[maemo-community] Maemo.org

[From: Jarmo.Tikka at nokia.com]

Hi,

Sorry about so late comments but I have not had time to read these
mailing lists lately...

>Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:32:37 +0100
>From: Dave Neary <dneary at maemo.org>
>Subject: Re: Maemo.org
>To: List for community development <maemo-community at maemo.org>
>Message-ID: <49679845.9040905 at maemo.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>Hi Jarmo,
>
>Jarmo.Tikka at nokia.com wrote:
>> Number of these restructurings of web site should be 
>minimized because 
>> they tend to break all external links to the site.
>> 
>> As a reminder site usability has been discussed also in 
>maemo bugzilla.
>> https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3972
>
>You might notice my comment on that bug. I'm all for improving 
>the usability of the site, and that's really the whole point 
>of the exercise.

Good because I think usability is one of the biggest problems we have in
site design.

>
>The logic we followed, and the main use-cases we are trying to 
>address, to get to where we are today is detailed in 
>http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Improving_maemo.org.
>
>A reminder: those core use-cases are:
>
>   1. A new tablet owner wants to install some software on his tablet.
>   2. An interested application developer comes to maemo.org 
>to learn how to write a new application for the tablet.
>   3. An existing application developer comes to maemo.org 
>looking for information on modifying his application for Maemo.
>   4. A Maemo Community member is looking for the latest news 
>from around the world of Maemo
>   5. An interested user wants to know how he can help make 
>Maemo better or give feedback
>   6. A tablet user has a problem which they would like to resolve.

These use cases look ok for me. I would add one more:

0. An interested developer comes to maemo.org looking for how to start
maemo development (first how to setup development environment to PC and
Tablet, second what platform documentation we have, third how to get
support if he runs into problems).

In addition to these basic developer use cases we have kind of technical
users profiles (including developers but also a lot of other people) who
are interested to install all kind of apps and components, more end user
type documentation and support etc...

>
>So we've got, in the case of 1, 2 and 3, someone coming to the 
>maemo.org home-page, and getting redirected quickly to the 
>Downloads page or the Development - the front page has the 
>most popular and the community choice applications. In the 
>fourth case, we have some news on the front page, with more 
>available at maemo.org/news. In the fifth case, we have the 
>new "Community" page, which should help show people how to get 
>involved, and finally for a user with a problem, we will have 
>the new "Support" page, which will bring them to the user 
>mailing list, documentation and FAQs, and of course bugzilla
>
>> How I see it people visit maemo.org because:
>> - they need to install/upgrae latest image or SDK
>
>SDK = developer = Development page

There are three phases, 1. install environment, 2. read platform
docuements, 3. find help from community for problems.

And actually forth phase publish your work to those technical users
(including other developers).

>
>> - they need to find out some official documentation for certain 
>> technology area
>
>What is documentation? We had quite a long discussion (I won't 
>say argument ;) about this when we came up with the first 
>drafts for the front page. For me, "documentation" is 
>meaningless without context - are we talking about developer 
>documentation, API references, application development guides? 
>That's in Development. Are we talking about troubleshooting, 
>tablet tutorials, FAQs? That's in Support.
>Documentation about getting started in maemo.org, signing up 
>to mailing lists, helping out - Community.

Maemo.org is mainly developer site so developer documentation if the
most important issue. For those technical users troubleshooting etc are
more important documentation. 

>
>> - they need to see if certain problem has been reported or 
>write a new 
>> bug report
>
>Problems = Support page.

Support page instructing how to and from where ask help. Instructions
what documents to use for certain platform. Instructions to check if
problem is already reported in bugzilla, ...

>
>> For me these new layouts seems to emphasize only this last type of 
>> usage e.g. social issues. In my opinion also those other usage 
>> patterns should be made easier.
>
>I hope that I've explained the logic behind the changes that 
>are being proposed by the community here. As you may be able 
>to tell, we have had some long debates on this over the 
>months. To read more, you might try this thread:
>http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2008-September/002335.
html
>
>There are other threads, through September, October, November 
>and December, working through vision, wireframing, and design 
>- and now implementation.

I am happy if you are able to improve usability of the site. At least
these use cases look ok for me.

>
>
>> For example we do not have links to the latest maemo 
>image/SDK release 
>> in front page.
>
>It's certainly conceivable that this would be interesting to a 
>decent portion of maemo.org visitors, but I'd suggest that the 
>bigger audience is people who own a tablet and want to either 
>solve a problem they have with it, or get some 
>community-developed software. We should definitely lead them 
>to the community, and to developing software. Don't you think 
>that the software developer looking for an SDK will be able to 
>find the appropriate sub-page to click on to get it?

Just a note that we cannot forget developers and concentrate those
technical users on maemo.org even if developers are also tehnical users
:). For development certain type of developer documentation is must.

I agree on that point that most maemo community participants (site
visitors) may be those tehcnical users but still the site keeps running
because of those develoepers developing and porting new stuff to maemo
and devices...

>
>> Anyhow I think you (maemo community members) have done very 
>good work 
>> for the site...
>
>Thanks! Since you're part of that community too, your feedback 
>is of course welcome. I just wanted to make you aware of 
>previous discussions, and the thinking behind this resulting design.

Still thinking that you do good work for maemo :).

//Jarmo

>
>Thanks,
>Dave.

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