On Sun, 17 Dec 2006, :murb: [maarten brouwers] wrote:

> Why this emphasis on explaining what is, at least I believe, a pretty 
> well known concept: 'Office suite' or 'Office package' or 'Office 
> tools'... it consists of an application that you can write with, you can 
> make calculations with, do presentations with and possibly keep your 
> stuff organized with. 'Math' and 'Draw' are two nice extras but the most 
> popular office suite today, 'MS Office', also has these features... 
> though not as separate programs, if I remember correctly. If the concept 
> is not well known, people can click on the underlined word 'office 
> suite' in the description [1]... so what is missing?  You didn't respond 
> to my response to your comments at that time.

OK, click on "Office Suite."  Your eye will be drawn immediately to the 
large text:

   OpenOffice.org 2 - Product Description

Aha! Wonderful!  Now, the next paragraph tells nothing about what version 
2 does. It only tells how it compares to Version 1.  Well, maybe the 
bulleted list will describe more specifics.  No, it just talks about ISO 
standards and how easy it is to use. At least I see that it has a 
database. What about the next paragraph? It talks about licensing.  Not 
one bit of this tells me what the product DOES. Only when I'm three 
fourths down the page do I see "What's in OpenOffice.org" and *finally* 
see what is really a product description.

 > 
> I think your mockup adds lots of text that is also distracting to new 
> users...  and how does explaining the concept of an Office suite at the 
> front page help end users? Please

It's not explaining what an office suite is; it's explaining what
components I get when I download OpenOffice.org.

What would be best is to do some usability testing: get people who have
never used OOo before, and put them in a room with a neutral third party
observing, and ask them to tell you what you get with OOo, just by using
the web site. See http://www.nedbatchelder.com/text/usability.html for
details on how to do this. Then we'd all have more facts to shout at each
other <grin/>

 -- 
J. David Eisenberg  http://catcode.com/

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply via email to