Instructions This is a group brainstorming exercise to extract OSAF information usage scenarios. We're hoping to jumpstart the process with a collaboratively edited wiki pages. I've provided a loose structure with some generic categories of usage scenarios. I'm hoping that you will jump in to provide specific examples and anecdotes as well as add your own categories.

Lay of the Land: What do we have today? What do we use it for?

Current information resources today: Do you use these? How often?

• Public wiki: Projects/Documentation/Journal
  • BrianMoseley Cosmo project and doc pages many times a day, journal very infrequently (but it's great to have when i do want somewhere to record things of temporary interest)
  • TedLeung - I mostly use my own journal pages, the DeveloperPlatformProject^? At least once a week I go through and try to catch up on the changes.
  • HeikkiToivonen - Projects daily. Documentation very rarely. I occasionally read Journal entries that I catch because I subscribe to wiki changes. I also write my own Journal entries every now and then.
  • LisaDusseault - Like Heikki, though I'm trying slowly to upgrade the Doc area so I go there more.
  • ReidEllis - Documentation daily, quite a bit, as I am still learning. Projects and Journal also daily.
  • PhilippeBossut - Daily especially the Project section of course.
  • BobbyRullo - Very occasionally.
• OSAF website
  • TedLeung - I almost never use this.
  • HeikkiToivonen - Rarely. I go here when I need to manage mailing list subscriptions, search the mailinglists, and see what job postings we have listed.
  • LisaDusseault - I go there to lookup contact info (office phone/fax #) and job posting/lookup.
  • ReidEllis - I went here a lot in my first couple of weeks. Almost never since then.
  • PhilippeBossut - Very rarely
  • BobbyRullo - Almost never.
• OSAF blog
  • BrianMoseley to announce Cosmo releases - email for all other Cosmo communication
  • TedLeung - Occasional posts when appropriate, read via RSS in RSS aggregator
  • HeikkiToivonen - Occasional posts, read via RSS in RSS aggregator
  • LisaDusseault - I follow posts with interests and occasionally post. I hope for brief single-topic essay-type posts myself though I've been assured the aggregated status posts interest some people.
  • ReidEllis - Almost never. Don't feel I have the authority to post (just yet). Didn't think of the RSS feed - will add to my aggregator.
  • PhilippeBossut - Occasionally, haven't posted in a while
  • BobbyRullo - Almost Never
• Mailing lists (General, Design, Dev, Scooby, Cosmo)
  • BrianMoseley Cosmo list very frequently, Scooby list occasionally, others lurk
  • TedLeung - I am using all the lists daily
  • HeikkiToivonen - I don't subscribe to Scooby. I stay up to date with dev, I may be several days behind with the others.
  • LisaDusseault - I subscribe to all of these and use them myself now and then.
  • ReidEllis - I am subscribed to them all, and finding the volume a bit overwhelming. Like Heikki, I am up-to-date with dev (soon to be chandler-dev), but not the others. I am finding the duplication of posts across design and (chandler-)dev quite annoying.
  • PhilippeBossut - Same as Reid as far as cross post is concerned. Subscribed to all. Thank goodness for good email filters!
  • BobbyRullo - I use these every day. I post and read frequently on Cosmo and Scooby, and read thoroughly CalDAV posts. Design and Dev I try to follow the general gist of, but the volume is a bit overwhelming.
• Private wiki
  • MimiYin 1-2 times per month for Hiring status, Directory info and Links to reimbursement forms
  • TedLeung - directory information and hiring status if I am in the interview loop
  • HeikkiToivonen - hiring, QA/lab machines, Tinderbox operation, release checklists, etc
  • LisaDusseault - Lots of hiring work and phone and IT information lookup.
  • ReidEllis - a few times a week, usually to look up phone numbers or IRC channel passwords
  • PhilippeBossut - Weekly at least for all things HR and confidential
  • BobbyRullo - I use this for Directory information, and HR stuff every so often.
• Chandler Project Landing Page
  • PieterHartsook - End user documentation, walk through, and screencast demos of highlighted features
• IRC logs
  • PieterHartsook - frequently review IRC office hour discussions or catch-up if I'm late paying attention to a discussion
    • ChatSchedule#OfficeHourArchives
    • Today's #chandler log

Types of content: Please provide specific examples or add new categories

• Announcements
  • TedLeung - release announcements, presence at conferences, etc.

