Paulo José - Brainstorm

Updating...

2011-03-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody,

Currently I'm working on some few issues concerning icons.

Proposal for "Saving Information" icons in Statusbar

My fisrt email about this issue is last February dated. But recently I received some most special feedback, then I resume this issue.

First iteration:

Feedback:

Style 1 with 3th symbol (upper right) is the best option. [1] [2]
Orange is a good choice for indicating "new", since yellow would be hard to eyes. [1] [2]
Smaller size (14x11px) fits better to the statusbar's size. [1] [2]
A new version is proposed to match the page's zoom icons style in statusbar. [2]

Second iteration:

Here I'm keeping just the previous Style 1, with 2th and 3th symbols and a different outline. A document symbol's version with gradients is included. The Styles 1 and 2 are 9px large (matching the page's zoom icon), otherwise the 3 and 4, 10px large.

Feedback:

10px large seems better. [1]
It should keep the differences to other icons. [1]
Transparency for the normal icon is proposed to keep the "status" look 'n feel. [1]

Third iteration:

Here stays just the third style, the transparency proposal is included, as well some improvements on the asterisk symbol. It also includes a new icon proposal to give feedback of saving completion. The idea is an icon showed while few seconds after the saving completion to give a little feedback to users.

I'm still waiting for feedback. ;-)

Mimetype icons to LibreOffice's toolbar

The problem seems to be the fact of mimetype icons don't match to other icons in LibreOffice's toolbar. So I made a Tango style version of them. So Bernhard give some good feedback on it, concerning on the no-shadow choice and size. Based on it, I made more 2 versions.

In above image you can see the
a) proposal 1 with Tango style icons and floor's shadows,
b) proposal 2 with Galaxy style icons without shadows,
c) proposal 3 with Galaxy style icons and 1px bottom shadow.

I'm still waiting for feedback. ;-)

To switch between Tango and Galaxy icons (and Small and Big sizes), just go to Tools -> Options -> View -> Icon size and style.

One banner more...

2011-02-21T20:48:00.000-08:00

Oops, I did it again! I mean, I did one banner more to The Challenge (now it's appear in my blog's sidebar too).

(Click to see it bigger)
SVG Source file: LibreOffice-The-Challenge-Banner-Paulo-v2-dark

It uses the really great Nik's cartoons. Thank you Nik!

Actually I did it yesterday. I should do the light version today, but my classes just started and I had no time anymore... Now my clock marks 1:44 AM and I'll need wake up ~7:00 AM.

Long seep to you. :P

Updating...

2011-02-19T19:43:00.000-08:00

Well, the last week was really a full-time working time to me, most because my university research came back to the road. So here is an insight of what I'm doing.

LibreOffice wallpapers

Thanks to feedback by the LibreOffice's Marketing Team, I improved my first wallpapers with the LibreOffice's Initial Mimetype Icons, normalizing the logo and increasing their size. Many thanks to they! Finally, I skipped from GIMP's post-production and re-edited everything in Blender's Node Compositor.

Wallpapers 1: 1920x1080px Widescreen (16:10):

Wallpapers 1: 1600x1200px Fullscreen (4:3):

Wallpapers 2: 1920x1080px Widescreen (16:10):

Wallpapers 2: 1600x1200px Fullscreen (4:3):

The Challenge's Banners

The LibreOffice Challenge: EUR 50 000 for the Foundation. Donate now for an effective, efficient, transparent, and inclusive community!

This a actual challenge and I'm sure it's achieve success! :) But the Website Mail Listing guys are needing some help with banners to promote The Challenge through the web, so these are my 2 cents for now:

First banner proposal (Dark and Light versions in Medium Rectangle size (300x250px):

SVG Source files on Wiki: Dark version | Light Version. I think you need the fonts Purisa and Droid Sans already installed to open the SVG files correctly.

The idea is keep it simply, attractive and nice. The button Donate is not a button actually, but if we can use HTML and CSS to implement these banners, they could be... The banners was not commented by Design Team yet, so you should take a look on the mail listing before use them.

I'll do more proposals, since more banners in different formats and goals are highly needed with some urgency. There are 29 days left to The Challenge's end, so please, donate!

My Research: Communicability Analysis on User Tests

I've been part of a research group in my University by approximately one year with 3 colleagues. Our two teachers, Dr. Cristiane Nobre and Elisa Tuller are usability's esperts and both they drove our research to a high level of quality and results.

Our main work was study and analyze the previous version of our University's website and propose a new version, correcting usabilities faults and asking the community feedback. We was too new in this task, so our teachers followed our research closer and helped it a lot. The first half of 2010 was filled by online surveys creation, user tests recording and many interviews with representative people from UFSJ. Both teachers and students helped to create the new website with their feedback. The second one, filled by many hard work to analysis all these material and conclude the research. I'm not sure if our work will be presented in a paper, since it's so much Case's study, but I'm hope keep learning so much as before.

Now we are learning how to apply the Communicability Evaluation Method on user tests (it's a kind of Semiotic Inspection). Basically, we need to watch our past video recordings and identify all communicability's ruptures between Designer's intent and final User's perception.

By sample, there's a menu on a web page, and the user should click into this menu to complete a determined task. By some reason, the user don't click in this menu. It usually indicates a rupture in user understanding of our system, and the Designer task is find the reason of this rupture and tag this moment appropriately in the recording. The tags we can use are generally phrases said by the users in his mind, thoughts actually. They can be "Where is it?", "What is it?", "Why is it not working?", "No, thanks." (the user choose by a different solution, but the Designer preferred one), and many others.

