User Experience of Training Team Make Site

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The WordPress Training Team helps people learn to use, extend, and contribute to WordPress through learn.wordpress.org.

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Meetings (Calendar)

Weekly Global team meeting: Tuesdays 07:00 UTC

Triage Squad GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ triage: Biweekly on Thursdays 07:00 UTC

See Meeting Details for more information.

Folks in the training team have collectively provided bits of feedback about the current structure of the Make site for the team for a little while. This conversation turned into more of an in-depth evaluation of the site and it’s purpose at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. NYC’s contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. this past month. In this post, I’m summarizing some of the key pieces of that conversation (myself, @melindahelt and @Becks979 attended) and applying pieces of that conversation to the current structure of the website. Please add your thoughts as to what pieces of the website need to shift in the comments of this post.

General Thoughts

It needs to be more clear that there are completed lesson plans that can be used in real life.
- I’m starting to think that the “Lesson Plans” navigation item should lead to a landing page that describes the available workshops rather than the long list of workshops in progress.
Examples that show different ways to use the lesson plans would be helpful
- We could include case studies, for example, that show how the plans have been used at a meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area., at a mini-workshop, at a conference, etc.
We need a handbook.
- Most Make teams have a handbook that contains the logistical information about how to contribute to the team and how the team self-organizes. This information is scattered across our site currently and needs to be gathered into one location (e.g. style guide,
The lesson plans in progress need an explanation.
- The handbook on the site is currently used to house the in-progress lesson plans, which is confusing due to it’s inclusion of partially completed plans. An introduction on the first page that explains what this is – and what it isn’t – would be helpful.
Inconsistent use of tagging/categories
- At different times, folks have categorized/tagged the blog posts on the site differently, leading to a somewhat meaningless structure. @courtneyengle had started to clean this up at one point and perhaps this is something we should revisit.
Areas of Focus
- The “Areas of Focus” blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. on the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. was intended to be an easy way to find the threads that relate to current conversations the team was having. It hasn’t been used as such much this year, though we were very consistent about using it this way during the second half of 2015. Perhaps this section should be renamed something like “current priorities”? Some of the content linked from it now should really go in a handbook instead and we could use it to bookmark key blog posts instead?
Rethinking the blue box
- I think revisiting the description of what the team is (e.g. are the lesson plans really “downloadable” as we describe?) could be important. We also should use this area to promote the use of lesson plans that already exist as well as contributing to the team in other ways (the list of which we should also review).

Some Specific Changes

Teacher Resources – this page needs to be rewritten to be in line with the lesson plans that we’ve created and to rely less on outside resources.
An FYI, I changed the time of the meeting on the contact form to the new time.
There are some pages that may not make sense to include any more given the current direction of the team: proposed theme lessons, proposed user lessons, project status.

Please add your reactions to any of these ideas, suggestions of changes we can make to improve the user experience of the website, and any other thoughts about the website in the comments!

c3zh 9:29 pm on August 8, 2016

I think these ideas are great. Would it be a good idea to have a section of lessons that are kind of in a betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. stage where we list them as done, but let people know that we are happy to get feedback on them?
Julie Kuehl 1:34 pm on August 9, 2016

Every time we discuss this I keep coming back to having two “sites” – one for the team (handbook, work in progress, etc.) and one for the public consumption (finished lesson plans and workshop outlines). I don’t know if that is possible, but it would be one way to reduce confusion – and make marketing the finished product easier. (This sounds like the staging/production environments common in web development. I’m reaching here, but could we have make.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org//training/ and training.wordpress.org?)

Tags/categories might be a good first step, but we should settle on an information architecture / taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. that we’d want to use to make them useful. And it’s ongoing work to make sure they’re correct and updated.

Mixing works-in-progress with completed work will always be confusing. Even when the (mythical) day comes that all lesson plans are complete, we’ll still have works-in-progress for updating and new features.

Also, like the wording of “Current Priorities”. And the blue box can always stand to be revisited. If we could separate works in progress from completed lessons, that would need to be made clear in the blue box too.
Melinda Helt 1:35 pm on August 9, 2016

Edit: While I was typing this, Julie posted her comment and she too is suggesting two sites (or at least two clear sections)

Regarding the Handbook: Yes, we need a true handbook that’s main purpose is to tell people how to get involved with the team, and how to complete each task. The “Get Involved” section in the blue box seems like an idea outline to kick off the handbook. Someone wants to see all ways to contribute to the team, point them to the handbook. Someone wants to specifically test, point to that section.

Lesson Plans: I think we should consider the main audience for the lessons section to be people outside of our team. People who are coming here to get materials for meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area., workshops, etc. That overall section includes things like the teacher resources, how to use the plans (case studies as mentioned above).

In this breakdown (internal team audience vs external audience), I’m not sure where the in-progress plans live?

And, if we are thinking of content as team vs external, what’s the availability of learn.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ for this project? Or are we too far away from that?

I’m happy to help in the re-organization of content, but realistically, I’m not going to have much time to focus on that until after WCPGH (September 17th)
Joe Casabona 3:09 pm on August 9, 2016

I think a lot of these thoughts could probably be implemented through a new home page design. Practically speaking I think most people use this as a resource, and while recruiting for the team is important, helping people find the right lesson plans is more important. I agree that using the blue box for a different purpose is probably best.

I also agree with the thoughts about the Lesson Plans page. I could see something like this being useful: a similar blue box introducing the lesson plans, and then each categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. of lessons in it’s own column. Next to each lesson plan is an indicating icon (complete, in-progress, not started) which is explained in the blue box. Then users will know immediately what that page is for and which lessons are ripe for the taking.
skarjune 4:48 pm on August 23, 2016

1. I agree with Julie that there should be a separate interface for public consumption with a staging/production division somehow. Post status, categories, separate pages with TOC, whatever works.
2. Rather than examples, suggested delivery formats for Meetups, WordCamps, workshops etc. would be helpful, could have examples of how these are used.
3. Yes, handbook.
4. This is an internal issue, so same as #1.
5. As Julie says a taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. would help. Also, more control of vocabulary is needed, as terminology varies a bit across lessons.
6. Internal discussions, so better in a handbook, as in #3.
7. Open for discussion.
Meagan Hanes 3:11 am on September 2, 2016

Here are my thoughts!

1. I agree, a landing page clearly showcasing the benefits of these lesson plans would be a great way to share the value of the workshops.

2. I think we should consider three standard case studies and base all our examples off of it – basically, small, medium, and large website. This is a continuation of our “pizza store” analogy we discussed last year. Pizza store would be “medium” perhaps, with Craft Blogger as “small” and e-commerce Craft Store as “large”, is a first idea.

3. Agree 100% on this. Our handbook must be restored to handbook use so we can onboard new contributors with ease! I have heard this feedback throughout my time here.

4. Agreed. Perhaps putting a little blurb of each on one Summary page would help?

5. Agreed.

6. Double agreed! This is a great space for a current priorities section = information relevant for the current time, say 3-6 months of project vision?

7. Being that this is our first encountered element on the page, I think we should pay particular attention to designing its information well. We could think of the top three purposes people will engage with this page perhaps, like: to join the team, to leverage the lessons we create, and to find places to take these lessons?

Welcome

Meetings (Calendar)

General Thoughts

Some Specific Changes

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