Projects
We have four great projects for the Season 2011:
Calligra, GIMP, LibreOffice and ownCloud
Calligra
Calligra Suite is an office suite created from KOffice in 2010. It is available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Haiku (more on their website).
The overall task for the SoU2011 is to create an interaction design for the creation and manipulation of objects.
_Introduction_
Calligra uses some specific terminology to describe the components that make up a document:
* a document is made up of shapes that are placed on a canvas
* shapes are objects, like text boxes, lines or images
* a shape is created from a set of default values, for instance the width of a line or the font for text.
* the default values are used whenever a new shape is created.
_Creating Shapes_
Currently, there are two ways to create objects in Calligra:
* from the "Add Shapes" docker
* using a tool that can create shapes
Originally, adding shapes from a docker with a collection of shapes was intended to make it easy to create and save new default settings for a particular type of shape. Then the new shape would show up in the docker. We do not have a suitable interaction for actually creating the new shape defaults, sorting, ordering and tagging them, although the basic code does exist to create shapes from saved parameters.
Creating shapes with the a tool was intended to be used only for vector shapes like lines and calligraphic lines where a user would create many shapes by drawing on the canvas.
After creation, the settings of a shape can be manipulated in two ways:
* by selecting the shape and changing some settings in one or more shape option dockers
* by selecting a tool that can manipulate the shape. Some tools come with option widgets that set properties on shapes directly.
By now, more and more option widgets are migrating to tools.
_Problems we face_
* Selecting a shape is quite difficult. Depending on the active tool, a click can select a shape, manipulate a shape or do nothing. One proposal is to show a border on hover that when clicked will always select the shape and that will allow basic manipulation such as dragging and changing geometry.
However:
Tt's not as easy as it sounds. If I edit a control point of a path shape which happens to be on top of another shape, I don't want to accidentally hit that magic border of the other shape and select that.
Or the case where there are several shapes on top of each other, editing one of them would show all selection borders of all these shapes?
So we have to keep in mind, that shapes are not always nicely separated from each other but can overlap.
* Creating new default settings for creating new shapes. We don't have anything for this, with the result that the Add Shapes docker always shows a set of rather boring defaults and cannot be customized.
* When working, it's useful to be able to set values and have those values carried over to the next object you create. We do not support that either.
_Goal_
The goal of this project is to create an interaction design for creating and manipulating shapes. The start should be http://community.kde.org/Calligra/Usability_and_UX/Common/Dockers_vs_ToolOptions.
The project is mentored by Boudewijn Rempt (Developer) and Celeste Lyn Paul (Usability).
If you think this is the right project for you, please send your application to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can also use this address if you have more questions.
GIMP
GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring (more on their Website).
The project is about creating a Mental Model for professional users of GIMP.
Project DescriptionMMG (Mental Models for GIMP) is a user research project for GIMP, the
free software image manipulation program.
It aims at better understanding professionals and aficionados in this
field by eliciting their context, tasks and philosophies in order to
improve the overall usability of GIMP.
Research will be carried out following Mental Models, combining
qualitative interviews with content analysis and a graphical format
for reporting, as proposed by Indy Young, creater of this method.
Results will provide guidance for interaction architecture and
software development.
The projects is mentored by Tobias Ehni (Usability) and Peter Sikking (UI, IA), with support from Mitch (Developer).
If you think this is the right project for you, please send your application to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .LibreOffice
LibreOffice is the power-packed free, libre and open source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs (more on their website).The task for the SoU 2011 will be to create artificats based on user reasearch.
Project Description:
In LibreOffice we would like know who our users are and what they are doing
with our product. Your task will be to explore ways to get in touch with the
users. You will use web-based tools to get feedback and informations from
them. The final goal is to create artifacts guiding the further development,
like personas and scenarios - built on real data.
The project will be mentored by Björn Balazs (usability) and Christoph Noack (UX).
If you think this is the right project for you, please send your application to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can also use this address if you have more questions.
ownCloud
ownCloud is a web platform to sync your data to
every device and also make it available online. It is intended to be
easily installable by everyone even on commodity hosting or their own
computer (more on their website).
Currently it enables managing files online, access them via WebDAV,
sharing files, streaming music, managing users & groups and more. There
are basic apps for contacts, calendars and bookrmarks. Also in development
are applications for desktop and Android.
ownCloud is still very young so there are a variety of things you can work
on. We already use distributed user testing to get feedback on
installation and file management. Next we would like to improve the web
applications for calendar, contacts and bookmarks. As they are still in
early stages, we can explore different designs and try out experimental
paradigms for managing those. Ideally you can code JavaScript, HTML+CSS
(and maybe PHP) so we can do fast iterations on design improvements and
directly test them with people who try out the latest development version.
The project will be mentored by Jan-Christoph Borchardt (design, user
experience), assisted by Robin Appelman (development).
If you think this is the right project for you, please send your application to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can also use this address if you have more questions.
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