This is a recipe how to export a VirtualBox desktop out of VDI 3 to a destination Solaris VirtualBox host. It is based on Dirk’s procedure and contains some modifications to make it work for me.

1. Tell the iSCSI initiator on the destination VitualBox host to accept static iSCSI connections:

iscsiadm modify discovery --static enable



2. Find out the IQN of the iSCSI target of the desktop to export. The easiest way is to look at the desktop as it is registered on the VirtualBox host. Here you can use the command:

VBoxManage list -l vms

It will show also the IQN and the host of the connected LUN. An IQN looks like this:

iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:c856c247-you-do-not-have-to-read-this-9318dd9d6b48



3. Mount the LUN into your destination VirtualBox host:

iscsiadm add static-config <IQN>,<IP>

The IP is the IP of the storage server – it is not its host name.

4. List the new target

iscsiadm list target -S

The last line contains the important output: OS Device Name, e.g.:

/dev/rdsk/c2t600144F04AD2FA0C0000144FEDF91800d0s2



5. Make a raw copy of the content:

dd if=/dev/rdsk/c2t600144F04AD2FA0C0000144FEDF91800d0p0 of=/var/tmp/image.out

Note, replace the s2 at the end of the raw disk name with p0. Don’t ask why. And you will have a lot of time not to ask why because the copy operation takes quite some time.

6. Convert the raw image into a VDI file:

VBoxManage convertfromraw /var/tmp/image.out /var/tmp/image.vdi --format VDI --variant Standard

Dirk’s convertdd was not available on my Solaris machine, but VBoxManage convertfromraw does the same.

Last but not least it should be mentioned that all this is obsolete for VDI 3.1. We have added a function to export a VirtualBox desktop directly from the Sun VDI administration:

Manchester – Leeds – Camberley, Surrey – London – Coventry – Edinburgh
Sun's Desktop Virtualisation Roadshow is coming to the United Kingdom.

Overview – Agenda – Dates and Registration between now and Feb 2010.

[Photo: CC by Jim Linwood]

Here is yet another wonderful reason why booth #415 is hot at EDUCAUSE 2009 in Denver.

[Image taken from Project Wonderland v0.5 User Preview 2]

A special talk on Wonderland by Kevin Roebuck is on Thursday 2:20pm - 3:10pm (Korbel Ballroom 3B): Sun Microsystems, An EDUCAUSE Gold Partner - Project Wonderland and the Age of Immersive Education

Overview - Agenda - Register

BTW_ sorry, green hills were not available in the image stock library. But rain is almost guaranteed.

EDUCAUSE 2009 is ready to start this week in Denver /Colorado. Do not miss to check out Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure – Sun VDI –  at booth #415 (floor plan).

See also Dirk’s posting on Sun VDI for the Education Market.

Picks from the conference schedule:

• Seminar 03T - Sun Microsystems
  Tuesday 8:00am - 2:30pm (Off-Site Tour)
  
  
• Virtual Desktops: 60 Percent Cheaper, but Are They Worth It?
  Gerard Flynn, Thomas Hoover
  Wednesday 3:50pm - 4:40pm (Korbel Ballroom 4A/B)
  
  
• Deploying and Managing Desktop Virtualization for University Students and Faculty
  Jeff Cunningham
  Wednesday 4:55pm - 6:10pm (Hall F, Table 65)
  
  
• "I'm Thin and Green": Reducing the Desktop Carbon Footprint While Offering Anywhere, Anytime Computing Services
  Richard Toeniskoetter
  Thursday 8:10am - 9:00am (Korbel Ballroom 1E/F)
  
  
• It Is About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright Right
  Lawrence Lessig
  Thursday 9:30am - 11:00am (Wells Fargo Theater)
  
  
• Sun Microsystems, An EDUCAUSE Gold Partner - Project Wonderland and the Age of Immersive Education
  Kevin Roebuck
  Thursday 2:20pm - 3:10pm (Korbel Ballroom 3B)

Thinning out process for the existing OOo user interface has started. Focus for OOo 3.3 will be on Impress. Please find the October status update presentation for Project Renaissance at the OOo Wiki (1 MB).

