I really appreciate this thoughtful mockup!
I like how the prompt to "add your location" is integrated into this page right where it's so relevant.
Thinking about Events: So far, the events management we've built into the website is minimal, and over time @stevie and I have migrated towards using Eventbrite when organizing events on behalf of the non-profit. Eventbrite is not integrated with our website, but perhaps it could be?

Thinking about Projects: The overall situation is that there is not much content tagged "projects" as it seems like individuals don't take the time to describe their project aims, concerns, location, methods, organizing and advocacy strategy all in one place, but rather just start posting progress updates. Having a set of "projects" clearly described is a desire across the organization from @joyofsoy in Communications to newcomers looking to find what's going on near them. It is an incredibly large editorial burden to create this documentation if the actual researchers aren't doing it. Ideas welcome.

I also vibe with the graphic calendar in rectangular form -- that was a request we heard from people during the user interface interviews about https://publiclab.org/events -- that the "agenda view" should be changed to the "calendar view". It would be great if someone clicked "Edit" on the /Events wiki page and just changed it now.

We've had some discussions about site navigation and the need to have stories more visible for newcomers, especially those who don't know what we do—so they can understand the broad scope of the Public Lab community's work.

In my dreams, we'd have a topbar navigation similar to the https://www.fastcompany.com/ site, where the buttons along the top (on their site, where it says CO.DESIGN, TECH, WORK LIFE, etc.) would be variables that are essentially just tags. (Click on TECH, for example, and you end up at https://www.fastcompany.com/technology) The navigation of the site would essentially be a glorified tag search.

Variables could be things like:

• stories (pollution from the Tonawanda Coke factory, industrial sand mining in Wisconsin, flooding in Pensacola)
• issues (climate change, factory farming, lead contamination)
• methods/technology/kits (spectrometry, microscopy, trawlers, odor logs)
• region (NYC, Gulf South, Southeast Asia)
• events

The goal is that I'd be able to easily share with others all of our stories related to climate change, for example, in a way where the results are like items—a clear "these are the fifteen stories we have related to climate change," instead of getting results of six notes about community workshops and three notes about kits and twenty questions about hurricanes—all tagged with climate change. Similarly, if I'm interested issues related to landfills in China, I'd love to be able to navigate to that in two clicks (hover of Issues and dropdown to landfills, then refine search to region: China).

A change like this is obviously a huge proposal, a total reworking of the site, and much more than the scope of your work on this project, @edie_blues, but that's some background about where I'd like to end up.

I agree with @liz that it would be a big editorial burden, at least at first, to tag and categorize everything so neatly, but it's something I would be excited to take on. If we're worried that researchers aren't doing these things themselves, perhaps they would if we built it into the posting process with a few (required) dropdowns to choose from.

Ultimately, I just worry that it's currently too hard for people to find the content they're looking for, and that there isn't a clear hierarchy in the structure of the site.

Sorry for the long (and mostly unrelated) tangent!

Hiya @liz and @joyofsoy,

Thank you both for sharing your vision! :)

I think we would solve some of the issues by adding required fields (ideally with smart suggestions) when posting projects (as well as any other content).

Once things are posted in a proper way (with info about location, time, tags), it will be much easier to display the right information in just a couple of clicks. So I could say: climate change -> filter by region -> filter by type (question, project, research note etc).

And a navbar with tags on top - like joyofsoy suggested - could also be a way to go. We could add a dropdown menu with the way of participating. Donate and Store buttons could be somewhere in the sidebar, and the rest could be moved to the footer.

My contract finishes today, but I'm confident that we will cross paths in the future :)

Keep well!

Eva

@edie_blues Thanks so much for all of your help!

Hi, all! I just wanted to start by chiming in in response to @joyofsoy's input - i think we could very easily start out with one of your categories: stories, issues, methods/technology/kits, regions, events, and begin collecting them on a 'holding' page. @joyofsoy, can you start using a unique tag, like story:frac-sand to tag a collection of pages?

Here's an example you can build on: https://publiclab.org/wiki/sandbox-4

Distinctly, we can also further develop the "card ui", here even. Joe, you had a sketch for a card UI from a while back and I wanted to see if you'd share a link or image? I think there's a lot we can dig into in the individual card designs. @edie_blues just for thoroughness would you link us to other places you've tried a specific cards design?

I also wonder what the map would look like -- would it display a set of projects near where you're currently searching? Or near your current position? Would people browse using the map, like searching on AirBNB?

Thanks a lot everyone!