On Sun, 2005-06-12 at 20:10 +0200, Frank Lichtenheld wrote: > Over the last few years the Debian website has seen many additions (like > all the CDDs) and punctual improvements (e.g. improved wnpp scripts, more > CSS oriented HTML structure). However, I think that the website actually needs > a structural reconsideration, i.e. we should improve the possibility to > actually find the stuff that is available and make the page more accessible > for people not as knowledgeable in how Debian is organised and working as > many of us are. Great! This has been in my thoughts for a long time. You have identified the following topics: > Ways through the site / user specific information > News > Search > Navigational Structure > Infrastructure > Layout > Other topics? Even though you asked us to split mails per topic, I'd like to consider / analyze these together for a little while. The topics seem to touch two groups: visitors to the site, and the site / content producers. They have different needs, and the visitors group contains, as you say, everything between newbies and gurus. One of the problems with the current Debian site is that it's hard to measure how good or bad it is. Some people think it's fine right now, while others think it should be remade from scratch, and then there is every opinion in between those. So at this moment, I think an important thing to do is to make it easier to measure how well the site does its job. One way of doing this which I have found useful in other projects is to come up with scenarios that describe the different kinds of people that interact with the site in different ways. This is close to what MJ called qualitative testing in his response, but it can be fabricated, based on actual user observations, interviews and/or web log stats. The scenarios are taken down to a story-telling level, describing, for example, Joe User's attempt to download and install the latest version of Debian. I'm used to calling these "use cases". We probably won't need more than 5-10 use cases. The use cases can be used in a variety of ways. To measure the quality of the site against a particular use case, you find the most optimal path to fulfill the goals of it. You only consider the optimal path at this point, and don't distract yourself by considering "wrong" paths or such. This is just counting clicks or steps to reach the goal, and the shorter the path, the better the site fulfills that particular use case. Obviously having several use cases will put a lower limit to this metric, and other factors can further limit it. Using the use cases in this way provides good guidelines while slowly improving the site in an evolutionary manner. On the other hand, you seem to suggest that the time is ripe for some bigger changes. With some more work, the use cases can be the foundation for a new design. I can explain how to do that in greater detail if you want, but let's just say that the result is a sketch of what the site will look like. It's not necessary to replace the entire old site in one go. You can work the old site towards the new design in phases. One last thing before I let you go: what I'm talking about is not about the visual or aesthetic aspects, about colours or the best way to make individual buttons or links convey their meaning. Those are important, but at a later stage. The same goes for the technical implementation, that's important at an even later stage. This is about having a "blueprint" against which you can measure whatever you manage to come up with at the later stages. Do you think it would be possible to approach the redesign of the Debian site from this angle? Or put in other words, how many of the people interested in participating in the redesign of the site can understand this way of thinking? Cheers, -- Fabian Fagerholm <fabbe@paniq.net>
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part