Feedback welcome.

Best regards,

Project Renaissance Team

The OpenOffice.org conference will start in a few days. Two cappuccino and one espresso, per favore :-)

The OOo User Experience Team will give two presentations and two workshops:

Wednesday: (11-04)

• 12:15 PM: Project Renaissance - Designing a new user interface for OpenOffice.org; Building; Palazzo dei Sette; Room: Sette 3; (Andreas Bartel, Frank Loehmann)

Thursday:  (11-05)

• 11:15 AM: Getting usagetracking data, technical and security aspects and a look in the future how to provide the data; Building: Palazzo dei Sette; Room: Sette 1; (Frank Mau, Frank Loehmann)
• 04:15 PM: UX Workshop I - The role and the methods of user experience in product design
  Building: Palazzo dei Sette, Room: Sette 1 (Andreas Bartel)
  
• 05:15 PM: Workshop II - User Experience Done "Live" Based on Expertise and Usage Data
  Building: Palazzo dei Sette, Room: Sette 1 (Christoph Noack, Frank Loehmann)
  

We are calling for topics for the second UX workshop. So everybody who wants to attend please give us input what you want us to discuss at the workshop. Up till now, nobody officially responded to our annoucement earlier this week.

We'll see us at the OpenOffice.org conference.

Best regards,

OpenOffice.org User Experience Team

The OpenOffice.org conference will start in a few days. It's high time to prepare for the stay - e.g. by consuming Italian style food and delicious coffee specialties. Today, I've added the second entry in my little series of "OOo logo interpretations": Two cappuccino and one espresso, per favore! :-)


Do you think I'm idling at the moment? If yes, then please consider to keep us running by submitting ideas to our workshop...


Up till now, nobody officially responded to our annoucement earlier this week. Maybe the reason is that we are question and issue free with regard to usability - which would be really great. But I really see the necessity for support when working with our software, trying extensions, reading websites, noticing user requests etc. Please, take that opportunity by either contacting us directly, or adding your ideas and questions to the wiki page.

I'm waiting for your input. Most presumably, I'll be awake for some more hours - I really had to consume the drinks mentioned above ;-)

We'll see us at the OpenOffice.org conference. I'm really much looking forward...

Christoph

Project Renaissance has created a special spreadsheet with the Impress User Feedback Data.

This spreadsheet is easier to use than the full version (no filtering needed) and will be used for the thinning out process of the Impress user interface.

The spreadsheet provides data for:

• Shortcuts
• Menu Entries
• Toolbars
  
• and new: A list of not called events

Furthermore a new event analysis (20 prev/next events) for:

• Undo
• Text
• Position and Size dialog
  

Best regards,

The Renaissance Team

The OpenOffice.org guys are doing some interesting analysis as part of their Project Renaissance UI improvement project. This click map caught my eye this week (click to see the whole thing):

More information on what they're doing can be found over on the GullFOSS Blog.

Hi everyone,

the User Experience Team currently prepares a workshop - which requires your participation to make it a "real" workshop :-)

Are you a developer in the context of OpenOffice.org? Great! Will you be attending the OpenOffice.org Conference 2009 in Orvieto, Italy? Even better!

You and everyone interested in User Experience (UX) design are invited to participate in this UX workshop.

Bring your questions which have impact on usability to be worked on "live" - supported by the members of the User Experience team. Together we will identify potential issues and develop promising interaction designs to even better satisfy your users' needs.

Something for you? Please read on in the OpenOffice.org Wiki.


We'll be glad if you join!

Christoph

A couple of slides to show the architecture and new features of Sun VDI 3.1:

// republished by Tanweer Ahmad

The Renaissance Project has started the announced thinning out process of the Impress user interface.

