Hi Louis,
I see you are not talking any more about either the portal and the
homepage? I consider this as discussing the homepage then... the user
requirements page for the website is a page describing what users of the
website need, in general. The type of pages needed to make sure these
requirements are met are not yet of importance.
A. To enable efficient downloading, especially for naive Windows users.
This usually translates to one-click downloading. And one click
downloading means that users do not learn of cdroms, p2p, etc. The
resolution is to do what we do now, modulated: after the click, user is
sent to the contribution page, which can have other elements, such as,
"Consider buying a CDROM or downloading via P2P if you experience
difficulty downloading".
The contribution page seems like a good place to advertise for CD-Roms
and P2P, but it should be advertised at other places as well. And
although P2P is not on most peoples mind, CD-Roms are. Office suites are
normally sold in boxes. So why not OOo?
I would rather skip the contribution page, though, OR, and that is imho
the biggest problem, make sure downloads start automatically. I think
the contribution page is the biggest issue at the moment. Followed by
the fact that we do not promote downloads that much, thus force people
to think about how they need to proceed (euh... P2P, CDRom, aaah,
download, <click>)
RESOLUTION: Open download by default and remove contribution page
(cost: none, just remove the javascript)
B. To inform users of OpenOffice.org, the product and community/project
and how they can participate.
I do not like buttons everywhere, and this is still rather fague, as
Leonard pointed out:
a) Is it a marketing page (convince people of using it)?
b) Is it a participating page (he called it the tech savvy page, but I'd
think it is a bit more)?
and I would add:
c) Is it a community page (create 'Fans of OOo' with (advanced) help,
tips, extensions etc.)
I think the homepage (www) should be mainly a marketing page (a). We
need to sell OOo here. The participating and community pages we can
discuss in another thread. But besides marketing it is also the first
stop for anyone wanting to do something with OOo, so we need very quick
links to the other important places. Tabs accommodate for some of this
needs already, but e.g. people who just downloaded OOo for the first
time may also resort to www-page.
I think that is what Louis describes here:
I envision a page that has links for support, participation, language
communities; extensions are important. "Support" can be in the end
"portal" or we may end up having a big link to 'portal' once we have
more content there--and that's going to happen. :-)
(...)
Secondary pages can add more information. Thus, portal can provide all
that "new to OOo?" promises, as well as other useful information and links.
Of course the question is to what extent :)
* Process
David also raised the idea that I'd considered at one point of paying
for a usability testing. I'm open to that; we can pay for it and that
may help. I do confess to being skeptical, however. What do others think?
As Leonard pointed out, usability testing is only worth it when we know
what we want. Therefore, in this stage I wouldn't start about it.
Assuming we do not use usability testing--or even if we do--I'd like to
still impose a deadline, and make it a hard one: 15 December. Note, I
first introduced this idea in September ;-), though I recognize the time
consuming nature of work like this....
Maybe we need a, 'or otherwise...' ;)
* homepage requirements: what goes on the homepage
And (imho) with homepage we think of homepage + the prominently linked
pages. For this I would promote keeping all these pages on the
www-domain and have all responsibility in one group. If information is
lacking we should apologize for this and only then forward them to less
well maintained corners of openoffice.org's website. Keeping these pages
somewhat centralized allows us also to develop a good web identity, with
predictable behaviour.
* and the established user page requirements: what goes on the portal
(assuming that is what it is) and ancillary pages (note: more than one).
(I assume that is not bound to the deadline of the 15th?)
I also think it makes sense for someone to own this. I can (more or less
futilely) drive this but I think it makes more sense for a designer to
own it. And we have some quite talented people here ;-), including
Maarten, Christian, Filip, William, Kay, Matthias, Kay, et al.
I am willing to volunteer as a coordinator (or 'owner'). But I won't
have time to design a lot... I am kind of restricted to e-mail
contributions only.
Finally, as to payment: Sun wants a better homepage for OOo and that is,
among other things, my goad. They are willing to pay for the design. My
interest is in ensuring it is a community thing, owned and maintained by
the community. But that does not mean that Sun can't pay for the labour
required for the design and implementation.
I think we should try to do it without financial support (this is better
for keeping it within the community imho), but if things are not moving
forward, we should hire someone. But in that case we need to be able to
tell this person/company what is required, hence the importance of
requirements. A coordinator imho should be able to specify this, I think
I can. After the homepage (www), we can rethink the portal page again,
since I have some ideas about that as well... but I would keep that
completely separated from the homepage discussion.
g.,
Maarten
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