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TriangleWiki.org Raleigh page

and RaleighNC.gov page 

A joint session to discuss two closely related web pages:

  1. the top-level Triangle Wiki page for Raleigh and
  2. the main page for the City of Raleigh web site.

 

Goal #1: Design the top-level page for the City of Raleigh in the Triangle Wiki. 

What do we want on the home page?

Good example of a community homepage  http://daviswiki.org

Need to prioritize what we'd like to see on the front-page, make a list

What type of audience are we targetting:

  • Residents 
  • Bored residents
  • Residents looking for solutions to problems

What about local media, some way to highlight current events on the main page

  • Hash tag feed from Twitter
  • Embed other wiki pages on the main page?

We need group of content masters to decide when things are feature

  • But do we want to curate this or is that too controlling?
  • If we police too much we may end-up showing some biases

Don't we want photos on the main page

  • Feed of interesting photos of Raleigh 
  • Photosynth feed

But we need to focus on and highlight the wiki and the wiki content, feeds and photos can be distracting 

Let's start drawing a picture now...

  • Top of a page: an elevator pitch for the page
  • Can we show some intro information for first time visitors?
    • But... there are some limitations to the wiki, we don't have complete design (and Javascripty) freedom
  • Need a table of contents, for example:
    • Sections or "districts" of town, city counsel districts
    • Neighborhoods
    • Trending topics?
  • Main page should have a map with markers for things that have pages

Important consideration: how do people arrive at the Triangle Wiki and the Raleigh home page?

Following up... let's talk about this over lunch

 

Goal #2: design top-level page for Raleigh Gov website

City is designing new look, feel and organization for the Raleigh web site

We looked at the new design, talked about the color scheme (orange) , and content of the side bar of links 

Suggestion: can we make the experience personalized to the ZIP code of the visitor, show them relevant information about their district, services for their neighborhood etc. ... apparently we already do this now to some extent

How often are the site and photos changed? A: frequently

How much was budgeted for usability? A: (apparently, not enough... we're seeking volunteers and not getting enough)

Let's look at the Chavis Park page. Before things were organized around "verticals" like swimming, soccer field, art center and not organized around each park. Also we feature a map that you can zoom into to see planimeric data like parking locations, etc.

Suggestion: use more images with captions, and use more captions ingeneral. People read captions

How is the site implemented: Alfresco CMS with XML content and XSL transforms, plus JBoss portal [ed: that seems heavy, why not use a wiki?)

We talked about how to use background color to imply partitions of the page

We talked about the problems of using the city seal and watermark

We ran out of time and wrapped things up...

 

Attendees

Reid Serozi 

Rick Ross

Dave Johnson @snoopdave

 

Others... please add your name if you attended

 

 

 

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