The goal of this process is to improve the most common interactions for Impress 3.3. This process is based on data from the User Feedback Program, customer interviews, surveys and usability issues.

The following visualization of the most clicked icons on toolbars of Impress 3.1 is a good point to start this process. A larger version of this click map can be found on the User Feedback Program home page.

More details, visualizations and reports will follow soon. 

Best regards,

The Project Renaissance Team

The user feedback program is still running and provides tons of data about what features are being used by our users in real live. This usage data is used within Project Renaissance.

The updated version from October now consists of five times more samples than the last version.  The spreadsheet provides separated data for Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw and a summary for all applications.

A visualization of this data for the Impress user interface and additional reports will follow later this week.

Best regards

Frank

The Prague xDesign team and Usability labs conducted a usability study for Java ME SDK. Read the product teams blog  to learn more about what they thought of the experience (and dont miss the pictures :) 

Weitere Infos zum Vortrag

Those of you who tested the Renaissance prototypes may have also responded to the survey that popped up afterwards. All in all, there were 1596 complete responses. (There were approx 1800, but the others were not complete) Thanks to Frank's hard work, the results have been compiled, evaluated and presented in a Calc file, however, omitting the comments from the text boxes which sometimes contained personal information that cannot legally be made public. (This has proven to be a continual problem with text boxes, so we are hoping to avoid this dilemma in future surveys by coming up with a solution that will comply with European data privacy laws and let us present all the data). The results in the Calc file be viewed on the Renaissance wiki.

Here are the results from three of the statements in the survey. Just to make you curious to see more ;-)

53% answered that they agree or agree totally that the current version of OpenOffice.org need a UI redesign. 32% answered that they disagree or disagree totally. This tendency supports the idea of project Renaissance.

66% responded that they agree or agree totally with this statement about the prototypes, whereas only 14% said they disagree or disagree totally. That means, that in these early stages of the project, conformity with user expectations is pretty good. From the comments (see Calc file), the live previews for formatting changes seem to have been especially well received.

Aside from the "Neutral" responses, the "Agrees" vs "Disagrees" are about equal. That shows that the prototypes don't yet have a polished UI (which was never in scope for the prototypes up till now) and that there are still too many clicks necessary to complete tasks.

The fact that there are still too many clicks is okay, because this was to be expected. We had planned to address exactly that by way of the OOo Improvement program data. Frank Loehmann has begun to analyze this user feedback data under the aspect of performing the most common tasks and will report on his findings when they are ready. The idea is to figure out how to reduce the number of mouse clicks or keyboard actions on the way to completing a task in the OpenOffice.org office suite. Stay tuned!

Thank you to everyone who filled out the survey. We really appreciate the feedback. Please continue to support our step by step effort to reach an improved UI.

The Renaissance Team

Question: What's happening in Project Renaissance at the moment?
Answer: The team answers frequently asked questions!

After our first prototyping phase, a lot of questions have been raised concerning the goals of Project Renaissance and its current state. After spending an incredible amount of time to address these comments individually, we now know about the commonly asked questions on mailing lists, in personal mails or in blog comments.

These questions have been collected and discussed with all the people involved in Project Renaissance, so you may consider these answers to be somehow official. You can find them on our fully revised FAQ page (link below).

But, plain text is missing a personal touch... So I'm very happy to announce that the FAQ page also features a video with Florian Effenberger (OpenOffice.org Marketing Co-Lead) who interviews Andreas Bartel (Project Renaissance). Enjoy it!


So check out the Project Renaissance Frequently Asked Questions in the OpenOffice.org Wiki!

And please: If somebody has answers with regard to Project Renaissance, please guide him to our FAQ page or just drop a message at the ux-ui mailing list (ui@ux.openoffice.org)! Thanks!

