Drupal documentation usability experiment

By Amazon on 30 Apr 2005 at 00:25 UTC

For the last several weeks the Drupal documentation team has been working to organize and create documentation. We have come up with several documentation handbooks that we believe will best meet your needs. Almost 200 of you have taken the time to tell us why you use Drupal documentation, what you need, and why you would decide to use Drupal documentation again. (View the previous announcement, take the survey or view the survery results.)

But before the Drupal documentation team commits to categorizing all the suggested documents you have requested into handbooks, we need your help. Please take the time to organize this list of suggested documentation into our list of proposed handbooks. We will take the results of how you think the documentation should be organized and make sure it's usable for the Drupal community. Please use your email address, which will be kept private, as your user name so that we can get back to you if you leave comments for us.

Comments

Is Dries coordinating this,

sami_k commented 30 April 2005 at 00:56

Is Dries coordinating this, or is this approved by him, i.e. have you talked with him? Dries if you could chime in on this, that would be great!

Yes, Dries is aware of this.

sepeck commented 30 April 2005 at 01:04

Yes, Dries is aware of this. Kieran(Amazon) is part of the drive to improve documentation. If you notice, the Drupal-docs is hosted off drupal.org. The wiki the documentation team is using is off space donated by Bryght. The goal is to improve Drupal documentation together, rather than seperately.

This is all part of the benefit of increased usage of Drupal as a CMS platform. Some new people think that the documentation needs improvement, and some folks who have been around a while agree. This needs volunteers. Well, there are some volunteers now and Kieran is one of the folks coordinating it.

His last post is on the front page. http://drupal.org/node/21389

-sp
---------
Test site...always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

Yes, I am aware of this. I

Dries commented 30 April 2005 at 06:46

Yes, I am aware of this. I have already taken the time to execute the card sorting experiment when it was being setup. See http://lists.drupal.org/archives/drupal-docs/2005-04/msg00320.html if you want proof.

Linux support for flash to do usability experiment

Amazon commented 30 April 2005 at 02:01

Hi, I got a complaint that this flash app doesn't work with Linux. Here's what I recommended.

uggh, there's no flash for linux?
http://freshmeat.net/projects/f4l/

Do it manually, and I'll ask the folks to import your results if it's
possible. Sorry for the hassle.

Follow these directions:
Introduction:
We are conducting research that will help us gain a better
understanding of how Drupal Documentation should be organized and make
it easier to use.

Instructions:
Assign each of the items in the list on the left to one of the category
boxes on the right. The items are names of documentation that have
been suggested by the community. Some documents may seem similar
because different people suggested the titles. However, they may in
fact be different.

Just drag items from the list into folders. What items belong together?
Think of a grocery store -- milk, cheese and butter are in the Dairy
section and apples and oranges are in the Fruit section.

There is no right group for the items. If you can not decide which
group a document belongs in you can place it in the Don't know/Don't
understand group.

This exercise should take you 20 to 30 minutes. You must do the
exercise in one sitting.

Useful definitions:
Drupal(CivicSpace, Bryght) is a dynamic web site platform which allows
an individual or community of users to publish, manage and organize a
variety of content, Drupal integrates many popular features of content
management systems, weblogs, collaborative tools and discussion-based
community software into one easy-to-use package.

Drupal handbooks are the terms used for books of Drupal documentation.

Modules/Applications: modules refer to the individual programs that run
on Drupal. People unfamiliar to Drupal think of these as applications.

Developing: is the term used for programming, desiging, testing, and
documenting.

Administering: Means configurating the application as it is. There are
no fundamental changes to the underlying the Drupal platform This is
mostly done through administration of the system through web
interfaces.

Theme: Modifies the look and presentation of your site

Please feel free to leave comments. Thank you for taking the time to
participate in our study.

Sort the list below into this list:
About Drupal
Installation and upgrading
Configuration and customization
Developing for Drupal
About the handbook
Docs in progress(wiki)
Don't know/Don't understand

Drupal, CivicSpace, Bryght comparison chart
OS, DB, PHP, Webserver level docs
OS, DB, PHP, Webserver level tasks needed to install
System Requirements
Installation Process
Installation best practices
Core vs contributed applications/modules
How to install a contributed module
How to upgrade Drupal core.
How to upgrade Drupal with modules and themes.
How to back up a site
How to restore a site
How to move a site
What settings are where
Initial configuration
Advanced configuration
Block tutorial
What are the core applications?
What do the core applications do?
Configuring core applications
Installing new applications
Application overviews
How theme engines work
How a theme affects your site
Trouble shooting guide
Development on Drupal
Learning how Drupal is put together?
How to make blocks
How to make modules
Marketing
User experience and usability guide
Security
Performance
Testing
Core concepts
Example site walkthroughs
Theme developers guide
Handbook for using applications(module)
Common tasks
Beginner tutorials
Data relationship diagram
Step by step page view generation
Module dev troubleshooting guide
Theme tutorial
Architecture overview
Walkthrough of example sites
Taxonomy tutorial
Language translator guide
Advanced module development tutorial
Guide to combining modules
What can I do with Drupal?
How does Drupal work?

Kieran Lal

Leaving comments

sleary commented 4 May 2005 at 15:01

Sorry to take up space here with my response, but the "leave a comment" thing absolutely will not work; it pops me back to the sign-in screen while I'm still typing, before I've submitted my sort. This has happened three times in a row and I give up. I've submitted the sort without comments, and I'm pasting them here:

Things I filed as "I don't understand" --

"Testing." Testing WHAT? You have been too concise; I don't know what you're talking about.

"Marketing." Again, marketing WHAT? Using Drupal for ecommerce or spreading the word about Drupal?

"PHP/OS level docs." If you mean documents specific to installing Drupal on a specific OS, that goes in installation, but if you're talking general reference, why would this be in the Drupal handbook? I'd expect references to OS- or language-specific things to be included anywhere they might be relevant... installation, configuration, etc. but not all in a single location.

"Step by step page view generation." Huh? I associate the term "page view" with server traffic analysis, but I'm pretty sure that's not what you're talking about. Are you talking about generating different layouts? Customizing the appearance of various node types? I have no idea.

Backing up, moving, and restoring a site probably ought to be a section separate from the initial installation and upgrading, but I've sorted that stuff as best I can.