New website for the kaosPilot
The KaosPilot web presence could use a facelift, especially due to the organization shifting towards multiple entities with KP International and schools in more countries.
This page is a draft for such facelift (or rather a complete remake!) of the KaosPilot web presence. The aim is to evolve into a proposal, and then schedule, and then history, of the implementation process...
Contents
Purpose
Clear, consistent, updated, accessible and enabling information flow
Strategic objectives
- Project platform, job zone (cv + offers + interface) to secure and improve work positions for former and current students.
- Merchandise department for building the brand
- Internal communication (two-way process) - in order to increase the level of consciousness about what is going on and enabling knowledge creation.
- External communication (two-way process) in order to make information more easy to get and understand.
- Create the first contact with potential costumers - students and new organizations. Highlight services (Development zone - Learning zone).
- 10 showrooms for a hopeful future - let one of them be in cyberspace.
Expression
Our values should be felt and seen... The home page should be...
- playful
- (give the sense of) real world
- streetwise (coolness and smart)
- risktaking (we allow ourself to put ideas and text as well as surprising the visitor)
- balanced...
- compassionate (the tone...)
Let's work for "inplace information"
Future/approach
The web presence should be more in line of a process and not as a finished product. Things will change and not everything will be in place at the same time. In the future KP transmits its lectures to the other schools and worlds, and provides platforms and other types of software for its education through public web. Also, more people will be allowed to upload information instead of everything going through a single editor...
It should contain discussion forums and blogs. Furthermore - all the schools will have the "same" home base in structure and some content...
Structure
Each site is owned and maintained by separate entities: Each school is responsible for their own sites, and KPI is responsible for theirs.
www.kaospilot.org
This will be the main intrance to the KaosPilots - both to "the best schools for the world" and to "10 showrooms for a hopefull future." We will have one KaosPilot-homepage and therefrom you have acces to all the schools, showrooms, etc.
www.kaospilot.dk
If you use www.kaospilot.dk you'll get to the main-page at www.kaospilot.org - the same will happen if you use www.kaospilot.no etc.
Wauw - that was quite a change! Please elaborate! -- JonasSmedegaard 2005-12-08 15:59:28
Entrance is important - in order to get precisely to the information "I" need... Perhaps find a "navigation" symbol - maybe an old compass picture in order to always be able to get back to the starting/main menue... I't very important, that you always know where you are and how to go home. Here's a link to a homepage that's doing that pretty well: http://www.skatepro.dk
The nodes of the compass could be:
- Application and information
- Information about the Kaospilots
- Consulting and Merchandise
- Contact
- Alumni
- Student information
- News
- project and job zone
- etc.
Consistency vs. freedoms
What consistency do we want between the sites? And opposite: What freedoms do we grant each webmaster?
Relevant technical consistencies/freedoms include...
Standards compliance (basics like HTML accessibility, but also blogging syndication and Semantic_Web stuff like FoaF and its business-oriented cousin DOAC.
- Build proces (realtime automated CMS, hand-coded static pages, automated but statically served pages...)
- Syncronicity (Identical login across domains, sharing stories across domains, acting as backup for each others resources...)
Relevant creative consistencies include...
- Navigation
- Design elements (choice of fonts, colors, etc.)
- Available tools (must each school provide a blogger?)
- Language (Is english mandatory at KP Brazil? What local languages are options at KP India? Are some words "unethical"?)
- Image policy (Restrictions on quality, style, content? Must images include license to use for other schools?)
Most technical and creative consistencies/freedom has both advantages and limitations, which affects the possibilities of sharing efforts and resources across domains.
Navigation
If the network is to be easily navigated, then it is very important that the international and school home pages are linked up in a similar way. In other words, buttons need to be in the same place, with the same names and icons for the same topics. For instance, different levels (KPI, Oslo, Århus, etc) will need an about page, and these should have similar names (e.g. About KPI, About KPOslo, About KPÅrhus, etc). Otherwise it will be very difficult for people to navigate the website. A very good example of real-world navigation can be found in the london underground maps, which maintain a very simple representation. These experts of navigation have a pretty easy to use website as well, check out: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/
We must be careful that wanting to make the site trendy does not make it confusing to use (something which the current site may have fallen victim to: There is a lot of elegance in simplicity.
Maintainance
Inventing and realizing is not enough - the result should also be kept alive afterwards...
Content
For each section of the website(s) should be considered how content is kept "alive". Contact info possibly needs only a check now and then for accuracy, but for other parts it might involve journalism, editorial work and/or other skills to make the community or the outside world provide/produce input.
- One or more editors are needed to maintain access-controlled content.
- One or more "cheer leaders" are needed to nurse community-driven content.
- One or more coordinators are needed for material provided as-is by business relations and other outsiders.
- How are they chosen? Turn-based duty among KP teams and/or KP staff? Outsourcing?
- Should skills be checked (alternative: jeopardizing our outside image could be a tremendous learning experience!)? Qualification process? Mentoring from "old-timers" at the same job?
- Will they be credited (individually or as a group) on the website?
- Will they be paid for their work? By the hour, by task or by month?
Technical infrastructure
Depending on the chosen tools used for the site, software may need to be kept current.
In particular, the software exposed to the general public requires security maintainance.
Each interface (HTML standards, blogging and other aggregation standards, proprietary interfaces for editorial tools) may need updating to keep working with the ever-changing outside software - web browsers, search (and other) engines, end-user computer systems (possibly forcing updates of proprietary editorial tools).
Random notes and comments
REMEMBER - there will be white papers, student projects etc...
See also: KpOsloWebsite, KpWebsiteProposal, ItZulmaThoughts