And now? The next few days we will publish more information about the current state of User Feedback data. Stay tuned ... and have a nice day!

Christoph

>>> Fwd >>>

Der Dokumentarfilm »Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work« wird auf der 13. GI-Fachtagung »Informatik und Schule – INFOS 2009« an der Freien Universität Berlin aufgeführt. Gezeigt wird der Film an der FU am 21. September 2009 um 18:00 Uhr im Hörsaal 1a der Rost-/Silberlaube, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, Berlin-Dahlem; im Anschluss findet eine Diskussion mit den Filmemachern statt. Der Film gehört zur Eröffnung der Konferenz, die ihr 25-jähriges Bestehen in Berlin begeht. Und er passt zum diesjährigen Motto: Zukunft braucht Herkunft.

Der 80-minütige Dokumentarfilm von Silvia Holzinger und Peter Haas porträtiert den deutsch-amerikanischen Informatikpionier und Gesellschaftskritiker Joseph Weizenbaum. In Berlin geboren, verließ Joseph Weizenbaum Deutschland 1936 und kehrte nach über 60 Jahren dorthin zurück. Der Film ist zugleich die erzählte persönliche Lebensreise des 85-jährigen „Rebellen“ und die Geschichte einer Jahrhunderterfindung, die des Computers.

“Der Film eröffnet gleichsam unsere Konferenz, die ihr 25-jähriges Bestehen in Berlin begeht. Er passt zum diesjährigen Motto: Zukunft braucht Herkunft” sagt Bernhard Koerber, Leiter der Tagung vom Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaften und Psychologie, der die Filmemacher an die Freie Universität Berlin eingeladen hat.

Von Joseph Weizenbaum heißt es, er habe das Geschichtenerzählen in die Wissenschaft zurückgebracht. Im Film erzählt der alte Herr, der unter Informatikern zur Kultfigur geworden ist, sein Leben in Anekdoten und Exkursen. Er berichtet, wie er zum Professor am renommierten Massachusetts Institute of Technology ernannt wurde und wie es zu »ELIZA« kam, seinem wohl bekanntesten Beitrag auf dem Gebiet der Informatik. Der Zuschauer erfährt auch sehr Persönliches über den Gesellschaftskritiker und nimmermüden Mahner.

»Wir durften unseren Film bislang an mehr als 40 Orten präsentieren. Mit unserem Digitalen Kino in der Hochschule knüpfen wir an eine alte Tradition an und verstehen uns als Kulturbrücke zwischen Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft! Der Film hat seinen Weg in unzählige Schulen, Hochschulen und Medienzentren gefunden«, so Silvia Holzinger und Peter Haas, die für den unabhängig produzierten Film 2007 den Wolfgang von Kempelen Preis für Informatikgeschichte erhielten.

Die Veranstaltung findet bei freiem Eintritt statt, und ausdrücklich lädt die Freie Universität auch interessierte Zuschauer ein, die nicht an der Tagung teilnehmen.

Die Website zum Film bietet viele zusätzliche Materialen zum Download: www.ilmarefilm.org.

Weitere Informationen

<<<<

mehr auf mprove

Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure 3.1 (VDI 3.1) is in early-access. Please check out the new version and help us to get the missing bits and pixels into the right spots.

> Quick Overview
> Preliminary Documentation
> Announcement and Download

Quelle: www.hamburgs-stadtteile.de

Am Freitag 11.9. laden Silpion IT Solutions und der 13. Stock zur Sommerparty ein. Beginn 12 Uhr Mittags! bis Open-End.

• Event bei Xing
• Alternativ über den 13. Stock

Ach ja, Sun VDI wird auch gezeigt.  cu _Matthias.

