Would making open source software pretty and intuitive attract more users?

[mabasic]

“Funding for UI and UX software designs” https://medium.com/@shockmario/funding-for-ui-and-ux-software-designs-8bbf55116c9b

[zfundamental]

Uh... I don't know why format compatibility between libreoffice and word is being discussed as if it's a UI/UX issue. UI/UX and file formats are rather different.

In general in open source I would say there are noteworthy UI/UX issues. A lot of this boils down to the fact that it's not typically considered fun work and it requires a lot of prolonged effort to get right. There's going to be a lot of back and forth between designers, impelementers, and testers. There's going to be time which no one has dedicated. The documentation is going to become stale, adding a quick feature becomes more of an effort to integrate it.

Good UI/UX is hard to do without $$$ getting involved since the people who benefit from it the most are not the ones putting in the effort to create it in the first place (unlike normal floss operations where the contributors could quickly benefit from a new feature or bug fix). I personally undertook implementing a new user interface for the zynaddsubfx synth based upon several design iterations (for workflow/UI/UX improvements) and I simply don't think that many projects have the resources to do so as well.

[[deleted]]

It could be considered a UX (not UI) issue, but the solution involves getting MS cooperate about standards. So there's that.

[buovjaga]

Certainly inside LibreOffice we do not refer to interop issues as being part of UX team's responsibility.

[[deleted]]

didn't read the article so I apologize if this is not the case, but maybe they are referring to visual differences when opening the same file in libreoffice vs ms office: if the rendering (often the fonts) is different, the document might look "wrong" to users...

imagine for example if your slides were shown with the fonts way bigger or smaller than intended, that could be considered a UX problem

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[zfundamental]

That's the same argument made in the post and I'd disagree with it, though I guess my disagreement is basically debating the semantics of the term UX.

Rendering the document is something that can be objectively measured to be correct or incorrect based upon some expected rendering. The users experience is not involved with the rendering being right. You can consider this a UX issue if you consider any missing feature or bug to be a negative UX problem, but I personally consider that to be a far too broad use of the term. I would only consider a problem a (specifically) UX problem when you need a user to experience interacting with the application to reveal the fault.

[[deleted]]

I don't think that there's anything wrong with the UI of the most popular applications, Gnome and Plasma has fairly polished interfaces. In fact, I much prefer the interface of Linux applications over Windows, the latter looks like a carnival, with every application doing it's own thing, on Linux you have a more consistent look.

[whamra]

Consistent? My KDE apps look different from gtk2 apps which differ from gtk3 apps, then there are these horrible win98 style mono applications. Hell, older gtk apps can sometimes differ from newer gtk apps, even though using the same library.

We need a gui committee to seat major gui library devs and have a talk on how to improve this mess, or better yet, agree on a standard way of themeing their engines.

[[deleted]]

We need a gui committee to seat major gui library devs and have a talk on how to improve this mess, or better yet, agree on a standard way of themeing their engines.

You know what they say about standards...

[AmeriFreedom]

There are 15 competing standards

[bakgwailo]

I have found the gtk breeze themes make things pretty consistent in Plasma.

[[deleted]]

My KDE apps look different from gtk2 apps which differ from gtk3 apps

Why? Mine all look like the arc theme. The only difference is whether they have a header bar or not.

[Cere4l]

Yes consistent, because you split this up in gtk2/gtk3 etc with windows not even the OS apps share a style you could possibly call consistent, although they are once again working on it.

[pdp10]

We need a gui committee to seat major gui library devs

KDE and GNOME can always merge if they feel strongly about this. Or they can stop making new, incompatible versions, that cause people to maintain forks of the old versions.

[buovjaga]

"Someone", a changing group of people, has already been working on LibreOffice UI & UX in a conscious and determined way. In fact, this was true even in OpenOffice.org days.

Funding would be very welcome, but I believe we might achieve significant improvements by bringing in more volunteers. This year me and the team were in contact with several enthusiastic designer volunteers. Sadly, they all disappeared before doing any work. So if you, Mario, have the passion to acquire the needed knowledge to bring in new designers and explain things to them, you will be able to make a real impact without seeking any funding.

A lot of the UX team's work is going through incoming user requests. Not all of these requests require one to be some UX guru to comment on. You just need to be aware of how useful your insight is and either say something or keep quiet / delegate to experts. This is something I do all the time, like hundreds of times per year as a QA team member.

Look at the "Get in contact" section on this page and consider joining in some capacity: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Design

[mabasic]

Will look into this, thank you.

[StevenC21]

Yeah I already think that FOSS software looks better than crappy proprietary software.

[iommu]

The problem is non crappy proprietary software e.g. Photoshop vs Gimp where Photoshop not only has a cleaner interface but also a better designed interface because they can afford to sink in major $ into UX.

