Appropedia:User experience: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:10, 21 February 2013

User experience, sometimes called UX, is important to make Appropedia a usable and enjoyable site for visitors.

Note: work on the tech side of user experience is being managed in this BetterMeans workstream which lets us track tasks. Please sign up there if you'd like to help out.

New skin

See Appropedia:User experience/New skin

Navigation

Web ring

In principle...

In conversations with Peter Campbell, we've discussed having a web ring for relevant green/dev sites - especially wikis, but possibly other useful and/or collaborative websites as well. Chief contenders:

Greenlivingpedia:
Envirowiki:
Howtopedia:
The relevant Wikia sites

The important questions are:

Is this adding value for users?
Are they providing similar links back to us?

Implementation

A template on the main page, at the bottom. Simple, quick to do.
en.battlestarwiki.org has a row of links to related sites as part of the skin, at the top of every page.

Url bar buttons

The recent changes feed is not much use except to the hardest of hardcore wiki geeks, so AboutUs puts their blog feed in their header: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/AboutUsWikiWeblog" /> We can do this for our blog, but it would be even cooler if we had a community wiki blog (like the Estigmergia wlog).

The Universal Edit Button also goes in the url bar.

Information architecture

Some aspects of IA (Information Architecture) are hard to separate out from UX, especially:

Left navbar links - do an initial carding exercise ASAP? (With students? When giving a talk?)
The Topic categories issue.

Subcommittee members

Template:Apsubcommittee

Claine1 (talk · contribs)
Chriswaterguy (talk · contribs) - chriswaterguy
Lonny (talk · contribs)

Subpages of this project

Interwiki links

meta:Gallery of user styles

External links

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-[[Image:Appropedia new skin screenshot draft 3C.jpg|thumb|250px|Draft skin]]
+{{shortcut|A:UX}}
-This page is for discussion and collaboration on improving the user experience (UX) on Appropedia. This includes look and feel, and navigability.
-Appropedia is working on a new skin. See:
+User experience, sometimes called UX, is important to make Appropedia a usable and enjoyable site for visitors.
-* Drafts of what the new skins might look like - see image on right, and [http://webfilehosting.com/WJYBO883FE1H/appropedia_draft3C.psd the Photoshop file] (you'll have to close the casino ads - please pardon these, and let us know on the {{talk page}} if you know a better free file host for large files).
-* [[Main Page tests]]
+Note: work on the tech side of user experience is being managed in [https://secure.bettermeans.com/projects/181/dashboard this BetterMeans workstream] which lets us track tasks. Please sign up there if you'd like to help out.
-== Comments and suggestions ==
+== New skin ==
-* Think about which links we want to make prominent. E.g. making "edit" very prominent may help emphasize the reader's ability to edit and escourage people to take that step. (Note how prominent it is at [[AboutUs:|AboutUs]].)--[[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] &middot; <small>[[User talk:Chriswaterguy|talk]]</small> 04:the 02, 13 March 2008 (PDT)
+See [[Appropedia:User experience/New skin]]
-* Green is a very common color, esp on sustainability-oriented sites. Could we use a textured brown, something like the current background? For narrow strips of color, we could experiment with a finer texture. --[[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] <small>([[User talk:Chriswaterguy|talk]])</small> 20:53, 29 March 2008 (PDT)
-**Then again, Tressie's new logos are very nice, with a blue-green thing happening that could give us a good choice of colors. --[[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] 20:31, 3 June 2008 (PDT)
-* Serif fonts? --[[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] 20:31, 3 June 2008 (PDT)
-=== Rotating image-links ===
+== Navigation ==
-Near the top right of the fan wiki http://en.battlestarwiki.org/ is an image (usually of a character) which links to the relevant wiki article. The image changes periodically (and the link and link text along with it), or when following a link or doing a hard refresh. This could be good for us - rotating through featured projects and other featured pages. --[[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] 07:42, 17 April 2008 (PDT)
+{{main|Appropedia:Navigation}}
-:I notice they don't have a logo at the top left the way most MediaWiki sites do, so this is probably the site logo, moved and somehow made to alternate. --[[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] 20:38, 3 June 2008 (PDT)
+== Web ring ==
-=== Web ring ===
+=== In principle... ===
-==== In principle... ====
 In conversations with [[User:Peter Campbell|Peter Campbell]], we've discussed having a web ring for relevant green/dev sites - especially wikis, but possibly other useful and/or collaborative websites as well. Chief contenders:
@@ Line 34: / Line 27: @@
 * Are they providing similar links back to us?
-==== Implementation ====
+=== Implementation ===
 * A template on the main page, at the bottom. Simple, quick to do.
-* http://en.battlestarwiki.org/ has a row of links to related sites as part of the skin, at the top of every page.
+* [http://en.battlestarwiki.org/ en.battlestarwiki.org] has a row of links to related sites as part of the skin, at the top of every page.
+== Url bar buttons ==
+The recent changes feed is not much use except to the hardest of hardcore wiki geeks, so AboutUs puts their blog feed in their header: <tt><nowiki><link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/AboutUsWikiWeblog" /></nowiki></tt> We can do this for [http://blogs.appropedia.org/ our blog], but it would be even cooler if we had a community wiki blog (like the [http://www.estigmergia.net/en/w/index.php?title=Wlog Estigmergia] wlog).
+The [http://universaleditbutton.org Universal Edit Button] also goes in the url bar.
 == Information architecture ==
@@ Line 52: / Line 51: @@
 * {{User|Chriswaterguy}} - {{email|chriswaterguy|appropedia|org}}
 * {{User|Lonny}}
+==  Subpages of this project ==
+{{list subpages}}
 == See also ==
@@ Line 62: / Line 65: @@
 * [[meta:Gallery of user styles]]
-[[Category:Appropedia site development|{{PAGENAME}}]]
+== External links ==
+* [http://www.packtpub.com/article/integrating-twitter-and-youtube-with-mediawiki Integrating Twitter and YouTube with MediaWiki]
+* [http://www.liquidben.com/wiki/index.php?title=Public:MediaWiki_CSS_reference MediaWiki CSS reference - LiquidWiki]
+[[Category:Appropedia site development]]