Many business professionals spent the last decade drawing SWOT quadrants. Take a piece of blank paper and draw a horizontal line across the center, then draw a vertical line down the center bisecting the first line. You are left with four boxes, or quadrants. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Together with the developers of Dolphin we are planning to improve the sidebars in Dolphin with a special focus on the concept of ‘recents’.
Dolphin, the default KDE file browser, targets to be efficient and intuitive. It is designed to be most beneficial for two types of users, represented by the Personas Lisa and Simon, who are at least a bit familiar to the concept of files and folders, but not necessarily with the file structure of Linux itself.
For quick access, Dolphin contains a couple of sidebars allowing to reach different places, devices or recently used files. Recently, on some mailing lists the ‘recent sidebar’ has been the target of some discussions. The point has been made that the ‘recent sidebar’ is rarely used and it hence should be improved.
Now this is where we want to step in and find out how developers and users can contribute in finding a new and better approach for the problem of accessing files that have been used in the past. With this article, we want to outline our idea how to address this question and we would like to discuss our approach with you.
Step 1 – collecting developers ideas
First we want to conduct a survey to learn about the current ideas and feelings of the developers. Questions we want to rise are for instance:
Step 2 – gathering users feedback
Next we are going to do an end user survey. We would like to know things like:
Food for thought
With this examination we would like to find out whether the envisioned improvements are valid. We want to anonymously collect a pool of the different goals developers have for Dolphin. These results are then compared to the expectations, needs and wishes of the users towards Dolphin. An analysis of the strengths and weaknesses (SWOT analysis) will then be used to determine which aspects need improvement.
What do you think of our procedure? Anything we can enhance? Please share your experience and opinion.
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE
A picture is worth a thousand words, or so the adage goes. Whether you need an Edward Tufte-type infographic, complex flowchart, or seating plan, the success of your graphics is often tied directly to your software. $300 SmartDraw 2013 aims to make visualization of data easy, even for users without a graphic design or drawing background.
When you run SmartDraw 2013, the program offers you five very different options: Create a visual, document a process, hold a meeting, manage a project, or make a presentation. Choosing to create a visual will allow you to choose from any of the many SmartDraw templates—from charts to seating plans to maps to SWOT analysis—which can be a little overwhelming. When you document a process, hold a meeting, or manage a project, SmartDraw will open a storyboard page and the typical items you need to create that type of project—process bubbles and arrows, for example—that you can drag and drop into position, or add using buttons. The option to make a presentation also opens a storyboard, in which you can plan out your slideshow. However, you will need to export to Microsoft PowerPoint to run the presentation.
You can automate many kinds of things with SmartDraw. For example, when you are creating a flow chart, the boxes will automatically line up unless you move them manually, and will connect with the arrows you choose. When you move a bar on a bar chart, the correct scale number will show and the scale will change with your chart. The canvas size also will change depending on the size of your graphic. All of these things make starting out with SmartDraw pretty easy. However, the number of graphics and chart types can be distracting, and some beginner users may notice the lack of a Wizard. For the over 40s set (and maybe some users under 40), the size and legibility of the type still is a problem. It can also be very difficult to create accurate technical drawings from scratch. When your graphic is complete, you can easily upload it to SmartDraw’s free cloud storage site: SmartShare.
SmartDraw can import data from a database file and automatically create charts and other info graphics. However, SmartDraw’s functionality in this regard is not much different from using the charting options built into Microsoft Excel or Apache OpenOffice Calc (free spreadsheet program.) If you have data that you want to crunch and display, SmartDraw may not be the best option: Tableau Public is free to download and will create stunning infographics using your raw data, without the need for you to do any additional math.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
