Drupal.org redesign officially underway

Now that everyone is (hopefully) recovered from Drupalcon Szeged, I wanted to create one more front page post with a roadmap for the portion of the redesign project involving Mark Boulton Design. Mark and Leisa provided insight into their approach to the redesign in their keynote and really built up excitement and enthusiasm for the project. I highly recommend it to anyone even a teensy bit interested in the redesign process. Over the next three months (September 2008 – December 2008), the d.o redesign team will be tackling:

• User research
• Revised information architecture
• Content audit and editing
• Wireframes
• Usability testing
• Brand style guide
• Finalized design .psd

To be sure, they have a lot of work ahead of them. No worries – they’re totally on it! However, it also should not be underestimated how much work is ahead of us, the community. Again, I’m not worried, but it’s important that everyone is clear that the scope of the work we’ve contracted MBD to do is only the beginning.

The community will be the driving force in the redesign of Drupal.org and the Redesign Group will be the central hub for all interested. Be a part of it.

To make this project successful, the Drupal community will:

• Participate in the design process
• Upgrade d.o to Drupal 6
• Build the theme
• Architect feature enhancements
• Conduct testing
• Launch and maintain d.o

That means we need you!

Step 1 is for you to subscribe to the Redesign Group. There we will be posting each of the deliverables created by MBD for community comment.

Here is the working schedule (e.g. please tune in at these regularly scheduled times!):

• Friday, September 19th – Sunday, September 21st: initial research and proposed top level IA
• Friday, September 26th – Sunday, September 28th: branding development
• Friday, October 3rd – Sunday, October 5th: prototyping round 2
• Friday, October 24th – Sunday, October 26th: prototyping round 3, branding development round 3, IA strategy, design concepts
• Friday, October 31st – Sunday, November 2nd: prototyping round 4, branding development round 4, design concepts

All reviews will be posted on Drupal.org redesign plan for the Drupal Association on groups.drupal.org.

In addition to g.d.o posts, I'll be lurking in #drupal.

The redesign is an awesome undertaking. It is ambitious. It will impact all of us. Get involved.:)