a to 3b, which is of course possible but it makes many other design activities a lot harder at a later stage. Due to time and resources constraints, we spent only little time on understanding our quantitative data and almost no time on qualitative research. As a consequence, we were only partially able to generate findings that support design decisions. But still, please donât get me wrong, what we got from our research is a lot more and better than relying on pure subjective assumptions. And that is a good thing and a good start.<br /><br />However, usually you would want to start with a redesign strategy that defines your redesign scope and therefore guides any of your design research activities such as what research questions youâd like to have answers to. I would say that we were quite good at this part. But as stated above, we were not able to answer a few of our important research questions such as âWhat is important to our users and what are their goals?â, âHow do they feel using our product?â or âHow would they like to feel using it?â. In practice, these are important insights that guide your design work and decisions. Insufficient answers to these questions make evaluation of designs a lot harder. That is actually related to our upcoming activities.<br /><br />So, what is the objective of ideation? As described in one of my earlier blog posts, ideation helps to generate a lot of unconstrained design ideas. By a lot I mean masses, as many as possible. This process is all about the quantity of ideas, not the quality or richness in detail. Quantity is important since you never know where a bright idea might show up. So, learn to embrace the diversity. When you think that you have enough crazy ideas, start getting some order. Sort them, check for overlapping ideas, define groups and label them. In sum, put similar things together and give them a name. Then take your design principles that youâve defined with the help of your research findings, and start refining all the crazy ideas accordingly. At the end, you should have a nice set of designs that you want to see in action in order to verify them with real users. That is basically where weâre heading next, refinement and prototyping.</p> + <p align="center"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.de/lh/photo/GsK-H2GgDckPImDvkaJ6Sw?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1V3VpP3YHN0/ShrsxLUS46I/AAAAAAAABKs/Worq-1_xaaM/s400/IMG_1086.JPG" /></a> <br /></p> + <p>To check how that approach works in our context and what we can actually get out of it, I did a small ideation âexperimentâ for the last two weeks. The first week I spent on drawing sketches like a maniac by myself. However, through our proposal collection phase, I was too restricted in my head. It is actually hard to let things go to which one is so used to. Last week, we repeated the ideation method with a couple of colleagues with various backgrounds. We had Dev, QA, Tooling, and UX onboard. In two groups, we started brainstorming about how we would want the ideal Impress to be. For three minutes, everyone wrote adjectives attributed to the âimaginaryâ Impress on sticky notes and then we put them on the wall, and started sorting and organizing them.<br /><br />Amazingly a lot of the adjectives overlapped. At the end, we were able to define two main groups that had a lot more adjectives than others. The first group could be described as the one concerned with usability while the second group was all about positive experiences, emotions and aesthetics of the product. That happed in both groups by the way. In sum, everyone in Dev, QA, Tooling, and UX wanted the future Impress to be easy to use and âprettyâ! These are quite basic needs, arenât they? And all from people with totally different backgrounds.</p></description> + <pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2009 19:56:33 +0000</pubDate> +</item> +<item> + <title>GullFOSS: OpenOffice.org User Survey 2009 Data Available</title> + <guid>tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/78154ce7426b0c6a</guid> + <link>http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/openoffice_org_user_survey_2009</link> + <description><p> +The data collected by the current OOo <a title="OOo Survey 2009" href="http://surveys.services.openoffice.org/surveys/index.php?sid=69531">User Survey 2009</a> has been <a title="OOo Wiki" href="http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance:Phase_1:OOoUser_Survey2009">published at the OOo wiki</a>. + +The data is based on more than 125K submissions by our users within the last three months. + +Unfortunately the questions are in German due to a limitation of the survey tooling (we have started this new survey with the 'wrong' language this time;-). Please use the key of a question to grab for the English text shown on the right side inside the spreadsheet. Sorry for the inconvenience.</p> + <p> + +Best Regards, + +</p> + <p>Frank</p></description> + <pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2009 19:13:27 +0000</pubDate> +</item> +<item> <title>Louis Suarez-Potts: Value : Notes on Foss 2009-05-25</title> <guid>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4649039904546083564.post-6589002475932314814</guid> <link>http://ooo-speak.blogspot.com/2009/05/value-notes-on-foss-2009-05-25.html</link> @@ -232,24 +259,6 @@ <p>Frank</p></description> <pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2009 09:11:30 +0000</pubDate> </item> -<item> - <title>John McCreesh: After the launch was over</title> - <guid>http://www.mealldubh.org/?p=689</guid> - <link>http://www.mealldubh.org/index.php/2009/05/12/after-the-launch-was-over/</link> - <description><p>So, <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/product/">OpenOffice.org 3.1</a> with all its <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.1/index.html">lovely new features</a> is well and truly launched, with the <a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/OOo/31/prweb2388264.htm">official announcement</a> last Thursday. I&#8217;ve reset the download counter on the <a href="http://marketing.openoffice.org/planet/">Marketing Planet</a> - as you can see from the <a href="http://marketing.openoffice.org/marketing_bouncer.html">detailed stats page</a>, we were just a smidgeon short of 60 million downloads for OpenOffice.org 3.0.</p> -<p>The first reviews are also starting to appear in the press - it&#8217;s worth keeping an eye on the <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/product/reviews.html">reviews page</a> for a summary - we don&#8217;t just list the good ones <img src="http://www.mealldubh.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" class="wp-smiley" /> </p></description> - <pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2009 19:06:15 +0000</pubDate> -</item> -<item> - <title>Benjamin Horst: TestFreaksâ 50 OpenOffice Tips</title> - <guid>http://www.solidoffice.com/?p=1143</guid> - <link>http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/1143</link> - <description><p>The <a href="http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/">TestFreaks Blog</a> publishes <a href="http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/information/mastering-open-office-50-useful-tips-to-get-you-started/">Mastering OpenOffice: 50 Useful Tips to Get You Started</a>:</p> -<blockquote><p><a href="http://www.openoffice.org/">OpenOffice</a> is the unsung software for personal usage. It offers two very convincing reasons to download: 1.) Itâs free. And 2.) It comes with 24/7 online help.</p></blockquote> -<p>Yes, both true, but there is more.</p> -<p>The article continues, with a collection of progressively more advanced tips for new users of OOo. It covers wizards for installing new dictionaries and fonts, and the Math component is discussed, as well as Calc, although very briefly. Of course it covers Writer, Impress and Draw as well, and one final tip on Base.</p></description> - <pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2009 02:09:55 +0000</pubDate> -</item> </channel> </rss> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
![http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1V3VpP3YHN0/ShrsxLUS46I/AAAAAAAABKs/Worq-1_xaaM/s400/IMG_1086.JPG"](https://lh5.ggpht.com/_1V3VpP3YHN0/ShrsxLUS46I/AAAAAAAABKs/Worq-1_xaaM/s400/IMG_1086.JPG"){kind=link}
![http://www.mealldubh.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif"](http://www.mealldubh.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif"){kind=link}
![http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1V3VpP3YHN0/ShrsxLUS46I/AAAAAAAABKs/Worq-1_xaaM/s400/IMG_1086.JPG"](https://lh5.ggpht.com/_1V3VpP3YHN0/ShrsxLUS46I/AAAAAAAABKs/Worq-1_xaaM/s400/IMG_1086.JPG"){kind=link}
![http://www.mealldubh.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif"](http://www.mealldubh.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif"){kind=link}