While OpenOffice 3.0 improved the situation a little, OpenOffice still looks quite outdated, especially when you compare it to Microsoft’s Office 2007. There are a lot of ways to go about fixing this problem. Luckily for us, OpenOffice has chosen an excellent path.

The first step is, of course, deciding to do something about the old look. This has been done, thanks to the Renaissance project. Then, you have to come up with the new design. This is the really challenging part. We will not see the results for some time (although I am sure we will see lots of ideas and drafts), but the currently outlined plan for the redesign looks great.

The first step in the current plan is to get people to fill out this survey. The survey basically just asks about how you use OpenOffice and what features are most important. Still, these are important things to know. I am very hopeful that this survey will provide enough information to at least know where to focus the redesign. After all, why redesign a feature that no one uses?

Next, the Renaissance project will ask people to use an extension that records information about their activities. It is not yet clear exactly what this will be, but the idea should be along the same line as the one before it: gather information about how many people use what features.

It will be some time before we can see the final product, but project Renaissance is already looking very promising from the beginning.

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