ubuntu-manual team mailing list archive

[Benjamin Humphrey <humphreybc@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi guys,

In the meeting today I shared some mockups of a plan for an online support
website that uses the content we have in the manual, as well as adding some
valuable tools for users to provide feedback and allowing us to offer more
dynamic content such as videos.

The website would be split into two parts, an "Ubuntu support" section, and
a "Learning Center." The support section would offer solutions to problems
that users have, and provide instructions on how to do tasks. Think Chapters
1 - 5 in our manual. The Learning Center would have our "advanced" content
that teaches users things beyond what they need to know for a basic, means
to an end experience. This section would not only involve our content from
Chapters 6 - 9, but also content submitted from the community could be
uploaded and featured. Integration with the Learning/Classroom teams in the
future would be fantastic and classes could be scheduled and managed through
the Learning Center as well.

It will work as a type of "moderated wiki" where users can suggest changes
to paragraphs or provide feedback in the form of a star rating system. This
feedback would be sent to us and we could then make a decision whether to go
ahead and implement the suggested changes or not. I think this strikes a
good balance between a free for all wiki and "static" documentation.

The website is designed to be very user friendly and minimalistic so the
reader isn't distracted from the main content.

The manual itself will be cut down for the next few releases so that it
truly becomes a "Getting Started" guide and will not cover advanced topics
at all. The advanced material will be available solely on the website, but
will be stored in the same pool as the content from the manual so that
translations can be done from the same place.

If you couldn't make the meeting, I highly recommend you read the log:
http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2010/05/06/%23ubuntu-meeting.html

Please have at the attached mockups and provide some feedback, as well as
begin discussion in this thread on how we're going to go about
implementation. Thanks!

-- 
Benjamin Humphrey

Ubuntu Manual Team Lead
Dunedin, New Zealand

http://www.ubuntu-manual.org
www.interesting.co.nz

Attachment: ubuntu-manual-online-mockups.zip
Description: Zip archive