Praja is an excellent initiative and has made quite an impact already. However, I think the user experience is a little lacking in terms of navigability and organization. These are my views on an alternative structure for the website.
People who visit praja can be divided into two different groups. First the contributors, who add to the content. Second, viewers who are essentially consumers of this content. The needs of these two groups are these:
1. Contributors
People who have content they can add to the pages. The content can be of different kinds which will be discussed in a while. But the essential need of this group is a basic input structure that allows, and may be sometimes, forces them to think more clearly about exactly what they want to contribute. As against blogs and forums which are essentially free form text, the users are forced to structure their thoughts according to certain constraints. For example, given the present structure of praja, three different categories of user contributed content can be identified:
- Projects: These don't have to be highly funded large projects. Anything that has an aim of generating some action is a project. The input boxes for Projects can be:
- Short Description What is it all about? This is a maximum 10 line answer to the quintessential question, Why?
- Present State What are the actions that have already been taken? If the project is already over, what were the steps taken?
- Stops What are the areas in which this project is struggling? What are the areas in which the Praja community can help?
- News: These are the news that a user feels is what everyone should be informed about. Things like "a local politician was arrested, but was released on bail within 2 days!" These are the things that would generate projects and action, but in themselves are not projects or actions. These would be heavily moderated and might be edited. Its probably important for these news to be very objective in nature and not carry any point of view. Discussion forums are meant for that.
- Reference: This is what gyan is. Stuff like RTI's, or data about criminal history of all the politicians in every constituency in a state. A wiki like structure that gyan is best for this, but the pages need to be very specific and should be well categorized. These pages would be referred to extensively by different projects and in discussion forums.
- Discussion Forums: Discussion forums can be attached to any project or news item. Essentially anyone can start a discussion about a particular item of interest. These are meant for brainstorming and informal discussions.
Apart from this, the contributors are encouraged to attach highly relevant tags to the items they put up.
2. Casual Visitors
As a result of providing the above strucuture, vistors don't have to wade through entire blog entries to get a sense of what they are looking at. The visual organization of different items mentioned above gives them visual cues that allows them to quickly identify the information they are most interested in. If they are lookiing at a project, they can quickly see what are the actions that have been taken and what are the areas in which they can help. Of course, the onus eventually lies on the contributors to put relevant material at the relevant place. A certain "culture" would have to be established in due course of time.
The front page should have these essential sections:
- Tag cloud: The tags are organized into higher level categories like roads, elections and these are prominently visible in a seperate panel on the main page. This panel is for people who have a certain defined interest areas and would like to quickly find relevant content.
- Active Forum topics: There should be a panel that displays the most active forum topics.
- Featured articles: These are essentially regular editorials that would summarize and put into context all the new activity like new projects, news and even gyan pages. They also highlight really inspiring projects so that a casual visitor gets an idea of what's possible through an organized, focussed community like this.
3. User categorization and profile
One of the other ideas that has essentially come from Gaia is that user base be categorized by nature of resources they can assist with and their areas of expertise. This should make it easy to find the right person to contact when needed.
I'd be happy to get everybody's opinion on this.
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Some thoughts
These are some of my observations in terms of front page redesign.
• The Homepage doesn’t communicate what Praja is all about.
• The words and terminologies being used need to be more universal, for example say the word the “Gyan”; though very appropriate for the topic, but it might not make any sense to a non-Hindi speaking visitor.
• The hierarchy of information needs to be redesigned at many places, for example the search box could come to the top of the page.
• The content on the page appears cluttered and its takes effort to comprehend it correctly. For e.g. the Frontpage section on the home page.
• The site also needs a makeover in terms of visual appeal.
Home Page should narrate the story......
Users - I tend to agree with SB's categorization and purpose of user kinds.
Content - Project and News posts definetely needs a clear distinction in their presentation and input fields/tone. Project posts should also have a status marker/link.
Presentation - This is the only variable that makes posts visible and significant. Therefore, the presentation of home page and different sections in a unique style would make Praja more appealing. Home Page should narrate the story of Praja in few lines/images. Kooze-me-Samundar Samaane Jaisa. Each Category of posts should have their own sections presenting all teh realted contents.
Discussion Posts - I agree with proposal that any post, be it project, news or gyan pages can be made/linked as a discussion post.
For further review inputs, website layout snapshots would help.
Syed
Not exactly inputs but...
Not that it cant be improved but what exactly is the problem with the current site? Maybe we should list some drawbacks and then get to solutions. I am pretty much comfortable with the site and its features. Maybe the following is a problem but maybe its not.
I have noticed Gyan is underutilized. It needs to get some prominence up front. Blog is more freewheeling and allows creative thoughts and opinions to flow it needs to share front page with Gyan. Gyan should be moderated with few topics decided by a few people.
more types of users
Activity wise, I see following types of users, starting with least in numbers to highest
However, I would use another lense to categorize users
The design aim of this website should be to retain #1, convert #2 to #3 and be of value to #4