Information Architecture


Please see navigation structure for the websites navigation structure.

Page Prototypes

Download the Mailman webinterface draft (PDF) to see how the interface will be structured, which elements will be available and how interaction between user and website should take place.

Major changes

This draft proposes major changes to the (known) web interface. Please read the global requirements to understand why the interface has changed.
Please note also, that the current draft is not a design proposal. The current goal is to develop an interface that can handle Mailman's complexity.
Once we have managed that, we will add aestethics aka design.

Comments

David H. Brown

Am I understanding the draft correctly in that at this level 2 page, all level 1 menu options will be shown in a horizontal layout? I can see where this would give maximum flexibility for an experienced user to jump quickly from task to task, but I'm concerned that it uses a lot of the page for items that are not relevant to the current task.
If the bold-face level 1 item indicates this level 2 page's ancestor, that suggests that the drill-down levels are known such that a more compact "breadcrumb" sort of interface could be used. This could be a huge benefit to anyone trying to maintain a list from a portable device (smartphone).

I've been very happy with the enhancement to the Windows Explorer address field in Vista. Each component of the path has become a button/link, allowing you to jump up to that ancestor folder. Separating path components are triangles which open drop-down menu, allowing you to select a different subfolder from that point. Applied to Mailman, this model would give something like:

Listname >>> Level 1 >> Level 2

  • "Listname" would be a link to the listinfo page;

  • ">>>" would open a popup menu showing all Level 1 options for the list; e.g.,
    "options","subscriptions","identity","statistics"

  • "Level 1" would link back to this level 1 page (equivalent to the bold level 1 button in the webinterface draft), e.g., "options"

  • ">>" would open a menu showing all Level 2 options for the level 1 ancestor of this page; e.g.,
    "general","topics","plugins"

  • "Level 2" is plain text indicating the current page; e.g., "general"

Looking at the global requirement for a task based interface, I'm not seeing where on the page a user would find confirmation of the current task.If you liked the single-line breadcrumb style, there could be an extra menu in there: Listname >>> Task >> Level 1 > Level 2. In your designs, I wonder whether the text in the red stamps ("requests (moderator)", "configuration (owner)", etc.) might be useful to actually display them after the listname, above the level 1 lists.

Thanks for your work!

MailmanWiki: DEV/Information Architecture (last edited 2009-04-23 07:52:04 by p@state-of-mind)