It may be not so braindead [LWN.net]

It may be not so braindead

Posted Oct 22, 2008 20:56 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK) by Tar
Parent article: Why OpenOffice.org Failed - and What to Do About It (ComputerWorld UK)

I've paritcipated in a study where people were confronted with the need to switch. Either to MS Office 2007 or to OpenOffice.org 2.2 (it was year ago). At first glance most people liked OpenOffice 2.2 "look and feel" and hoped they will be comfortable in no time - and they hated "innovative" ribbon in MS Office 2007. But after trying to do some 20 tasks (average success rate was 87% for MS Office 2007 and 75% for OpenOffice 2.2) they switched positions totally. Of course they still felt MS Office 2003 was better...

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OpenOffice vs. Office 2007

Posted Oct 23, 2008 9:12 UTC (Thu) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

I'm surprised by this, and it would be interesting to know who designed this study, as OpenOffice 2.x is far more like Office 2003 than is Office 2007. I mainly have used Office 2003 but recently was switched at work to 2007, yet I found it far quicker and easier to do certain tasks in OpenOffice, because the toolbar layout and commands are almost identical to Office 2003. The main difference is that the icons are not the same but their designs are very similar.

In continuing to use the Office 2007 interface, I think it's good for access to a wide range of functions, but if you simply want a smaller range of functions (text formatting, bullets, headings, fonts, etc), it's much quicker to use the old style Office 2003 / OpenOffice toolbars, as they are available with a single click. In 2007, the unlearning required is really quite enormous.

I also know someone at work who is on Office 2007 and actually uses OpenOffice on the same Windows PC, without company approval, because it's quicker and easier for some documents to use this.

OpenOffice vs. Office 2007

Posted Oct 23, 2008 11:19 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

I'm surprised by this, and it would be interesting to know who designed this study, as OpenOffice 2.x is far more like Office 2003 than is Office 2007.

Maybe that's the problem? It might be easier to switch to a UI which is so visibly different that you know you need to relearn it than to one which is similar at first glance but just different enough to be frustrating...

UI != placement of buttons

Posted Oct 23, 2008 14:38 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Not really. As I've said: first impression was quite positive for OpenOffice.org and VERY negative for MS Office 2007. But after some time expression changed.

Sure, buttons are grouped differently in MS Office 2007. And it's a problem for a people who are familiar with MS Office 2003 or MS Office XP. But! Underlaying logic is the same. The fact that knobs are moved in MS Office 2007 is irritating, the fact that knobs are different in OpenOffice.org is disastrous.

P.S. Note: these were experienced MS Office 2003 users, not "fresh" users - but it's the situation with most companies, right?

Similarity is skin-deep, differences are deeper

Posted Oct 23, 2008 14:32 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I'm surprised by this, and it would be interesting to know who designed this study

I don't want to talk about names on public (it was testing for one medium-sized firm which wanted to decide migration path, not something for magazine). But I can show you one example where failure rate for MS Office was 0% and 50% (sic!) for OpenOffice.org

The task was simple: add page numbers to existing document. In MS Office you go and insert Page Numbers. MS Office will ask if you want them on top or on the bottom - and you are done. Sure it took some time to find the new position for this operation in MS Office 2007 - but in OpenOffice.org there are no such function at all! The function which DOES exist there just puts the page number in the middle of the document - why will you need THIS?

Actually OpenOffice.org's approach is more logical: it does what it's asked to do! MS Office tries to "help" you. That's what makes it so unbearable to me and apparently that's exactly what makes it so attractive to "normal" users...

I also know someone at work who is on Office 2007 and actually uses OpenOffice on the same Windows PC, without company approval, because it's quicker and easier for some documents to use this.

Is s/he programmer or the a secretary? In my experience programmers actually prefer OpenOffice.org (not all but a lot of them do), but target group for Office applications are not programmers...