Hi Bernhard, all, On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Bernhard Dippold <[email protected]> wrote: > Just two single cent ideas from my side:
I'm sure they're worth a lot more :) > On the branding list Ismaël Grammenidis proposed [1]: >> >> A while ago there was a discussion at the Dutch NL project about creating >> a >> customized frontpage. >> Perhaps we can implement that idea in the international site as well: >> >> http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/NL/Stappenplan#Voorpagina_.28Homepage.29 >> >> There are 4 sections on that frontpage with each 5 links: >> - OpenOffice.org >> -- Download >> -- For who and why? >> -- About the project >> -- Licence >> >> - Support >> -- Installation guide >> -- Manuals >> -- Forum (Bulletin Board) >> -- Wiki >> -- Tips& Tricks >> >> - Announcements >> >> - Contribute >> -- Background information >> -- Projects >> -- Bugs >> -- FAQ >> -- Contact >> > > I heard several comments about improving the main page - on the other hand I > know about the intensive discussions when the last main page update took > place in 2008 (I think). It might not be a bad idea to reopen that item up for discussion for the following reasons: 1) Every now and then it pops up on a mailing list and my standard response has been to point people to the past discussion threads and ask them to look at the arguments for and against, and if they have anything new to add, then please feel free to do so. No one has added anything, probably because it's a big ask for people to re-read old discussions. The redesign provides an opportunity for re-evaluation (personally, I'm a big fan of iterative development). 2) As it stands, the action statements are inconsistent with the rest of the site (or, perhaps, the rest of the site is inconsistent with the action statements): we have action statements on the homepage, but not on the rest of the site. The website fails on the point of consistency. Among many other things, a good user experience relies on consistency (e.g. Nielsen's 10 Heuristics, #4: Consistency and standards [1]) 3) We have the opportunity to create a broader consensus - by having a stronger UX project play a more significant role, as well as the native language projects, which you have mentioned. Of course, we need to reach out to them first. This thread has shown considerable interest in the website list - are we ready to make some announcements on the other mailing lists about the redesign effort? 4) The circumstances may have changed - OOo is considerably more well known in 2010 than it was in early 2008; the previous website was launched around the release of 2.4. The web itself has also changed in that time (i.e., become considerably more social). Does that change what we want to do with the homepage (and other pages for that matter)? > If we think we should talk about changing the general structure, this would > be the right time - I just don't know if we want to do it at all... The task would be huge, certainly. We've started 'brainstorming' some ideas for changes, but no one has said this is in, or this is out. That could be useful. I think we need someone (or some people) to lead the redesign effort and provide guidance like Maarten did in 2008. The website project has a lead and a co-lead - perhaps they could offer some advice? > My second thought starts with a different point of view, but leads to a > similar question: > > With the new Branding Initiative we work on establishing a common > look-and-feel for OOo containing not only the same symbols (logo and gull > orb), but also the same color language, graphical element positioning and so > on. > > The goal is to define an OOo brand that "lives" in every visual > representation of OOo, supports the perception of a consistent and unique > community and creates certain positive feelings for our visitors, users and > contributors. > > A common design (containing an area for individual concepts and project > related goals) on our project's main pages might help a lot to reach this > goal. > > Therefore we should try to include the designers of the sub-project's main > pages (especially some of the accepted projects and native-lang's), that > showed vivid and interesting approaches to reach people. > > I invited Terada Kazuhiro, the designer of the Japanese main page [2], to > join this list - perhaps we could find others too. I fully agree, and I'm sure we could find others. My question(s) now is/are, are we ready to take that step? That is, can we send out an announcement to relevant mailing lists inviting people to join the effort? If so, what do we tell them - what is within scope and what is out of scope? How do we structure the redesign effort? Do we need to wait for something first (e.g. from the branding project)? I think these are enough questions for one day :) Regards, Ivan. ---------------- [1] http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
