[Imc-uk-useability] usability meeting

mish mishd at fastmail.fm
Thu Apr 27 16:08:11 PDT 2006


hey folks

This email is to report back about what we did in our recent usability
meeting.  We can't implement most of this without getting the dev server
back on line, and the wiki is offline, so I can't record it there, so
here it is.  I've put stuff relevant to UK generally higher up - firstly
thanks to Maria for some great work on the help pages, looking much
better already.

PREPUBLISH PAGE

We changed this (because we could) - see

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/cambridge/static/prepublish.html

We also think the UK page should change to this text and layout (we
nicked and modified various good ideas from
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/prepublish2.html )

PUBLISH PAGE

We've gone through the page and want to cut quite a lot of text - the
present system means that the text will be the same on all regions and
the UK page (except for Notts).  (This will be implemented on the dev
server when it is online again, and an email sent to imc-uk-propose at
this time).

In the below bits, if a section is not mentioned, it is not changed.
This will be clearer with a real example on the dev server.

TOP BIT

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CAMBRIDGE FRONT PAGE

PDF generation needs to be fixed

RSS Feeds - we think that we should use a RSS icon instead of XML (see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/ for example.  The newswire link should be right
of "Newswire" at the top of the column - aswell as at the bottom of a
lot of scrolling.  Would like to do something similar for the features,
but a location "above the fold" is harder to see, and prob less
necessary.  We may also add links in the Links section in the left
column.

We should change the cambridge help page to link to the new improved UK
help pages (great work Maria).

Change "Publish Your News" to "Click Here To Publish Your News" 
It might not be obvious to everyone that the button actually is a
button.

Add a "Full Article" or "Read More" link to the features - it is not
obvious that you can click through at the moment.

Add a tag line "Grassroots news and views from Cambridge" - unless
someone comes up with something better (suggestions on a postcard to ..)
We want a tag line., but the UK tagline is too long for us.  The only
other aspect we might want to put in there is that *you* can publish -
but the "Click to publish" button should highlight that OK

We changed the CSS so that articles did not appear as links when the
mouse hovered over it.

Hamish



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