Plan spec

[RichardLitt]

Thought Dump!

1. A person can submit an email asking for help with their project. They may not know git. This project is added to a database, with their comments and problem. Hopefully, this will link to a GitHub or a Bitbucket repo. A user wishing to be a mentor can ask to be one. Once we validate them, they can see this list from users who need help. There is a contact button - this would send an email to the admins, or to the user their self if they have indicated they do not need privacy.

In this version there is a team page, about section, and perhaps a mentor list. GitHub, twitter, fb auth. Settings page. There is a detailed project page, as well as a list of projects. User pages. There is a page for mentors, describing how they can sign up,

1. A user can submit a repo. We then display that repo details, along with comments asking for help. The project has to be on Github or bitbucket. If they don’t know git we can link tutorials, but I think for the sake of ease of use for mentors (who are the users we need to motivate/cater to) it’s a prerequisite. 'Suggest a pull?'
2. A user can privately submit a repo. Here, we clone the repo, and then display it without the user. Again, mentors can sign in to see these, but the project and the user remain anonymous.
3. Event page. We list details of where and when. We list projects and or users that will be coming to the event.
   • I would suggest tagging by language. Nothing fancy, start with HTML/CSS, JS, Python, RoR, add more as needed. But, again from the perspective of making mentorship as easy as possible, I think this would be helpful. The whole project doesn’t need to be tagged, just what they need assistance with.

[simonv3]

So that's pretty messy, but here's an information architecture.

Basically, from what I got from your thought dump, this is what I think the site might look like in a site-mappy kind of way.

I suspect there's a couple of things missing.

Mainly, I think it shows that there's some confusion about what a user (mentee) is, and what a user (mentee) can do.

What I think the most important part of the site is, is the Submit a Question -> Project List view. I suspect that everything else is just bells and whistles, and we should figure out that flow as best as possible.

Some thoughts:

• submitting a question could be anonymous, but I think the person still needs to be able create an account. I don't think projects should be submitted without a user account, or at least an e-mail address attached to them (which we have to verify).
• As part of an MMP, maybe the only people who can log in are mentors, to see the list of projects that have been submitted. From there on all communication happens via e-mail and on the repository. In fact, if that's the point, you don't need much more than two google forms (one for projects, and one for mentors) to test whether it works. The google forms send to an excel document, and mentors look at the projects there.

[RichardLitt]

This looks really good to me, especially as a thing we can iterate on - aka, build, and then test. Yes, there's probably a few things missing.

Regarding a mentor / mentee - maybe that isn't a useful distiniction. Perhaps we can just have users, who can ask questions or not. There was a differentiator between this and SO, which I can't remember at the moment. I think that communication happening on the repo or by email is great - it is much more useful than having something always be online. @collapsedwave Do you still have your specs anywhere?

Creating an account is OK. I agree. I'm not sure whether an excel document would work - or, rather, I don't know what users I could get to use that. If we had a website with a basic design that linked to some sort of list, that might work - I know of some communities we can bootstrap it on.

A website that just lists requests for PRs would also be a good idea, but probably not here.

[collapsedwave]

@RichardLitt I don't see anything on dropbox, and don't really have time to work on this at the moment. Good luck though!

[RichardLitt]

@collapsedwave No worries! Thanks anyway. Just seeing if I can get an MVP cranked out now that I know a bit more about my skill level and ability to make things.