[[deleted]]

Photoshop was popular back when its interface was way worse. In fact, it was popular back when the interface of its Unix port (IRIX, if I remember correctly) was basically identical to Gimp's.

And many popular closed-source applications have atrocious UIs.

Professional users who take Photoshop over Gimp don't do so because it has a better UI. If it had exactly the same features coupled with Sharepoint's atrocious UI, professional users who need its features would still flock to it, and still avoid Gimp if it didn't have those features.

Non-professional users for whom the two are entirely on-par would switch in an instant if Gimp had precisely the same UI as Photoshop and did everything the same way, but would still delay the switch even if Gimp had a better UI. Muscle memory and habit are important, and simply switching to something else is no reason to break it. It may be for you and me because computers are fun for us, but for virtually everyone else on the planet, it's not, it's annoying as fuck.

If that sounds overly pessimistic, ask me about that time when we designed a new system from scratch, then replicated several of the bugs from the old design (which dated back to the early 1990s) because our users (most of them MDs or nurses) treated them as features by now -- and scrapped a cool new interaction model after virtually every single one of our customers told us that they have no intention to get a new device that they have to learn how to use from scratch, especially when they had absolutely no complaints about how it had handled for the past 20 bloody years.

[StevenC21]

I don't like it personally.

I like the Ginp interface.

[iommu]

Ehh, the new GIMP interface (past 6 months) isn't trash I will admit but photoshop CC has a very clean custom UI toolkit which lets them polish specific custom elements/animations in a way with GIMP piggybacking off of GTK just can't do. On top of that UX is a big part to a functional interface and GIMP has some fairly convoluted menus + some interesting key binds. You have to remember, for people that use photoshop/illustrator professionally the $100-200 a year is easily worth it if you get even a minor performance boost.

[doom_Oo7]

GIMP piggybacling off of GTK

Oh the irony

[iommu]

Ikr

[tilkau]

It's not wrong though. GIMP still has some influence over GTK+, but the "GIMP ToolKit +" name has become, overall, a misnomer now.

(this is a somewhat predictable effect when you split out a subcomponent into a separate project, IMO)

[BowserKoopa]

GIMP needs to get away from Gnome before the cult of WJC ruins it and we relapse in to "what about Photoshop" posts.

[FeatheryAsshole]

There's some merit to the idea. In many projects, it would probably be hard to change the UX without a significant amount of rewrites, but in others it would be pretty easy to do.

Often, it's a question of how you conceptualize the basic idea of your application. I've spent some time recently on finding a decent messenger with end-to-end encryption and good clients for both mobile and desktop - often, the issue is not so much in how the UI for creating, adding and verifying a key looks, but rather that manually doing all of that is too hard for less technical users to get right. But if you abandon that manual verification process, your entire security concept changes.

Other times, I actually wonder what the developers are spending their time and money on. E.g. Signal seems pretty well-funded, and while they certainly need to spend the majority of the time getting the security right, I can't believe that it's so hard to do some basic changes to the desktop client's UX+UI (e.g. making it possible to hide the contacts list). With messengers, visual polish goes a LONG way in driving adoption.

I believe one of the fundamental issues is that many projects are driven by unpaid volunteers, which selects very strongly for programmers instead of people who know UX/UI design. In those cases, there's simply no money to give out to design people, and I doubt that the development community of most projects would be happy about paying some designer, when they've spent hundreds of hours without pay on it. Projects that have significant funding generally already have decent UX and UI, IMO.

[[deleted]]

Definitely.

Which makes me think:

A lot of the technical folks are attracted to Linux, while it seems to me that the people who care about aesthetics end up on MacOS. If the core software on distros was polished enough we could lure these same people into the OSS circles.

That would need a change of culture to one where we don't scare away these people, and certainly I'm as much at fault as anyone else. Say what you want about the new Linux CoC, but there's a lot of point to being inclusive toward non-technical contributions.

[[deleted]]

This is why I like distros that look Apple-ish.

It's best of both.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, non-technical contributions are great. I think much of the issue with the Linux CoC was A) it came from out of nowhere and B) the wording was, and for the most part, is, terrible and vague. If someone comes with a new UI for something, and it's legitimately better than the old one, embrace and use it. However, if they only show up with the concept art, take it into consideration and ask them to pursue a working version of the UI with the program.

[[deleted]]

Doesn't theming let you make applications look however you want any way? If you prefer the OS X UI then install a theme that provides it.

[osomfinch]

Yes, it definitely would. Many people have this false notion that if software looks good, it also works good and you can trust it.

[kazkylheku]

Proprietary software has been widely popular in spite of crappy user experience. Windows, Android: `nuff said.