We are using Morae software from TechSmith, an proprietary solution. It take a while to analyze all recordings, most because we're absorbing the concepts yet. But the actual difficult part of this process is to adapt the tags to web context. They was initially done for software context and it's clear to me how they not fit very well to the user's interaction on web pages.

We are thinking about the possibly to create new tags to this context and looking for related papers . If you know something (any interesting paper, maybe) that could be helpful to us, please let me know.

Other projects

I think some projects - that I've been part - are in a break. They are the Field Dialog, the Presentation Templates to Impress and the Mimetype Icons for the tool bar on LibreOffice's UI. Also Benjamin Horst invited me to join in a project related to a tabbed interface and a dashboard concept to LibreOffice. I have no idea when I'll be able to resume these projects, but I wish do it soon. :)

LibreOffice Wallpapers

2011-02-15T13:11:00.000-08:00

Hi guys, here we go with more 3D stuff:

Update (16 feb 2011): The second wallpaper was updated to correct some incorrect vertexes on 3D meshes. The most perceptive error was in the triangle on top right corner of the Base icon. Now they all look fine. :D

[Blender + Gimp] - The PNG files are huge (almost 1MB each one), so here you find JPG versions: Wallpaper 1 - Wallpaper 2

These are my first wallpapers since I started to play with 3D models of LibreOffice new icon set. The first one have no much perspective and the light source come from the backside. It's the because icons have less saturated color. The second still have the back light source, but this arrangement and camera perspective make the scene darker. Please, make your choice. :P

Design team, sorry for change the color of the symbol and the "Document Foundation" text. It was done to make them seem more native in this "light style", and in mean time empathize the Libre Office name too . :)

I hope you like it!

LibreOffice in Blender

2011-02-12T16:14:00.000-08:00

There are some years that I work with Blender, an open source 3D program. I love to play with 3D, making an simple idea become true. Although, my first try to mix Blender and LibreOffice was put a bit of the Blender's User Interface in the LibreOffice's User Interface.

So today I thought "Why not put a few of LibreOffice in Blender too?" Yeah! Here is a try:

It's just a 3D model of the Writer document icon from LibreOffice's new branding. For now I made it for fun, but maybe it can be useful to marketing stuff or something else, I don't know. :)

WIP: Bachianas Brasieliras. No1 - v.0.1

2011-02-11T19:56:00.000-08:00

I keep doing progress in Bachianas Brasileiras templates. Last days I was experiencing an apparently rare bug of Impress, which forbid me to save more than one background in a only Open Document Presentation (ODP format).

But now I discovered a way to solve partially the problem [see my comment] and already made the first version (still Work In Progress - version 0.1). Because the bug, Impress can make few mistakes opening the file, so be patient when trying it.

Download from LibreOffice Wiki page

All the backgrounds are in 1600x1200px PNG format. The first color theme is Green 1, and the next will be Blue 2, Orange Accent and Purble 1 - all picked from the current LibreOffice palette. For the typography, my options are limited since I don't know how to include (or even if it's possible) a font source in the template file yet. So my choice was the beautiful an sans-serifed Ubuntu's font. There's something special in this font that wins me since the first time.

I ask your opinion to correct and improve the work already done and direct the next steps of this Work In Progress, which probably will the create bullet images, slides with footnotes and include some other cool resources. By the way, do you usually make use of bullets? I generally don't use them in my presentations.

Finally I need to say Thank You to jumbo444, who tell me about the Master Page feature, which helps me a lot!

This work is under the Commons Creative license. Stay free to use/modify/share it as you want, keeping original credits of course.

Bachianas No1 - LibreOffice Templates

2011-02-03T16:00:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone,

My name is Paulo José, a 20 years old Brazilian (Opa brasucas!). I'm starting this blog to share my learning process while a -recent- member of the LibreOffice design team. Here I'll try to focus on my interesting topics in the computing world as Design, OpenSource, Usability, Accessibility, User Experience and Computer Graphics.

This is my first words on my first personal blog, so I wanna make it too good as can be done! So I'm happy to show you a little piece of design that I'm working in. They are few simple templates for LibreOffice Impress, using our new branding colors suggested by Christoph Noack. I call them the "Bachianas Brasileiras No.1" (I explain after the break).

Everything began when Kevin Soviero sent a message to the LibreOffice design mail listing suggesting we could make new Impress templates. I love the idea, because I usually have no time to make a good looking presentation when I need one... So I'm on my vacations now and there are more time to make these things finally.

The name "Bachianas Brasileiras No.1" come from some classical songs from my preferred classical musician Heitor Villa Lobos, who lived in the past century. He made some of the greatest pieces of musical art I've ever seen and his Bachianas was mainly inspired by the work of John Sebastian Bach. There are nine Bachianas that I know, each one with some movements like Prelude and Aria. They inspire me very much to create, so I'm planning do more templates...

Now I'm having some problems with the LibreOffice Impress file format. Sadly, I can't to save more than one background in an unique file. I can set it perfectly and save my job, but when I open the file again, its backgrounds faded away, resting only one. If you know how to help me, I'd like to how how solve this issue (bug?).

And about the artwork itself, I hope you like them! :) Soon I'm able to create the template files, I'll upload and share them under the Commons Creative license.

Wish me good luck! :D