• Personal ideas
• Meeting notes

• Design proposals: User research, Usability, Architecture, Workflow, Interaction, Visual
• Research material
• Discussions: Brainstorming, evaluating proposals

• Planning
• Decision documents
• Specs
• Developer documentation
  • Step-by-step tutorials for parcel developers
  • Step-by-step tutorials for (potentially non-OSAF) application developers
• End user documentation
  • PhilippeBossut - Trouble shooting page
• FAQ's

Audiences: Please provide specific examples or add new categories

• Press
• End-user
• Design contributor
• Developer contributor
  • PhilippeBossut - Testers and QA contributor
  • PhilippeBossut - Localization contributor
  • PhilippeBossut - Website / Wiki / Documentation contributor
• OSAF staff
• Design/Product team
• Ops team
• Mitch

Axes of metadata to keep track of: Please provide specific examples for each category or add new categories

• Author/Owner(s)
• Status of the content
• Focus of the content: Is this a priority topic right now?
  • I'm jumping back into performance issues after not having kept up for a while. What are the topics being discussed right now?
• Type of content
• Working group
• Project
• Subject matter

• Target audience
  • I'd like to read all the content intended for non-technical, new users of Chandler.

Diagnosing the problem. I've seeded this section with a few general ideas, please provide specific personal anecdotes if any of these scenarios ring true for you or add new categories as you see fit.

Presenting a coherent story about OSAF to newbies

• Lack of control over proportions and layout makes it difficult to direct readers' attention
  • MatthewEernisse and BobbyRullo talked about how it was difficult to navigate through blobs of text on the Chandler and Scooby Project pages to find what you want. Matt/Bobby? Could you give some specific examples about what you were looking for in particular?
• Hard to draw readers in: Just in, Most commented, Hot topics
• Much of the content is either old or not understandable to people unfamiliar with the project
• Need Getting started packs for different audiences: all the logistical information together
  • One for users
  • One for developers
  • One for new OSAF hires

Guiding reading on the wiki and discussion on the lists

• No ability to focus the attention of readers on topics: What are we discussing now. What are issues deferred until later. What are settled issues? What are out of date issues?
• Meeting notes are opaque: usually recorded with just dates, not titles or descriptions
• Could we use the blog to "focus" attention?
• PhilippeBossut - I think we need a small shallow clean main identifiable documentation tree that we can refer people to with confidence. We need to keep this small so that we can maintain it up to date constantly. Any one of us should be able to navigate and check this entire tree in 30 minutes.

Making it easy to take personal responsibility for maintaining your own posts on the wiki

• Need a homepage that automatically collects "all of my contributions"
  • Lack of a centralized "my" page makes it hard for people to go back and "garden" their own wiki contributions
    • ReidEllis - Give everyone a work blog to post to easily? Wiki is not the best tool for this kind of thing.
  • Wiki pages I've written that are out-of-date? Is that reflected somewhere?
    • PhilippeBossut - Need a way to park / archive old pages
  • Wiki pages I've written that haven't been linked from the right pages?
  • What else?

Important or frequently used information hard to find

• Key information is often "below the fold".
  • Scenario: I want to go to the irc logs. I hit the link in the sidebar (ChatOnIRC). The key links I ever care about here are: (1) chandler, cosmo, or scooby logs or (2) chat schedule.
    • Added a Table of Contents to the ChatOnIRC page ( %TOC% wiki variable ) to make it easier to find the sections that are important that fall "below the fold". -- PieterHartsook - 21 Apr 2006
• Searching functionality works poorly
  • PhilippeBossut - search is dreadful, never been able to find anything
• MorgenSagen can't remember the Wiki page where he described how to do a personal parcel. So he couldn't pass that info onto PriscillaChung - reported by TedLeung