This article is about reducing complexity with a knife, scissors, and some tape. These tools already indicate that I am talking about RL! Well, in fact you can cut all the wires of your power adaptors to simplify your life, but I do recommending this right now. The problem at hand is a TV remote -- I can hear your aahs! Too many remote controls with too many functions, too tiny buttons, too easy to get lost, confusing labels and to sum it up: not suited to the task. My user population is an 80-yrs old lady with a telly hooked up to the cable; no special equipment like VCR, DVD, AUX 1-3 or SAT. Not to mention HD recorders, or TiVO with timeshift functionality. In my opinion it is even difficult for an educated engineer to use any remote control properly, but at 80 years you come from a totally different background to say the least, and your mental abilities are no longer at 100%. Usage errors are frequent -- and the concept of Undo or Home is not available.

As said, my approach reduces the likelihood of user errors by making dangerous actions impossible to trigger:

http://www.23hq.com/mprove/photo/4903842

I find my design also superior to the competition because in terms of robustness you cannot remove the paper shield by accident.

(also http://om.ly/Ipvj)

Other special remote controls aim to address a limited eyesight of the user by making everything larger:

http://www.23hq.com/mprove/photo/4903784
They shouldn't have stopped here. Clear wording is preferred. But this is no news if you are familiar with accessibility guidelines. On the other hand, this is the first remote that offers a function to call a taxi -- I call that a unique selling point!
I think different shapes of the buttons is also a good idea, because touch becomes more important if you cannot see so well anymore; or if it's quite dark in your living room with the home entertainment system. Though in the example above, channel and volume controls are too similar to get used to them without taking a look all the time.

[originally published as a User Experience Forum Newsletter #28 | Join Xing]

Since we have been rather silent lately, some might think that not much is happening in the project anymore. Therefore I would like to give all those who are interested a short update about what else, besides prototyping, keeps us busy.

In addition to going through gazillions of feedback regarding the prototypes on different channels, thinking and discussing further UX engineering initiatives, analyzing the data collected using a new, office productivity specific version of the IsoMetrics usability questionnaire, there are two university projects that we give advice to in parallel.

A study project team at the University of Osnabrueck, Department of Work and Organizational Psychology, has been working in the context of Project Renaissance since April 2009. This spring semester, the students were busy with getting into the basics of UX engineering from a theoretical and a practical perspective. Their goal for the first half of the project was to design alternative solutions of how to handle charts in OpenOffice.org Impress.

In July, the team under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Kai-Uwe Hamborg visited us in Hamburg and the students were given the opportunity to present their redesign ideas to the UX team and the whole Imress team. We had a great discussion about current usability problems and how the designs proposed by the students might resolve the issues. For further details, please visit the project’s Wiki page. In the coming winter term, the students will be busy conducting a usability study in order to validate the designs. We will keep you updated about their progress.

The second project was also initiated this spring with the support of Prof. Hamborg who is by the way one of the creators of the IsoMetrcs usability questionnaire. Our goal was to collect detailed information about the usage of office productivity applications in a university context. An intern of the Department of Work and Organizational Psychology conducted interviews to collect information regarding the tasks the students use office tools for. The task inventory was then used as input for a survey. This survey was conducted in several universities using the freely available LimeSurvey software which is also used by several OpenOffice.org teams. Data collection was just finished, so for now no detailed information is available. They only data that is available at the moment is that over a thousand students participated in the study, OpenOffice.org seems to not to be the leading (by numbers) office productivity tool in university context and Linux, as an operating systems, seems to be ahead of Apple Mac. A detailed analysis is what follows and as soon as the data has been processed, results will be posted here or in the Wiki of Project Renaissance.

The results of the cooperation directly support Project Renaissance. The data from the user feedback program gives us a clue about frequently used commands but with little task context, whereas detailed information from the task inventory survey will help us to map usage frequency on tasks. In addition, the study project might give us the opportunity to validate a few specific design solutions (e.g. sidepanes) with users. However, this is up to the study project team.

Best,

Andreas

service design is interactive design meets industrial design meets advertising meets interior design meets graphic design meets sequential art. An interview with Pater Fossick by Paula Wallace.

