UDS session for Ubuntu Help (Was: USB installation instructions for beginners)

[Mat Tomaszewski]

On 13/04/2010 13:29, Phil Bull wrote:
> Hi Mat,
>
> On Thu, 2010-04-08 at 11:03 +0100, Mat Tomaszewski wrote:
>    
>> Thanks Phil, this is brilliant work. And this is what I propose.
>>      
> Thanks. Please let me know what you'd like me to do with it (i.e. if you
> need it rushing out for Lucid, or whether it can wait until next
> release).
>    

I think it would be great if your instructions could find their way to 
help.ubuntu.com (ideally accompanied by screengrabs). We are rushing 
indeed and have created some basic instructions that will land directly 
on ubuntu.com, but they are nowhere near as comprehensive as yours. I 
can share some screengrabs that we have done internally with you if 
that's helpful.

> [...]
>    
>> During the upcoming UDS there will be, for the first time, a dedicated
>> design and user experience track, driven by our team. It will be a great
>> chance to meet and talk about those exciting challenges. I'd like to
>> propose a working session dedicated to online help and support for
>> Ubuntu, where I'd love to see as many doc team members participating as
>> possible.
>>      
> I should be able to participate remotely.
>    

Great!

>    
>> The structure that I think the session should have could be outlined as:
>>
>> - Who are our users? When and why do they need help and support? How do
>> they go about solving their problems?
>> - What areas of using the desktop are generating most questions?
>> - What structure should be applied to the online help to answer those
>> questions most efficiently?
>> - What language and tone of voice will be the most effective?
>> - What visual language will be the most effective?
>>      
> A lot of the answers to these questions will be useful upstream too. You
> may be aware that GNOME are currently completely rebuilding their help
> system with Mallard and Yelp 3.0, so we should try to tie in any of our
> work with that effort.
>    

Indeed. It would be a very interesting thread for our discussion.


>    
>> Charline Poirier, our user research lead (CC'd), has offered her
>> expertise and insight to help with this project and will also
>> participate in the session. Charline will bring her enormous knowledge
>> about users' needs and behaviours but is also very curious about all the
>> findings of the doc team. Please feel free to engage her in your
>> conversations on the mailing list.
>>      
> At the moment, we're relying solely on our judgement when deciding what
> to cover in the docs, which isn't very sensible. Browsing the forums for
> common topics can be useful, and I've also started to use a script which
> mines the IRC logs for user questions, but it would be great if Charline
> could work with us to come up with a more robust methodology.
>
> In particular, I'd be interested in developing a set of user personas
> that we could use to inform our writing.
>    

That's great - I think this is where Charline's expertise will prove 
very useful!

>    
>> Phil, would you like to register an appropriate blueprint for UDS?
>> Please email or ping me on irc if you need any help.
>>      
> I'm hoping that we can have a Doc Team meeting in a week or two so we
> can discuss this stuff and get some blueprints registered. It would be
> great if you could participate - I'll let you know when the meeting is
> arranged for.
>
>    

That would be awesome, thanks Phil!

Regards,

Mat