[OSM-talk] Upcoming changes - a reply to your feedback

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi All,

Thank you for all the comments about the proposed redesign of
OpenStreetMap.org website. I fed these back to the developers on the
"github pull request" [1]. John has written a reply to the ideas, which I
have copied below. In summary changes have been made to the Welcome text
and "urban centric" About text. The contrast of the top links has also been
increased slightly. The idea of expanding the "export" functionality to
link people to other ways of getting OSM data was well received but falls
outside of the scope of this redesign (hopefully it will come in the
future).

If you spot anything else, feel free to reply with your constructive
feedback and I'm sure John will be happy to answer in due course.

Best regards,
Rob

[1]
https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/pull/498#issuecomment-28603439

--- REPLY FROM JOHN ---

@RobJN Thanks for the summary of the mailing list comments.

> text attributs for the top menus.

I've increased the contrast on the secondary navigation links.

> The documentation behind "Help" feels like it is too many clicks away
(desire to keep it on the home page).

A main goal of the redesign was to make the experience more focused and not
overwhelm a user who's looking for Help with multiple links (forum, wiki,
etc) but with a single clear option - "Help". The help page itself should
be improved in the future, but it is conceptually sound and better than
what we have today.

> It was also suggested that "Help" was given higher priority and the
export feature lower priority (e.g. by switching there positions). Others
pointed out that the ability to export is what makes OSM different and as
such "if we want to promote this (i.e. the Export feature), we need a
description page with links to the planet file, country excerpts, small
exports (from the osm-server) and to larger exports via the overpass API or
overpass turbo page.

I chose the current grouping for two reasons. Conceptually it makes sense:
"Edit", "History", "Export" are all about providing access to OSM's data,
which is one of the primary purposes of the website, while "Help" and
"About" provide auxiliary information about the project itself. It also
makes things that behave similarly, look similar: "Edit", "History", and
"Export" all provide a map-centric view, while the other links go to
interior pages of the site which do not feature a map.

Saman and I both talked about bigger changes to OSM.org's information
architecture at the respective State of the Maps, and I think there will be
opportunities to reorganize the navigation elements with the goal of better
aligning them to the primary purposes for which OSM.org is used (as a map,
as an app for maintaining a geodatabase, as a social platform, as a data
resource for 3rd parties). But that's too wide of a goal for this effort.

Similarly I'd like to table the second request on expanded Export
functionality -- those sound like good ideas, but are outside the scope of
this effort.

> the "About" first sentence is very urban-centric... the "community
driven" section is talking about "engineers" and HOT team but the average
contributor ... is not mentioned even though it is the main part of the
community.

I'm working on some copy adjustments to better balance this.

> Imho there should be a way to remove the Welcome-textbox, too. (for
non-logged in users)

I think it provides a nice impetus to create an account. :)

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