website mockups, what is fedora?

[Paul Frields]

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 10:27 AM, Ben Boeckel<mathstuf at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The challenge for the adventurous 'all-choice' population is to
>> realize that they aren't the lion share of people.
>>
>
> Good point. Kevin said on IRC earlier today that we may
> be looking at it from different viewpoints as well. The
> current mockups assume new-to-Linux while in the KDE
> SIG we are looking from a new-to-Fedora-but-familiar-
> with-Linux viewpoint. Maybe this is a part of the root of
> the problem behind how we see these mockups?

It may be.  That's why we set out a set of audience precepts to show
for whom these pages are intended. I think the assumption that people
looking for a specific set of tools, or for a specific spin they've
either seen or heard about, are going to blindly look for the general
download page, especially if we present better options for them.

If I'm in the KDE SIG, promoting Fedora at a show, or pointing out our
spin to someone in person, over email, on IRC, or elsewhere, if I have
a place to point people directly such as "get.fp.o/kde", that is where
I'll send them.  Why would I send them elsewhere on a goose chase when
I can put them right where they'll see what I work on every day?  It
is bad design and the wrong strategy to force that goal onto the
get-fedora page, which has a very different set of objectives.

That's why this fixation on making the general get-fedora page more
complex and choice-laden seems very counterproductive to me. It
assumes that we should have a goal for that page of diverting people
who don't know how to make an informed choice, to force them to make
that choice. As we've laid out previously, the purpose of this page is
to cater -- not exclusively, but primarily -- to people who are not
looking for a panoply of choices. We're providing *other* pages to
cater to people looking for either specific choices, or a large menu
of options.

The get-fedora page *does* need to provide for the relatively small
portion of people who end up there by accident, giving them a way to
find the things they were looking for. Those people are incented to
read the whole page to find what they want, and the "route to choice"
area prominently displays a number of the most popular things they'd
be looking for.

Paul