[Design] Engaging the community

[Gregory]

At the SotM BoF we agreed that it was important to engage the community, or
at least make them feel engaged. If we don't do this, and conclude to change
something (even small) there will probably be uproar. Could we agree on an
OSMF blog post to submit? An attempted draft:

Title: Thinking about our homepage
The home page of OpenStreetMap.org was designed in 2006 in a pub on a paper
napkin. Since then what OpenStreetMap does for people, and the ways in which
it does that, have greatly widened. It would be easy to say the homepage,
and initial landing place for a lot of people, struggles to show a lot of
people what they want to see or even where to go to get it.

At State of the Map a group of people ended up discussing how the homepage
could be redesigned or adapted to better server viewers. Discussions have
continued on the design mailing list, which you are welcome to join.

The first stage is to think about what type of people visit the homepage, or
that we might wish to send to the website. Once the various types of people
and their aims have been thought out, we can think about how information,
documentation, tools, and maps would be easier for them to find. Hopefully,
and with the help of statistics/metrics, we can work out ways to make it
easier for each person-type without making it too much harder for other
person-types. This is most hard for the users that aren't fully into the
community like you.

So if you can think about what your friend/mum/colleague what try to do/find
after hearing about OpenStreetMap, then you can help us.
We have listed some people-type and their intended tasks at
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Design_Mailing_List/OSM.org_Personas but
if you think we have missed a task that someone visiting the homepage would
expect to do, then add it to the talk/discussion
page<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Design_Mailing_List/OSM.org_Personas>
so
we can incorporate it in.

We look forward to thinking about these user-groups and
our analysing statistics on how well they can perform them using the OSM.org
homepage.
(end)

It could perhaps be shorter, but I thought it was key to put a task in
there. Even if people don't add personas/tasks, they will have felt welcome
to do so. My thought is people who look at it will see their desired-tasks
met already. Indeed, when I put an example task on the talk page I then
noticed it was probably met by a different persona.


-- 
Gregory
osm at livingwithdragons.com
http://www.livingwithdragons.com
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