One of the issues the Board has been discussing recently is the state of our various download pages for Fedora. This topic springs directly from the process of getting to the heart of Fedora's goals. Along the way we've determined that one of the steps we can take is to improve the clarity of how we present the Fedora distribution. The way many people come into contact with that presentation is through our download site, which needs to provide a first-rate experience for everyone who uses it. This topic clearly falls into the Board's domain, because it's to do not with the production of the Fedora distribution, but rather with the way it's presented, and with the design of one of the essential public-facing pieces of the project. A good, user-centric design must be simple and easy to follow, and provide a route for all users to reach what they want. The most effective route for new users of the website is usually very different than for experienced ones, but all routes must be attractive and effective for the people using them. The experience we currently provide for both these groups on our download site is not terribly attractive or effective, and needs revision. Thanks to some dedicated community members, there was some work done to redesign these experiences in the past, but for a variety of reasons those efforts didn't fully succeed. The Board and I want to see them back on the front burner, so that we are providing the best possible presentation of the many faces of Fedora, whether that presentation is more of an introduction to free software, or intended for experienced users. One of the visual models used by the Community Architecture and me is one in which contributors form the tip of a large pyramid. That pyramid is made up of all the people who use and experience the things that we make in this project. (The most visible and ubiquitous of those is the Fedora distribution itself.) To expand that tip, we strive to do two things: (A) make a bigger pyramid, and (B) make it easy for people to move from the base to the tip (i.e., move from consuming to participating, and then to contributing). A successful redesign of our download site is really concerned with (A) more than (B). The site should help us grow the pyramid from the base up, while also providing ample resources for people who are downloading Fedora with a pre-existing purpose of participating and contributing. A good design has a target audience, and for these different audiences we need different designs. One of them should target new users -- to grow the pyramid from the base up -- and the other should target more experienced or adventurous users. Specifically, we want a central site that is capable of providing more detailed and compelling information about all Fedora spins, and a streamlined, simple download page that presents the default Live spin. The Board's foremost goal is to help Fedora succeed as a contributor-centric project, at times actively leading where necessary. To produce these improvements for Fedora 12, we're asking a small group of people to tackle this problem. This approach is very similar to how any contributor group can stage a Fedora Activity Day, gathering a group with the skills and motivation to identify and solve specific issues. Fortunately, the Fedora Project has clear community leadership already in both the areas of website design (Mo Duffy) and website infrastructure (Ricky Zhou), whom we've asked to participate. The Board will be responsible for developing the requirements for the project here, and will empower them, in accordance with those requirements, to make improvements openly and transparently for the overall benefit of the Project. -- Paul _______________________________________________ fedora-advisory-board mailing list fedora-advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board