/via Matthias Schrader

Sun Ray 2, Sun Ray 2FS, and the Sun Ray 270, together with the Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager 1.1, are once again certified for VMware View. The latest tests against VMware View 3.1.1 run smoothly.

Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager 1.1

/All articles with tag 'srvc'

Do you notice the difference? No? Good. Good design is when you do not notice it. You probably haven't recognized that the prompt icon has changed compared to the icon that was used for nearly a decade.

The former icon still had the original Sun purple on a beveled button (the latter a usability issue in its own, because there is nothing to click). And even though the Sun Ray 1 is still on duty at many sites, it has long been replaced by a couple of successor models. Hence the icon of the tilted thin client device is not appropriate anymore.

The new set of status icons will be part of the upcoming SRSS 4.2 release. The entire set is presented and explained at SRSS Troubleshooting Wiki.

Thanks to Jörg for the good cooperation, and welcome to the blogosphere.

The prototype phase didn't end on July 4 after as originally planned. It is still going strong and eliciting a great deal of enthusiasm and feedback. In this blog post we want to provide answers to some of the negative comments we've received. Of course we have been thrilled by all the positive comments, too, but the nay-sayers have been vocal, so we need to be vocal, too.

Some of the negative comments posted after in our July status update post were:

a) Oh no! Not like Microsoft!
b) My monitor gets wider not higher (horizontal vs. vertical UI)
c) Do not copy ribbons. Innovate do not imitate!
d) Why are you killing menus?
e) I/Everyone hate/s 'ribbons'!
f) Make it optional. Keep classic interface as an option.
g) 'Ribbons' are only for beginners/newbies.
h) Professionals (like me) are distracted by the new interface/'ribbons' because I/they already know were to find the desired functionality.
i) It is so ugly!

Before providing answers, we want to remind everyone of our goals and a tidbit about doing such development work in public.

Our mission:
“Create a User Interface so that OpenOffice.org becomes the users' choice not only out of need but also out of desire”

and our project goal:
"... to know and to understand our users as they are, and to help them accomplish what they want to, by providing efficient access to valuable functionality through a desirable user interface."

Please trust us that we will not implement anything that has not been tested and validated in real-life situations.

Working in the "open" can be tough. It seems that everyone under the sun already knows what we should do. Regardless of what we present we will always get at least one comment saying our idea is wrong/stupid (See a, c, e). The team always has to keep in mind that many comments are not from average users of OOo. The UX team has to weigh all comments carefully. Presenting a mid-fidelity prototype means risking that people do not understand the purpose and think the next product will look like this (i).

We also created a survey, that shows up when the prototype gets closed. (This requires Java 6 installed, because the system's web browser is called). The survey has more questions now since last Friday. New Prototype, new survey. ;-) The results of the survey are different from the negative comments on GullFoss. We think because those users who fill out the survey give the prototype a test drive at least for a moment. But who reads our blogs and tries the prototype? The average OOo user? No! So only real live testing can show us if a new UI is suiteable.

Developing a user interface (UI) for office sorftware is not an easy job, because this software is used by unique users with all skill levels and a huge range of tasks. Nobody wants to be a beginner, at least not for long :-) , so we have to focus on intermediate users while not distracting expert users.

When you analyse office documents, you see that most users only use a very basic set of features out of what OOo offers. So it seems that we are already done, because OOo could do so much more. Really? But why do those office documents look so basic even if they are made by experienced users? We only know a few people who are good in techniques and design at the same level. So users should concentrate on what they are the experts in: the document content, and not have to design/define/layout each and everything inside their document on their own.

Most expert users stated that they already know where to find the fucntionality (h) and that no new UI is needed, so that only beginners (g) would take any advantage of a new UI. We want to provide rich formated document pieces like tables, header, footer, indexes, etc. in galleries, so that the user can easily choose from professionally designed ones. This allows all users to create powerful and beautiful documents.We need some kind of new UI to offer those galleries.

