Louis Suarez-Potts wrote:
> Obviously, this is a
> list filled with website experts, and I'd really love to hear their
> professional opinions on the current and proposed versions.
...which shoulnd't be confused with usability experts.
I'll leave CSS and XHTML to the experts, but usability doesn't seem to be
a strong point in this team. I'm far from expert, but at least I've
studied it and thought about it for a few years.
> * So: What are the major deficiencies of the current page?
>
> I'm not being wilfully obtuse, I mainly want to get clarifications here.
> Each of us, I suspect, has a different "take" on them. If any of you
> have already stated what you dislike, please, bear with the rest of us
> and re-state them in a way that invites participation. There are a lot
> of talented people on this list and it would be great to hear from them.
See my earlier post for more details and explanations. Usability is not
something I can explain in one paragraph, and even the long email I sent
doesn't do justice to the subject. But nonetheless, I'll try:
- The dowload link is not prominent at all.
- Neither is the Native-lang link.
- The most important part of the page (the centre) is taken up by an
un-help ful iamge.
- A lot of links are not front-page material (Website statistics).
- A lot of links are unclear ("Bugs & Issues").
- A lot of links are duplicative (contributing vs todos; about us vs
product information).
- Most links are illogically organized (most things under community
resources are not community resources).
- Important links are missing ("Documentation", "Media Kit").
- The login thing causes endless confusion at the users list.
- There is a lot of extraneous writing that only makes the page more
overwhelming (the explanations beside the community resources links).
- The dates are all non-internationalized. They cause confusion. I had
to ask a friend to help me figure out what they meant.
- The site pressumes knowledge of OOo's organizational structure
(OOoForum, Bugs & Issues, Project Guidelines, NLC).
This is just what I remember off the top of my head. Even after you work
on all this you'd ave to think about icons, fonts and layout to assign
visibility and prominence in order of importance.
The site is not even developer-centric. Most of the things I said above
don't help developers one bit. The problem is that the site's layout and
content was not made with usability in mind.
> What Kay and I had done was bring in key members from other projects to
> participate in the redesign.
That sounds a lot like what Jean was saying. The focus was on what you
wanted to tell the user, not what the user wants to know.
Cheers,
--
Daniel Carrera | I know everything, I just can't remember
Join OOoAuthors today! | it all at once.
http://www.oooauthors.org | :-)
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