Caveat: Work in Progress: there's more from 3/29 to be added this weekend.

Discovery, Intelligence, Relevance, Community

Guiding Principles for Gnomepal Information Architecture (IA)

• IA exercises can get pretty bogged down with ceremony. The objective here is to keep this one streamlined, so achievable requirements can be derived from it. For subsequent revs, it may be appropriate to apply more rigor, but this is a sprint, so keep edits concise this round.
• Patterns, patterns, patterns! Abstract all models. Remember, we're building a tool that builds communities, not a community itself. Avoid single use or one-off scenarios.
• Avoid thinking "what would I do?" Instead, come back to the Personas, and try to put yourself inside the head of the one that will face the problem you're thinking thru.
• Modules are Drupal's strength, but only if they're modular enough to be moved between scenarios - if one type of community can use a tool, perhaps the others can as well.

Personas:

Personas are a representation of the live humans we're designing for. While they roughly map to what Drupal treats as "roles," Personas are meant to be archetypal - there will obviously be many sub-classes within these types.

Community Leader - A community site adminstrator.

Goals:

• Serve the community (the reason to create a community site to begin with)
• Attract new and existing community members
• Promote interaction among community members and external communities
• Maintain the health and well-being of the community
• Manage community infrastructure ("plumbing")
• Monetize intra-community interactions for the accrual of value to the community owners, the community at large, or to individual members within an intra-community economy

Deputized Member - A community member who the Community Leader has granted some (arbitrary) privileges. (Example: Editor.)

Goals:

• Assist the Community Leader(s)
• Execute the site maintenance duties allocated to them
• Be recognized and rewarded for their efforts
• Shares many of the community health goals with Community Leader(s) and service acquisition goals with Basic Member

Basic Member - A site visitor who has completed the adminstration and profile process and been granted access by the site's adminstrators.

Goals:

• Contribute to the community
• Create content
• Acquire community services
• Interact with other community members
• Pursue interests
• Engage in activities
• Give help, Get help
• Meet new people

Visitor - An anonymous visitor to the site who can browse just enough content to decide if they want to join the community, but does not have access to the community's core material.

Goals:

• Be quickly or immediately matched with shared affinities
• Evaluate the community strength
• Assess interest in membership
• Easily discover what services the community offers
• Easily discover what activities are ongoing within the community
• Easily discover how to join the community

Scenarios

Scenarios are a representation of real-world experiences that occur online. Scenarios aren't use cases, they're more narrative and intended to capture the totality of the experience, but they often break down into conditional sets of use cases.

Authentication Question

• Does Gnomepal.org manage single sign-on for central profile / inter-community management? This would allow for the greatest flow of information, relevance, and discovery across domains and communities - knowing that any person may fulfill different roles in various communities, and wear those badges proudly if allowed. From here, a simple member of one community could more easily create their own - passing them on to a recommended host and bringing their authenticated credentials with them. One would not have to maintain multiple profiles that work well with Open identification directives - since one also belongs to multiple communities of people with disparate goals.

Set Up a Community Site

• Download and/or access install profile via Recommended Web Host
• Run installer or request credentials
• Receive installation confirmation email with credentials
• Log in to new site
• Begin setup wizard

Setup Wizard

• Setup Wizard and its Values may be changed or accessed at a later time
• Step X of Y visible clearly on the page
• Skip Wizard option available

1. Community Title: "What is your Community called?"
2. Community Mission Statement: "Give us a single sentence description of your Community"
3. Community Tool / Feature Checklist: "What do you want your members to be able to do?"
4. Build Community Call-to-Action List (5+ text fields): "Why should people use your site?"
5. Do you want advertising on your site?

• If Yes, "Do you want to share advertising revenues with members?"
• If Yes, "Do you want to donate X-Y% of advertising impressions to the Gnomepal Organization automatically?"

1. Community Feel: "How would you like your Community to look?"

• Choose a Theme (radio button)
• Themes potentially divided into genres, pulled from a central repository
• Hobby or Affinity
• Sports / Leisure / Travel
• Games / Entertainment / Arts
• Business or Professional
• Non-profit Organization
• Neighborhood
• School or Class
• Fan Club
• Conference
• Organic / Generic

1. Community Documentation Checklist: "Do you have these yet...?"

• Terms of Service / Terms and Conditions
• Code of Conduct
• Privacy Policy
• Copyright Notices
• ISSN

1. Community Guidelines: "Which member behaviors are forbidden?"
2. Community Security: "Do you need your entire site password protected?"
3. Invitation: "Would you like to announce your Community on Gnomepal.org?"

Deeper Setup Configuration

Become a Member

Establish Identity

Create Content

Edit Content

View Content

Critique Content

Find Friends

Join an entity

Affiliate (Link to) External Content

Content Types

• Text
• Audio
• Video
• Images

Sections

• Blogs
• Classifieds / Coupons / Store
• Q&A
• Wiki
• Schedule / Calendar / Events
• Groups
• Group FAQ
• Group Forums / Email List
• Aggregate Schedule / Calendar / Events
• Aggregate Media
• Aggregate Q&A
• Aggregate Wiki
• Polls
• Tags / Categories
• Forums
• Activities
• Aggregate Local Track
• Aggregate Off-site Track
• Profiles
• Local Track
• Off-site Track
• Relevant Activity
• Interests / Shared Interests
• Chat / Live Video
• External Community Links / Shared
• Internal Group Links / Shared
• Shoutbox
• Media
• Contact
• Email
• Address
• Instant Messaging
• Private Messaging
• For Sale
• Local "Relatives"
• Awards
• Points
• Age on Site
• Site Content Favorites
• Library / Help / FAQ / Documentation
• Media
• Audio
• Video
• Images

Activities

• Add Friend
• Chat
• Tag
• Post Content
• Post Comment
• Answer Question
• Ask Question
• Edit Wiki
• Add Favorite
• Join Group
• Send Private Message

Dynamic Page Types

• Admin Dashboard
• Group Dashboard
• Member Dashboard
• Anonymous Entry Page
• Anonymous Referral Page (passed URL argument from search term)
• Section Page
• User Profile Page
• Tag Page
• Content Type Page