Analyze and provide designs to improve the Drupal Download process

I love this task idea, both because it's needed, and also because we could duplicate it several times for each of the major Drupal sections (Handbooks, Support, etc.). However, I think "2) get involved with the community" would be better as a separate task, and leave this one as just the downloads page.

Also, this task is still a little fuzzy, because we don't give a clear guideline on what the finished product we're looking for ought to look like.

So I would say make the following alterations:

1) Take out the bit about "get involved with the community" and, if possible, write up as a separate task, perhaps around the "Contribute" tab?
2) Recommend that their comparisons follow the format of http://groups.drupal.org/files/home-page-analysis.pdf (unless there's something better we can point them to)
3) Recommend that their proposed mock-ups follow the format of http://groups.drupal.org/node/3777 (unless there's something better we can point them to)
4) Take off that bit about "split testing" since none of us had any clue of what that was. :D

Oops. Meant to mark this CNW. Sorry. :(

That looks great to me. :) Thanks a lot, gaele! Could you please post that to the Google task tracker at http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...?

This has now been posted at http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...

However, I think it would be best if we created a separate issue on d.o for work on this task, since using this issue could get confusing.

@gaele: can you create a separate issue and then we can close this issue.

Thanks

Yeah good call. :P I was trying to "hack" this issue but that turns out to be way more work. ;)

Removing original task and replacing it with approved one.

So, subscribe ;)

Split testing == a-b testing. If they provide multiple mockups we can do the rest, but basically the point is: we randomly select from one of the designs, present it to the user, see which one results in more downloads. Based upon those statistics we refine the one that works best and use it.

The idea of "getting involved in the community" came from my own experience with OpenOffice.org. When you download/install you see a message at a couple of places that says "Hey, open source means you can help too. Here are some areas that need help and how you can join them". I guess we can leave this up to them to recommend other community goals which might be worth promoting on the download page.

There are two sections that discuss what the output is and I think that they are both specific without hampering creativity, though they are somewhat hidden in the body of the request. I started with the version in #3 and split them out to highlight them.

Based on these changes and your suggestions to provide the example designs, I feel like this is ready to go!

Description:

Review download processes and pages for various software that can be downloaded online. Look for strengths and weaknesses in the approaches that the different projects and companies take. In particular look for features which make it easier or more motivating to download the software. Compare these to the way that Drupal promotes downloads on the home page and the "Download" page

Ask 3 to 5 people to "Download Drupal". Without giving them further instructions, analyze what they do, where they navigate, and any points of confusion in the process.

Deliverables:

* Provide these notes and a summary analysis of the current process.
* Provide annotated mockups of page designs for any improvements and workflow. You should provide 2 to 3 alternate designs.

Resources:

* http://openusability.org/
* http://keycontent.org/tiki-index.php?page=Usability+Tools
* http://groups.drupal.org/usability
* http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics
* Example page analysis (PDF)
* Example annotated mockup

Estimated time:

3 days

ha, y'all got busy with this while I was having breakfast with a half finished comment.

Done.

Copy of the revision from December 13, 2007 - 07:00.