TDF Community Blog

The Document Foundation (TDF), the charitable entity behind the world’s leading free office suite LibreOffice, seeks for companies or individuals to

develop and incorporate usability metrics collection for LibreOffice

to start work as soon as possible.

In order to improve the user interface, human interaction and usability of LibreOffice, The Document Foundation is looking for an individual or company to, as a turnkey project, implement a usability metrics collection feature to be incorporated into the Windows, Linux and Mac OS X versions of the free office suite. The project consists of:

1. planning and conception of features and clicks to track in close contact with our UX team, with preselection and prioritization of the features
2. installation and configuration of a server part within TDF’s infrastructure, which is based on Mozilla’s UITelemetry (see and http://bwinton.github.io/d3Experiments/contextmenu.html for further details) and defines the format for the client part
3. a client part, that not only counts how often features have been used, but also provides further metrics; some samples of items that need tracking are
   1. the location of the click action in the menu, as sometimes duplicates exist
   2. which context menu was used
   3. whether a certain feature was invoked by a single click, by click and hold, by a drop down click or by a multi click
   4. from which application clicking on the close document/window ‘X’ (.CloseDoc) and close application ‘X’ (.Quit) occurs
   5. whether the user used the enter key, mouse click or an accelerator to open a menu item
   6. how the app was opened (via command line, start menu, start center, or by opening a document)
   7. in which toolbar a button was clicked, as some buttons are in multiple toolbars, and users can add buttons to toolbars individually
   8. which slide transitions and object animations are used most in Impress
   9. the concrete action/command sequence: which action was used by the user, and which was the next action used after that (e.g. inserting an image and then adding a caption)
   10. which menu bar keystroke sequences are used (e.g. Alt+F + O)
   11. which icon theme, font list and theme name the user has active
       
       Work on the client part also involves storing collected metrics data locally in the user profile with transmission to the server part when connectivity is in place.
4. an opt-in mechanism for the client part, so users have to actively enable the feature before any data is collected and transferred

With this feature, TDF – amongst other improvements – aims to:

• improve the menus, toolbars and the sidebar
• show the most popular inserted special characters for use in a future drop down
• show the most popular bullet/numbering styles for use in a future drop down

Work is to be carried out in the source code of the current master branch of LibreOffice, as available in our git repository at http://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/libreoffice/core.git

Required Skills

Programming Languages

• C++ for the LibreOffice client part
• knowledge about Mozilla’s UITelemetry for the server part

Other Skills

• English (conversationally fluent in order to coordinate and plan with members of TDF)
• good connections to the LibreOffice UX team (see http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice-ux-advise) and the will to participate in regular UX team calls, to jointly work on the implementation of the features

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age.

We exclusively use free, libre and open source (FLOSS) software for development whereever possible and the resulting work must be licensed under MPLv2.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member, or never having contributed before, does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

The task offered is a project-based one-off, with no immediate plans to a mid- or long-term contractual relationship. It is offered on a freelance, project basis. Companies and individuals applying can be located anywhere in the world.

Bids on individual work packages (#1-#4) are welcome.

TDF is looking forward to receiving your applications, including your financial expectations (name the final price for the turnkey project), and the earliest date of your availability, via e-mail to Florian Effenberger at floeff@documentfoundation.org no later than April 1, 2015. You can encrypt your message via PGP/GnuPG.

Applicants who have not received feedback by April 30, 2015 should consider that their application, after careful review, could not be considered.