Re: Website impression

On Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:48:42 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams
<[email protected]> wrote:

>> - the overall impression was that of a website that is not completely  
>> geared towards attracting and informing users. I think the open source  
>> (non-commercial) world suffers greatly from this, and you can see it at  
>> http://www.jabber.org for a start. That website does a great job 
>> informing  would-be developers or technical linux fans, but the 
>> unsuspecting user  that has heard about jabber.org as a cool or good 
>> Instant Messenging  platform just doesn´t get treated to a good show.
>
> And are end users really interested in a "Messaging platform"?  No.
> System and network administrators are,  and the first thing they are
> going to do is go server shopping.  Then the user will be given a Jabber
> client and configuration instructions.  And end user is interesting in
> the fact that their friend Billy uses a IM system call Jabber so they go
> searching, probably via Google, and install the first Jabber client they
> find [ except on a corporate workstation where they probably don't have
> sufficient privileges to install anything ].
>
>> Compare with http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution.
>> Their interest is in informing would-be users.
>
> And evolution is an end-user application, a groupware server is not.

I agree. I mentioned it already in my reply to Joe Auty. Though I´m an end  
user, and I´m interested in Jabber, and the jabber.org website did not  
meet my needs. Were I a system admin interested in installing it on my  
local intranet, it would have been the same.

>
>> Not even technical users want technicalities. Not until they start using
>>
>> it, and that´s when they need user manuals, not frontpages.
>
> I completely and 105% disagree.  I am a technical user, and
> technicalities are the very first things I want to see.   I want to
> filter out the non-viable or non-applicable
> applications/services/servers as fast as I can.  Give me the features,
> dependencies, protocols supported, etc...  as up-front as you possibly
> can.

This may be as it is, but you will need information to decide whether you
want or can use it or not. You need, indeed, features. But you first need
to know the setting in which the solution operates. If I read that the
mission is "we _want_ to create this and that", what does that tell me
about what's realised? It can have many features, fine, the application
page is good for that, true, but if it doesn't give me the impression that
it's well thought-out, that it has its place in the world, that users are
happy, that support is good, then I am one of the first to walk away and
check other sites first. My time is precious to me, I'd like to get a
complete picture as soon as possible, and that is NOT in the first place
about technical things, but about functional things, which may be technical
of nature. Perhaps I should not use technical but
operational/constructional here... That it supports the _functionality_ of
connecting with LDAP is good, not that is has an LDAP-plugin. Likewise for
anything, my advise is: focus on describing the functionality, not how it
is realised. You can of course mention technical issues important to this
functionality just fine. But just use a functional view of your system if
you describe it to would-be users, whether they be Joe's #1, #2, #3, #4 or
#5. It is terrible to have to read through the construction of some package
to see what and how it realises in terms of functionality. This is
especially true, at least for me, for those systems that provide a lot of
low-level functionality, but fail to describe the high-level functions that
can be realised through them, requiring you to read through and comprehend
absolutely every detail about those lowlevel functions before you can grasp
the total picture.


>
>> - I don´t really ´get´ from the introduction material, what exactly is 
>> the  nature of OGo. Is it a server? Is it a client/server solution?
>
> http://www.opengroupware.org/en/about/index.html
> "Mission: To create, as a community, the leading open source groupware
> server to integrate with the leading open source office suite products
> and all the leading groupware clients running across all major
> platforms, and to provide access to all functionality and data through
> open XML-based interfaces and APIs."
>
> How much more plainly can it be stated.  This states "server" and
> mentions "groupware clients".

True.

>
>> both Outlook and Evolution, among others, AND has a native webinterface  
>> that is just brilliant (if it actually is, haven´t tried yet ;)),
>
> Well, the web interface is certainly not "brilliant", IMHO.  But it is
> certainly well-able usable.
>
>> the first thing I want you to do ;). Of course, telling me that it is a  
>> groupware solution that provides [name many applications here] is the 
>> very  first thing, but then comes what I just mentioned. That is the way 
>> to  inform ppl as fast as possible about the nature of your solution. It 
>> also  provides the reader with a good overview of its environment, and 
>> the  environment is where the user now exists. What you did with that 
>> very  short Mission statement and then immediately describe the History 
>> and the  connection to SKYRiX is just not a good solution. That is to 
>> say, if  ¨About¨ is the starting point, then you should change your 
>> ¨About¨.  Because the History and the SKYRiX connection are not relevant 
>> AT ALL to a  new visitor to the website. So you should juggle with what 
>> ¨About¨ means,  is it the starting point, or is it something for telling 
>> the user ¨About
>
> I agree here. The "applications" section should be linked to from within
> the "about" page, since the applications are what this is about.  But I
> don't think the SKYRiX bit should be removed,  when an organization
> makes a nice donation or contribution then they deserve to be tooted
> about somewhere where people see it - that is just fair and, basically,
> how the world works.

Of course. But I would suggest to put it in a "About this project" section
and not as the starting point for new ppl browsing the site.
You might reference it in your introduction, as in "OpenGroupware.org is a
blabla that was originally written by SKYRiX and continues to receive their
support to this day. SKYRiX also provides commercial enhancements such as
Microsoft Outlook integration and blabla. OpenGroupware.org [more
functional/environmental descriptons...]. This way, you describe
immediately the relationship as a quick historical note, a quick positional
note, and the relevance for the functionality offered to customers. This of
course is just a quick example; I would never advise to really start your
introduction like this ;).


>
>> So, it seems your cute lil´ project has more to it than I at first  
>> suspected.
>
> Condescending much?

;-) no not really. getting grounded in reality is the more apt term ;).

>
>> part of the email I sent Helge. It was about getting an ¨Opera M2¨-level
>>

Oh, I was talking about Opera Software ASA's emailclient, that has GMail
like functionality or so I've heard (describe their relationship). See:

-- 
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
-- 
OpenGroupware.org Discussion [email protected]
http://mail.opengroupware.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss