[Design] SotM11: BoF meeting

[SteveC]

Dear all

One sunny lunchtime at SOTM I saw Matt gesticulating to fellow mappers 
outside on the grass and I immediately knew that design was being 
discussed. This was confirmed by noting Mike in the circle of discussion.

I walked over there and was pleasantly surprised by both the high level 
of discussion and critically the deep interest in taking some concrete 
steps toward MakingThingsBetter(TM).

The Google Analytics roadblock was mentioned by me based on the deep 
skepticism shown in the past to using commercial services in OSM. 
Personally, I'm not ideologically driven and will use whatever works. 
I'm perfectly happy using GA for a week or two, collect some stats and 
make them available. If this piwik thing works just as well then fine. 
Personally I think the simplest possible thing is to put a line of JS 
from GA in and be done with it, and we're just creating more work for 
ourselves, but it's not me choosing to go do the work.

I'd like to thank Mike for being interested and pursuing things here. I 
don't think Mike or anyone else is of the opinion that they should come 
up with all the ideas and then "Tom should go do the work" or anything 
like that. It's more that we're at the start of a long and inclusive 
process to find better design principals for our beautiful website.

At the start of that process it sounds all very loose and space cadet, 
but that's on purpose. To collect ideas, opinions, and not leave any 
stone unturned. As things go on, the scope narrows, the vision becomes 
more defined and mockups and code are built.

Please don't base opinions of the probability of success on how loose 
things feel right now. What's happening is pretty standard design 
process. Let's be open to new ideas, not get stuck in the tactics of 
this service vs. that service and help everyone here with a creative 
mind integrate with the rest of us. Let's be mindful that the most basic 
thing's needed to people building a design are, perhaps for good 
reasons, not immediately available. Things like the numbers Mike is 
looking for. That's going to be frustrating to people used to having the 
tools available, and it's going to be frustrating to those being told we 
need the tools. But either way, we're all working toward the same goal here.

Steve


On 9/15/2011 12:00 PM, Michal Migurski wrote:
> On Sep 15, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Tom Hughes wrote:
>
>> On 15/09/11 06:53, Michal Migurski wrote:
>>
>>> Tom, what do you think about something a bit more ghetto? Most analytics packages are front-ends to big, dumb log files (basically) and the kinds of metrics I'm imagining might not be captured by a standard collection of server metrics.
>>>
>>> The dream log file I have in mind would have five columns: tracking cookie, timestamp, OSM username (if any), URL path, and a message with some detail like "searched map", and it would be written by some ajaxy-javascript thing that would watch people's actions on the site, seeing things invisible to HTTP logs.
>>>
>>> A few metrics I've got in mind that can help us evaluate whether a site design helped after the fact are:
>>> 	- time on site, from page to page (more is better)
>>> 	- frequency and number of repeat visits (more is better)
>>> 	- follow-on signups (more is better)
>>> 	- interactions with the slippy map (where do they pan/zoom to?)
>>> 	- search terms typed into the box (what kinds of things do they look for?)
>>>
>>> Tom, would it be interesting to you to help instrument the site in this way, in a hacked-up way at first?
>> That sounds like far more work than installing piwik to be honest.
>
> Sure, but does piwik actually give us the numbers we'll want? I looked at it and saw lots of traditional server metrics, but had a hard time seeing what they offered in terms of OSM-specific application and user metrics.
>
> I looked here:
> 	http://piwik.org/docs/piwik-tour/
>
> -mike.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> michal migurski- mike at stamen.com
>                   415.558.1610
>
>
>
>
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