This new UI needs a home. So the question was where to place it. The reading direction in western countries is from top left to bottom right and users are used to finding the interface on top of the document area. Furthermore the height available for a bar on, e.g. the left side, is too low for the amount of functions, especially on small displays like netbooks. Also we did not want to spread the functionality all around the application. So the team decided to go with a horizontal on top even if monitors are getting wider (b) these days. Most users use the software as it is out of the box, so we have to focus on a good default. But  there is nothting to say that the user can't configure it to fit their specific screen or work needs. It is a clear requirement that the new UI must support a minimized visualisation (fold open or change to float) and it should support a vertical visualization in a second step. Configuration possibilities could be added in future versions.

Our prototype did not kill the menus (d). They are still there! Even the new prototype, which is in the making, will keep at least the same structure (File, Edit, View, Insert, Format...) users are used to these days, but it will provide new graphical possibilites where we need it to provide rich formatted document pieces. The next prototype will also implement a context-sensitive interface approach.

We do not want to copy the ribbon (c) interface. But what makes the 'ribbon'? The tabbed interface? No. On top navigation? No. Rich formated document pieces in galleries? Maybe, but templates are not new and other products did provide those possibilities earlier. Do we have to keep the classical interface as a second interface? This would mean that it has to be maintained as well as the new one. So maybe it is a good idea to offer this as an OOo extension, if really required by users (f).

We hope that we provided some answers to comments/questions posted on the previous post on Project Renaissance.

Please stay tuned for the new prototype being released by end of next week!

Best regards,

The Renaissance Team

It was really interesting to follow the media in the last days where discussion around the latest Renaissance prototype took place. And many many people commented on the blog from Frank a colleague of mine and other public sources.

First of all i am not really involved in this project, i am more an interested observer and see the opportunity in a new UI to improve the extensions infra-structure as well. But hey that is a different story.

The noise signals that people don't like an interface like ribbon or better where concepts similar to ribbon are used. I am not sure i have my own opinion but i agree at least that OpenOffice.org need it's own identity. It should be known as easy to use, highly productive and intuitive office suite with all the well known advantages (platform independent, standardized document format, free in terms of license costs for end users, etc.). And not only as a free alternative or clone of a well known other office application. The are many things that we will probably never achieve in the same quality. And the questions is if we need it or if it is maybe enough to make that what we have and what we can better, faster and easier to use? Means provide the tons of features in a new fresh way that people find it and can make use of it. How many office users can really work with styles, data pilots, etc.? I am sure you know what i mean.

Anyway i think the discussed prototype was not intended to demo an early development snapshot of a future office. No i think the intention was to experiment with concepts, give users the chance to play live with different settings and see what works best. And yes one thing of the prototype is the new toolbar concept that is similar to ribbon. I personally think that it is not bad to reuse ideas or concepts that are already accepted. Like it or not ( i personally don't like it very much but that is unimportant because i am no typical office user) but ribbon is based on a very good research work. And the Renaissance team planned their work based on the user data of a survey and they don't put simply their own opinions or preferences in a prototype. I recommend to all people who don't like the shown toolbar concept to join the UX mailing list, discuss it with the team and bring in your own ideas. It's even better as simply complaining publicly. Where do you have the chance to actively participate in such a planning ...?

Also surprising was that all the other good concepts and features were a little bit lost in all this blame war around the toolbar concept. What about the live previews, the drag and drop feature in the sorter view, the 3DView that shows probably one approach usable for small devices ... Many many other things are in the prototype, maybe you should give the prototype a further try with a new fresh attitude, free to explore the other stuff in it. And again if you feel competent to help in a constructive way join the UX team and bring in your ideas, your man power and help to make OpenOffice.org the best office suite of choice.