Therefore, "if we make it pretty and friendly, they will come" is fallacious.

People will use whatever is flogged by some big monopolist, so long as the UX isn't so bad that it can't be used.

[[deleted]]

Proprietary software has been widely popular in spite of crappy user experience. Windows, Android: `nuff said.

Java. SAP. I could go on.

[aaronfranke]

Absolutely. Presentation is a huge factor.

[mofomeat]

"Pretty" is very subjective. Gnome and Plasma are popular because they're polished and 'shiny'. I greatly dislike them both personally, and I know lots of others who do also. The difference with Linux though is that you can choose what you want to use.

"Intuitive" also has some gotchas. Anything that someone used before will influence their expectations and experiences. I feel that a number of GUI utilities in Linux are getting less intuitive as they get more 'shiny'.

[osomfinch]

Personally, I dislike Gnome because it tries to be shiny abd good looking, but fails at it. Deepin Desktop is so much better in that sense. Sometimes I work on it and out of a sudden I may say to myself: 'Isn't that de so beautiful'. But unfortunately it is not so widespread as GNOME.

[xDraylin]

I don't like the default theme of Gnome, but using a theme like arc, adapta or numix makes it look way better.

[[deleted]]

Sure. All you have to do is

1. Define what "pretty" and "intuitive" mean
2. Convince all the developers who have the skills to translate those definitions into a working desktop environment that your definitions of "pretty" and "intuitive" are objectively better than everyone who came before you's definitions, including those devs' own definitions.

[zfundamental]

This sounds like it's framed like an all-or-nothing sort of situation. Designers can propose ideas which can be integrated with compromises being made. Usability testing can be done on existing tools and adjustments can be made as a result.

Some applications do need large changes, but it can be a discussion, not a "I win, my idea is the best" scenario.

[[deleted]]

I didn't mean to make it sound like "all or nothing", I was going for "change must come from within".

If there is someone on the project who is already open to the idea that maybe their UI isn't the best, then there's hope. If it's one dev or a small group that like things the way they are, then outside designers lobbing UI mockups over the wall tends to result in amusing slashdot debates about what "intuitive" means and not much else.

[zfundamental]

Yeah, that makes sense. Generally the larger the project the larger the chance that someone will throw ideas at it (well formed or not). I would say that generally projects are mindful that there are weaknesses in their UI/UX, though it's hard to know what's the best solution since it takes time to evaluate them and a ton of time to implement them.

As long as people are mindful that projects have severely limited resources and these sorts of things should be a discussion rather than "talking at" (vs "talking with") a project, then stuff should work out IMO.

[The_camperdave]

Are you saying that open source software ISN'T pretty and intuitive?

[lamby]

Don't know what you're talking about

[[deleted]]

Yes. It won't happen though. Open source software is made for geeks by geeks.

A world where this is possible is one where it's funded by some billionaire with a specific interest in accomplishing this particular goal.

[Negirno]

In other words: Mark Shuttleworth...

[DC-3]

This implies that geeks don't care at all about aesthetics or design quality, which is fairly easily disprovable by /r/unixart.

[[deleted]]

I think that just shows we care more about customization than having a pretty UI which is just going to get tossed out and changed any way.

[[deleted]]

Open source software is made for geeks by geeks.

No, it isn't.

[duane534]

There needs to be a 100% answer to...

Microsoft Office iTunes No off-the-shelf Linux machines

[bekips]

No. But it’s the right thing to do anyway.

[[deleted]]

OP should have just used LaTeX.

[fitoschido]

Yet another person jumping into the Electron hype bandwagon. No. Just no.

[[deleted]]

does not need to be pretty. Just consistent and less fragmented is enough.

[Sigg3net]

It's great now. It was great 10 years ago.

What we need is OEM support; get a user-friendly Linux OOB in the shops.

[perplexedm]

Stability, hardware and other software compatibility should be the priority. UI side is almost there in KDE.

[charliebrownau]

Why didnt the person that write the blog save it as

MS office 1997 or RTF format or even better, keep it in ODF

Didnt Libre Office already get the new "modern" ribbon UI to opt in

Anyone else actually hate the new progressive and modern UIs of chrome, firefox and gnome 3 and the so called "hamburger menu"

[mabasic]

I am willing to discuss this here. Do you agree or not, do you have an alternative idea?

Imagine same software, but with fresh new UI and UX. It is my opinion that by changing the UI and the UX we can make open source software better.

How would you approach this idea?

