Navigation Architecture

[una]

• Move "Component Name Matrix" out to a higher-level link
• Re-order Proposals section to be above Analysis/Research to promote better information hierarchy

Context: Outcome of initial iA workshop session

[gregwhitworth]

Also there were discussions around a different landing page for each component to quickly find relevant content and an overview of meta information about that component. @bkardell @melanierichards raised this. Additionally, this would surface how the expected structure of the navigation would occur.

[melanierichards]

A couple weeks ago, a small group brainstormed some approaches to the information architecture (IA). We thought about various jobs to be done, and what structure of IA might be needed to meet those various JTBD. The scratchpad document is here. Note, this doc is currently readonly. Members of that brainstorm, please comment here if I missed anything pertinent in this distillation or if any new ideas come to mind. :)

Summary of the brainstorm

Navigation

Distilling various ideas together, the IA ends up something like the following:

• Home
• Get Involved (was "Contribute")
• Work Items: high-level view of all the proposals / research we're working on
  • Sub-page / landing page for each work item
• About (sub-pages could instead be folded into the top-level "About" page)
  • Sub-page: Charter
  • Sub page: Participants
  • Sub page: FAQ

We weren't sure yet whether there should be a top-level nav item along the lines of "Component Library" or "Catalog". Here we are thinking about some way for an author to stop on the site and say, "ok, I don't really care about all the research and what stage a proposal is at for a given component. All I want to do here is consume the Open UI suite of Web Components in my project." We could elevate this to the top level, or one could get to the consumable WC from a work item's landing page. This could be deferred until it becomes more relevant, though?

"Home" page contents

Clearly address:

• What is Open UI?
• Why is it important?
• What are we actually providing through this CG? What are our deliverables? What's in scope? (Wasn't clear to a participant that new components are in scope)
• How can someone get involved?
• What should I go and do next?
• How can I find the status on existing proposals?

Get involved contents

• Elevate the status of basic mechanical information (joining the CG, the importance of the Discord, getting invites to meetings, the fact that we don't really use mailing lists the way other groups do)
• Add a design system
• Contribute to research
• Process/stages
• Information for UAs who want to implement some of the proposals we're generating, or influence their direction

Work Items contents (index)

• Short description of the various different deliverables/stages we will generate for various work items
• Filterable dashboard of all the components/controls the group is looking into. Each work item row should have:
  • Title and link to landing page
  • Status label, e.g. “Platform proposal incubation”
  • Direct links to / indication of availability for:
    • Research
    • Initial proposal (explainer)
    • Open UI Web Component
    • Platform proposal(s) / draft specs

Each work item's landing page

• Short description
• Status label for the "stage" the work item is at
• Direct links to / indication of availability for:
  • Research
  • Initial proposal (explainer)
  • Open UI Web Component
  • Link to labeled GH issues
  • Browser support, if it's a platform API/control (pull in Can I Use?)

[boazsender]

I think this is great. I can take the action item to write the guidance and how to get started and follow the working mode (#197)

[melanierichards]

Group resolved to go forward with this plan, and we'll create separate issues for the work involved to implement.

[bkardell]

I really like these changes... until you really 'see it' and try to use it hard to imagine beyond this and I think this would be a quantum leap improvement, I agree we should make N issues out of this so people can bite off meaninful chunks and move us that way. might it be helpful if people from that session (sorry I missed it due to an emergency) gave a little thoughts/advice on whether there were any kind of order dependencies that would be helpful here so we aren't left in a weird state because some items are easier than others?

[melanierichards]

@bkardell I don't think there's too much interdependency, to be honest. Mostly:

• Home page changes should probably come after we move pieces around, since we'd be deep-linking into various parts of the site.
• We'll want to figure out URL structure for work item landing pages in tandem with the creation of the Work Items index page. And then we'd either need to create/convert landing pages for all the work items before swapping over the navigation to that index, OR, perhaps easier, have fallback logic ("if no landing page, link in the Work Items dashboard for the individual work item falls back to the work item's main research page ").

[melanierichards]

Ok, just opened up a bunch of issues. Feel free to:

• Add more if I missed something
• Assign yourself to an issue, even if I've already assigned myself. Co-conspirators welcome!

[github-actions[bot]]

There hasn't been any discussion on this issue for a while, so we're marking it as stale. If you choose to kick off the discussion again, we'll remove the 'stale' label.