The prototype shows ideas and concepts and give you the chance to play with them live nothing more. It doesn't show the OpenOffice.org from tomorrow nor does it mean that the new OpenOffice.org UI will be implemented in Java. But Java was a perfect choice for the really fast prototyping and what i have heart the developers really liked it and especially the fast progress they made with the tooling around.

Prototyping is really a good approach to test concepts and get an impression how things work live. All the feedback is very important and i am sure that it will help the team for the future work. But as i mentioned there is much more in the prototype that needs attention and is worse to play with and where feedback is also welcome.

Please don't misinterpret a prototype and make too much noise about only one part of the prototype that of course is very visible ;-) There is again much more in it!!!

The prototyping phase, to create a new user interface for OpenOffice.org, has ended last week. See our monthly project Renaissance status presentation for July and try the prototype yourself (Java 6 required). It is not only about Impress, we are working on a UI for the entire OOo. You will be asked to give feedback when closing the prototype. Make use of it!

Note: The prototype is a mid-fidelity one. So no polished UI. We just want to be able to test the interaction. Content of the toolbars and the group labeling are subject to change. They show just what can be done in this prototype. This allows us to create UX tests that can be run with current OOo and the prototypes.

Best regards,

Frank 

Jeremy Ashley, Vice President, Applications User Experience
with Misha Vaughan, Architect, Applications User Experience

I managed to leave a rainy San Francisco only to get wetter in the humidity of Orlando, Florida. The conference was spread out across the exceptionally large Orange County Conference Center. This year the Applications User Experience team was running a number of presentations:

• User Experience Innovations, Jeremy Ashley & Patanjali Venkatacharya


• The Future of Enterprise is with the Mobile Workforce, Lynn Rampoldi –Hnilo


• How the JD Edwards EnterpriseOne User Interface Continues to Evolve, Madhuri Kolhatkar


• Oracle Applications Usability Testing, Velynda Prakhantree

We also had an eye-tracking system set up in the demogrounds on the main exhibit hall to measure the usability of two Web sites for customers: usableapps.oracle.com and oracle.com. Our new Tobii system allowed users to walk up and get calibrated for eye-tracking in just a few seconds.

Fig 1. Michal Kopec and Joyce Ohgi demonstrate Tobii eyetracker at COLLABORATE09, Orlando, Florida, May 2009.

Our walk-up users responded to the uncanny way their eyeballs were represented on the screen -- you see these two animated white dots peering at you. Once they got beyond that, we managed to gather some great data on how users search for information on content-based Web pages.

One thing I always enjoy doing at these conferences is walking around the exhibition hall floor when few other people are there first thing in the morning. I chatted with several consulting organizations on the COLLABORATE09 exhibit hall floor. I talked to them about their end users and feedback they have received on user experiences of Oracle Applications.

The feedback fell into three different categories that can be described as a pyramid of issues (Fig 2).

1. Widget-level issues were at the bottom of the pyramid and the biggest issue. This kind of issue is a specific concern about a particular feature on a page. An example is the need for “row-level validation on tables” from JD Edwards. I would guess that more people have their individual wish-list items that were at a component level. The majority of feedback fell into this category.

2. The training time needed for some of the products ranks as the second biggest issue. Customers were looking for ways to get their end users up-to-speed faster. This is especially challenging when trying to deliver training to end users across the current suite of applications.

3. Consumer-level user experience was the third category of feedback, and the smallest. In general, customers would ask, “Why isn’t it as easy as some of the other things I use?” For example, “Why doesn’t search work like Google?” Another request is for a purchasing experience similar to Amazon.

Fig 2. The pyramid of user experience issues.

Attending COLLABORATE is always a fascinating experience, because we get to see a broad section of our users all in one place, rather than the individual sessions we run in a usability lab. You get a much better feeling of how the wind is blowing for customers.

As always at COLLABORATE, we experienced a vibrant user community who is very enthusiastic about our products and equally enthusiastic about giving their feedback.