[Talk-ht] [OSM-talk] Thoughts on OSM design, and looking forward and back
Jean-Guilhem Cailton
jgc at arkemie.com
Wed Feb 24 19:16:44 GMT 2010
Thanks a lot Steve, for underlining the need to improve the experience
of new visitors.
This is right on spot with what we have been feeling regarding Haiti.
Now that OSM is indeed the best map in Haiti, there is a kind of special
responsibility that comes with this: let potential users know about OSM,
and actually use it, and then maybe for some of them help improve it.
(Just as an example (I don't mean that these specific points are
especially important), there was a few days ago a little discussion
about some Haiti thematic maps
(http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti/Earthquake_map_resources#POI-Maps
)
and their coupling with OpenStreetBugs. See e.g.:
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ht/2010-February/000244.html )
I am thinking of two concrete ways we could contribute to this effort:
- Localization. For instance, help adapting OpenStreetBugs and
translating it in Haitian Creole, and maybe also the front page and a
few others.
(How do we do this ? For OSB, I see
http://github.com/emka/openstreetbugs/tree/master/locale/. Is it enough
to supply an osb.ht.json file ?)
- Get feedback from potential new users. Maybe, without going as far as
a formal study like the one you quoted for Wikipedia
(http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/UX_and_Usability_Study ), by
organizing one or several hand-on sessions with a few potential
users/contributors, possibly with a video recording of their reactions,
questions, etc...
Do you think this would be useful ?
Cheers,
Jean-Guilhem
Toulouse, France
P.S.: also, thanks a lot for your article "OpenStreetMap - The Best Map"
(http://opengeodata.org/openstreetmap-the-best-map). I really enjoyed
reading it, and I think it makes a lot of sense.
More information about the Talk-ht
mailing list