I love this idea and have had many discussions about this lacking from
current content scope. My own journey through Mozilla since 2014 has
been hampered by this.
Discourse has made ACCESS to such information more centralised, but I
personally don’t feel it helps a newcomer gain an visually based
EXPLORE overview. By being more text based it helps those needing more
information about what’s happening right now. To me at least it does
not always reflect how each component slots into the greater.
For a successful comparison I would direct towards the MoFo’s Web
Literacy Wheel https://learning.mozilla.org/en-US/web-literacy
This model, rather visually, and cohesively, collates a variety of
touch-points under the focus of Web Literacy. If one were, perhaps, a
designer or an editor or a coder, an appropriate path of potential
involvement could dive into an aligned field. They could also explore
associated areas of interest, unearthing fields they potentially had
never imagined. By its design it is just another way of exposing a
mindmap, but it also active encourages exploration.
I’m researching a lot of behaviour change studies recently, and another
effective example of a wheel visualisation can be see in the ‘Behaviour
Change Wheel’.
My supposition is the entry point for each person will be different. If
we were to take just one example entry as via Mozilla’s stance on
Privacy, we’d soon see that individual engagement on the matter could
take on a broad scope of involvement. Events, documentation, activism,
social networks, design, meme generation, policy, content creation,
journalism, code implementation, network building, video creation,
story boarding, project management, localisation, human/civil rights,
knowledge building, fact finding, etc etc.
If an early attempt is made to match these innately personal focal
triggers of interest, then the likelihood of an individual finding
something which personally aligns would increase? If we are
communicating at a fact finding stage of the user’s journey, would
communicating on very strategy based goal triggers be most effective?
The point I’m trying to make is: if we were to take the view from the
individual with X experience/focus arriving afresh to Mozilla, are we
rapidly communicating to their skills/needs match as to where they
could be most useful?
This is where text based design, through a forum of the ilk of
Discourse, could provide a healthy foundation of communicating
Mozilla’s siloes. But if the desire is to instead encourage user
interaction, and integration, then perhaps a greater user lead
communication focus is the way to go?
