There was a great deal of discussion about the OpenOffice's UI in August 2007 on
the User Experience sub-project's mailing list. I would kindly call for a review
of the discussion and applying the ideas presented. In the presented discussion
threads there are many solid arguments about how the present UI design could be
made radically more usable for the end user; boosting the adoption rate of the
OOo and building new solid selling points for supporting OOo selection in projects.

One good example is Josmar's (still very rough) attempt that can be found at
http://josmar52789.googlepages.com/ and the accompanying discussion at the UX
list. To summarize, the present UI and the workflows were modeled after
Microsoft Office 95. It was a good target and a benchmark in the past. However
to compete today the UI must be context sensitive and it must allow the user to
focus on their real-life problem instead of guiding to tinker and/or get spammed
with irrelevant properties (manual editing of stylable content etc). Furthermore
end users do not just expect to get a selection between usability and aesthetics
- it is reasonable to demand for both. 

In overall the competitors have raised the bar significantly with their latest
generations of the office productivity suites. OOo should be able to accomplish
at least the same, ideally better the others.