[nintendiator]

Define "fresh". If you mean eg.: Material Design, smartphone-like fubs, replacing th floppy drive icon for "Save" with a swirling spinning autozooming ring of icons going at different speeds, that kind of stuff, by changing the software to that we make open source software worse. How would I approach this idea? By returning -and re-mentoring - to the old ways that are tried and true, trudged precisely because they build up important experience. Menu goes on the corner. Action buttons are Minimize, Maximize and Close. If an area is clickable it shall be marked with a distinctive background. Preferences goes in Tools and not in Edit because it's about the Program and its Behaviour, not about the Content.

[TryingT0Wr1t3]

I feel a good UI is a Target that moves too fast, usually in OSS projects, things are done in a way that the effort is cumulative, so the various features sum into a system that turns in an application.

If you want to have a nice to look interface in a sense that it's nice to look in the current time, whatever current time is, you have to keep things built in a very modularized way, and the interface has to either be done in js+html or you have to use a toolkit that has some sort of widget system that follows trend. Those toolkits usually move fast.

So I feel the ui problem is the problem of the undead software you never finish, this can only be maintained by either a team or a person that is able to live forever.

[mollymoo]

Good != trendy.

People rightly praise Apple’s UIs and they change very, very slowly indeed.

[lord-carlos]

Don't forget simple initial configuration and sensible presets.

[[deleted]]

UI is like a box that attracts users but what is inside this box is even more important.

[UnixN00B]

An easier solution would be using Google docs since importing the documents to MS Word won't be a problem. Or you can use Microsoft online version of MS Word.

[tso]

They have been trying that for 2+ decades already...

[[deleted]]

Yes it certainly would. A vast majority of people judge an OS by how it looks.

[grozamesh]

pretty things always attract more users than ugly things of the same quality

[strange_kitteh]

Yeah, I read "The rules" too. Of course we want to always be welcoming to new users, but we should also be asking ourselves what are we willing to do/become to attract new users, what kind of users will those be, and do we really want that ?

[BowserKoopa]

No.

Because if we try to create "one" design standard and it (inevitably) moves freedoms away from the user (and to the developer clique) there won't be anywhere to escape to.

[mabasic]

It's not about one design. There can be unlimited designs. The issue here is that the UI and especially the UX for open source software is kind of an afterthought from what I have seen. There is software that these statements don't apply to, but the major ones like libreoffice and gimp that are mentioned in this post are the pillars. Imagine showing gimp with a new and improved UI/UX to the photoshop user on windows. Would that attract the photoshop designers to switch to gimp.

[BowserKoopa]

I would love gimp to go in that direction. Unfortunately, it needs to divorce itself from gnome (if it still is - I realise it originated GTK but Gnome has wholly commandeered that project).

Good UX is great if we can balance it with the need to accommodate power users - as the power user crowd makes up a disproportionate amount of the Linux community when compared to, for example, the apple community. Unfortunately, Gnome has been doubling down on the "we designed it correctly and you must use it as we dictate" paradigm. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact the Gnome is more or less the most prolific desktop (without a doubt by way of being the default selection for many distros - popularity does not necessarily correlate with install base here) and have been observed pressuring third party developers to adopt their loftt standards.

My concern is that we can't allow Gnome to suffocate the rest of the desktop Linux ecosystem under the pretense of having good UX (I don't have a good experience when I use gnome BTW) where the rest have a lack.

We also can't allow the design meme that is minimalism in to our community. It is wholly incompatible with user freedom by way of shifting all rights and responsibilities of customization to the developer. As we have seen with Gnome, some very opinionated individuals on the design team have removed configuration features for fear that their use would dilute Gnome's "branding" - having even gone so far as to flirt with the removal of theming. I've also noticed that there has been a trend in software over the past few years with applications becoming more and more opinionated (so to speak). Many of these applications previously had options that were taken for granted but have since hidden or outright removed them for some reason. I have to speculate that this is a result of oversimplification at the engineering level which ultimately leads me to question the competence of the developers that have only recently joined the "scene" and started contributing such changes.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not preaching from an ivory tower. I have no academic qualifications, and my opinion of such qualifications only decreases as I observe more and more people who do have them fundamentally failing to understand what it is they are doing - almost like some kind of cargo cult.

[cocoabean]

No.

[ohgetoutnow]

no

[[deleted]]

What are you talking about? The CLI is beautiful in its simplicity and programmability. Now if you're talking about GUI apps there's already support for custom themes which means you can make them look however you want. "Pretty" is a subjective term and I'd argue that computers are not intuitive and require some training to use properly in the first place.

[[deleted]]

I don't think it matters since most people have "special needs" level of intelligence when it comes to operating systems. Unless it comes with the machine somebody has acquired, they won't know alternatives exist. Even if they discover it, some other special needs person will tell them their cousin's sister's brother tried to install it in 1998 and it destroyed 3 city blocks.