Ubuntu support and learning center

Registered by Benjamin Humphrey

Developing an awesome, quality, dynamic website that acts as an online learning and support center for Ubuntu users to both solve their problems or work through tasks, and also to learn more about Ubuntu and how to help with it. The final site would involve material from the manual project, docs team, learning project and third party articles, split into well organized, topic based help using cutting edge web technologies like HTML5.

The website would also collect information and feedback from the users on the usefulness of articles or individual paragraphs, so that we can constantly improve our material to make it the best quality we can.

Check the spec: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-support-and-learning-center

Blueprint information

Status:
Started
Approver:
None
Priority:
Undefined
Drafter:
Benjamin Humphrey
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
Ubuntu Manual Team
Definition:
Discussion
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Started
Milestone target:
None
Started by
Benjamin Humphrey

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

[humphreybc 10.05.2010]

In the Ubuntu Manual team meeting last week I shared some mockups of a plan for an online support website that uses the content we have in the manual, as well as adding some valuable tools for users to provide feedback and allowing us to offer more dynamic content such as videos.

The website would be split into two parts, an "Ubuntu support" section, and a "Learning Center." The support section would offer solutions to problems that users have, and provide instructions on how to do tasks. Think Chapters 1 - 5 in our manual, "Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.04." The Learning Center would have our "advanced" content that teaches users things beyond what they need to know for a basic, means to an end experience. This section would not only involve our content from Chapters 6 - 9, but also content submitted from the community could be uploaded and featured. Integration with the Learning/Classroom teams in the future would be fantastic and classes could be scheduled and managed through the Learning Center as well. It would also be nice to work with the people working on the Ubuntu Developers Manual to get their content into the Learning Center.

It will work as a type of "moderated wiki" where users can suggest changes to paragraphs or provide feedback in the form of a star rating system. This feedback would be sent to us and we could then make a decision whether to go ahead and implement the suggested changes or not. I think this strikes a good balance between a free for all wiki and "static" documentation.

The website is designed to be very user friendly and minimalistic so the reader isn't distracted from the main content and we should work closely with the Canonical training department and design team researchers so we can figure out exactly what users are having difficulty with and what questions they ask frequently.

The manual itself will be cut down for the next few releases so that it truly becomes a "Getting Started" guide and will not cover advanced topics at all. The advanced material will be available solely on the website, but will be stored in the same pool as the content from the manual so that translations can be done from the same place.

If you couldn't make the meeting, I highly recommend you read the log: http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2010/05/06/%23ubuntu-meeting.html

Please have a look at the mockups I've created, which are on the bottom of this page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-support-and-learning-center

[ACTIONS]

Ubuntu Support and Learning Center

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-support-and-learning-center
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-ubuntu-support-and-learning-center

Tasks:

 - Go to the docs team and sort out technological issues [Kevin Godby and Benjamin Humphrey]
   - collaboration
     - Docs team has wiki and docbook
     - Manual team has their simpler tools - share these tools
     - Learning team is seeking technology
   - [humphreybc] Create project page: DONE (https://launchpad.net/uslc)
   - translations
   - version management [Benjamin]
   - create website [UMP]

(?)

Work Items