Aeolus website improvements

Jaromír Coufal jcoufal at redhat.com
Sun Jul 15 20:29:43 UTC 2012


On 13.7.2012 18:41, Justin Clift wrote:
> On 14/07/2012, at 2:05 AM, Francesco Vollero wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> some time ago, I go trough with Jan Wildeboer to see what's wrong with our
>> the website and so on. Until now we've an huge list of things that from
>> my point should be changed asap.
> Some very good points here. :)
>
> Going to regroup them a bit for my first response here, as some of them
> have similar dependencies. ;>
>
>
>> A quick list:
>>
>> - The developer info says "Open Source" but not which license.
>> - Having the mailing list link and the IRC channel in plain sight.
> This stuff can be done immediately, as there aren't any dependencies
> we have to wait on.  Want to submit patches? :)
>
>
>> - The architecture picture of Aeolus in the frontpage.
> Interesting thought.  Yeah, that would be useful.  Needs some good
> candidate ideas probably.
>
> It'll probably take a few ideas/concepts, reviews on mailing list.
> Give it a week from when it's started. ;)
I was thinking about this one. If we want sites to be more personal, 
isn't it contra-productive to show images with architecture details in 
front page? Definitely the picture is great idea to be on sites, the 
only question is if it should be right on the front page.

Being new user coming to page for the first time I am not that much 
interested about architecture details but about:
*- What is Aeolus?*
*- What benefits does it bring to me,*
*- How does it look/work* - in general,*
- How can I get it*.

If I am more interested in details of a project, I would go to "About" 
and look for details there.

So in my opinion picture is great idea just placed in some relevant 
subsection.
>> - Make it more personal. People attach to people, not to code. (I
>> already said that in my previous email with things to do)
> That's a bit generic.  Any idea's on how we should approach this?
I think, answer is partially in the idea with *videos*. It gets the page 
more personal if we omit deep details and focus on introducing Aeolus 
and what it brings to people.
Other idea is listed at the end of this e-mail within my notes - make 
*texts* "personal", make people to see themselves in particular 
situation (how using Aeolus is solving their problem).
>> - Have in frontpage a videoclip explaining what Aeolus is or have a
>> video of a general introduction (elevator pitch, lightning talk) on the
>> front page.
>> - Create quick videos on the most common usecases like:
>>    - "I am a VMWare admin - how can I use Aeolus?"
>>    - "I am a DevOps -  how can I use Aeolus?"
>>    - "We have RHEL and use EC2 -  how can I use Aeolus?"
> 100% agreed.  We have a dependency on working upstream Aeolus, that's
> also suitable for screencasting with.  *In theory* we're knocking off
> the last of the bugs blocking this about now.  With luck, around the end
> of this sprint the upstream 0.10.x branch of stuff will be suitable for
> doing the above with.
>
> That being said, we can still plan out a lot of the stuff, prior to
> creating anything.
>
> We'll need to work out each idea in depth.  Like a movie script, so
> we know what's to be said, shown, etc.
>
> Actual recording of screencast time doesn't take long.  The planning
> (if we want good results) can take a lot of time.  Days. :/
Definitely agree. User experience and success stories are parts which 
brings people inside the project.

On the front-page I would expect some *introduction* of Aeolus project, 
well and shortly explained basic concepts and maybe some very short user 
stories (each in 2-3 sentences).

Then there could be videos with common *use-cases* in separate page 
available under link (e.g. "See how it works" leading to some subsection 
of "Use it").

However, these materials should be in *high quality* (especially 
front-page introduction video) which would consume quite lot of time to 
produce. Use-cases could be done in some temporary version in lower 
quality (quick fill of gap which is right now) and later on we can bring 
better ones, but in this case they definitely shouldn't be on the 
front-page.
>> - We should really separate more between the users we want to attract
>> and the developers you are interested in. We should keep this in mind
>> and work on it.
>> - Mailing list where users can discuss usecases for aeolus.
>> - Mailing list where developers discuss how to develop the project.
> Separate user and dev lists?  I'd be happy with that. :)
>
> Hugh, is this workable from your point of view?
>
> Small amount of effort.  From memory, we just need to fill out a form,
> and one it get created.  Then we just need to point people at it.  (website,
> annoucnement, etc).
>
>
>
>> - The newest "recent news" is 3 months old, we should update it fastly.
> Dropping that one.  Website has been updated since you wrote that. ;)
>
>
>
>> Looking forward for your feedback on those things and how many people we
>> should bother to make it done ASAP.
> We can ask the graphics people to create an architecture diagram for us,
> we'll need to give them the details to put in it though.  (doesn't have
> to look great, just needs to get the info to them)
>
> How much time/effort have you got? :)
>
> + Justin
>
>
>> Cheers,
>> Francesco
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Francesco Vollero
>> Software Engineer Aeolus Project
> --
> Aeolus Community Manager
> http://www.aeolusproject.org

I would like to add few of my quick observations and ideas:

*** About >*Aeolus mission*... Image could be pictured in better way for 
explaining an idea. For me it's quite *hard to get it* and takes some 
time to understand it well from the picture (for the first time as a new 
coming). User doesn't want to think, he should see and know what was 
intended to be said. Otherwise he continues without having the idea.

*** About > *What is Aeolus*... For user terms "Aeolus Conductor / 
Composer / Orchestrator / HA Manager" says nothing. We could start in 
*more personal* way such as "Control all your running instances all over 
different clouds in one environment..." or "Compose compatible images 
for different clouds..." or "Orchestrate set of images in organized 
way...", etc. Involve user in a way that he depicts himself in such 
situation.

*** About >*Components*... I would try to *highlight important words* 
because there is quite a lot of text. (e.g. for Conductor first item: 
"launch, track, clean". Might help in readability.

** About*... Maybe I would *show all subpages* under this section right 
away as some sort of menu (Screenshots, Features, Requirements). Reason 
why - example: User wants to know Requirements. (without looking to 
footer navigation or using search which are secondary navigation) How 
can he know where to find them?

** *Get it... Navigation on right might be more visible. I almost 
overlooked it (noticed on the 4th page).

*** *Use it*... I would *hide support for older versions* under its 
heading and unfold only if user wants to see it. It's unnecessary 
distracting user from main stream.

*** Developers... Put links into the box background (the same one as is 
in About, Get it, Use it) in order to make them more visible - page 
background makes links little bit hard to read.

*** Projects... Make projects' names as click-able heading to be more 
visible. Maybe use boxes as background?


I hope it will help,
Jarda

--
Jaromír Coufal

Interaction Designer
Red Hat Czech s.r.o.

Mobile: +420 724 595 508
E-mail: jcoufal at redhat.com
IRC: jcoufal at #cloudforms-ui, #aeolus, #brno

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