Improving LibreOffice User Experience (UX)

Effective from May 2016, Heiko Tietze has started working as a consultant to drive LibreOffice UX one step further.

Heiko has been one of the most active UX volunteers during the last few years, and has been instrumental in a rather large number of the user interface improvements since LibreOffice 4.4.

In addition, he has coordinated UX focused research, which has – amongst other results – led to the development of the human interface guidelines (HIG), and to incremental UI changes to menus and toolbars. Currently, the focus is on the improvement of the LibreOffice Draw user interface.

Most of Heiko’s and other UX volunteers’ activities are reflected in the TDF Design blog, where Heiko has extensively reported about the research and the most significant UX improvements, such as the reorganization of toolbars and the new application specific-menus launched in LibreOffice 5.1.

Heiko’s main objectives will be to work with developers to find out what is technically possible and makes sense to improve LibreOffice UX, to grow the UX and design contributor base, and help with UX-related bugs.

Heiko Tietze has a degree and a doctorate in psychology at the University of Jena, where he has also worked as researcher in general psychology. In his professional career, he has worked with neurophysiological methods like electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye tracking (EOG) on different topics, such as vigilance in traffic and the outcome of automation.

On top of his strong methodological and statistical background, he has developed the skills to write software code to deal with large bulks of data, and has specialized in computer science. In the last ten years, he has focused on usability for different customers, with projects from embedded systems to complex desktop software.

In addition to LibreOffice, Heiko is also a long time contributor to the KDE project and a member of the visual design group (VDG).