launchpad homepage should emphasize activity, not mass

This should depend on whether or not you are logged in - once I'm logged in, I do not want to see a "Come join us!" message. I want to read about how my own projects are doing.

On Nov 30, 2009, at 4:14 PM, Scott Lawrence <email address hidden> wrote:
> This should depend on whether or not you are logged in - once I'm
> logged
> in, I do not want to see a "Come join us!" message. I want to read
> about how my own projects are doing.

Cool Idea!

I think then what would be interesting for me is something mor
tabular. Something like:

Ubuntu:
372 Bug comments added
3210 Revisions committed

And have the entries shown be based on which projects I've paticipated
in, and what features of LP that they use.

That *is* a cool idea!

Definitely do this.

After LP version 3 sucked all the life out of the UI, it definitely could use some love. Since the LP team seem to no longer care about making the UI look good, at least some more lively content would be a boost.

I have to say I'm disappointed with Launchpad's slowness when it comes to implementing things like this.

Sure, it's marked as “Low” importance, but it's also a really really simple thing to do. Why not just *do it* and allow everyone to enjoy the benefits now? It won't take long. And then you can move on to “higher” importance items that take more time to complete.

If everyone ignores the “low” items in favor of “high” ones, the Launchpad community will ultimately suffer. There is tons of low-hanging fruit everywhere that is being ignored simply because of “low” importance!

I don't mean to come off too negative. I just care about Launchpad. I remember its infancy when improvements were being made at lightspeed! But I'm disheartened when I see how much things have changed: Slower. UI “improvements” that amount to an overwhelming wall of text. More like the competitors I once abandoned for Launchpad.

Launchpad's attractiveness was once so impressive because it was fast-paced, it had a UI that was in many ways superior to the current 3.0 incarnation, and the feeling was one of excitement just to log in—to see what improvements Launchpad had made.

…

Low-hanging fruit. Ripe for picking. Go for it! :)

Here's some pseudocode to get you started:

…

if ( not_logged_in )
    query = statistics_for_yesterdays_activity
else if ( logged_in )
    query = statistics_for_user_projects

display( query )

…

This is not an important issue to stake holders nor to most Launchpad community members. This can only be fixed by someone who has spare time to work on it. Users are welcome to submit a patch to make Launchpad better (and I do mean please help fix this).

What a great idea.

Zearin, how about sending an actual patch for it?

The research I've done on Launchpad indicates that users think of Launchpad as a tool. The main information they look for, when they log-on, is information about projects they are involved in and the bugs they are interested in. They want to get to work.
One of the research conclusion was the following: "it is not easy to find a particular project from the Launchpad home page. If someone knows that a project tracks its bugs in Launchpad and visits for the first time, it is not obvious how they should proceed. The home page should guide people directly into the tasks we know they're likely to perform on a first visit, as after a first visit it would appear people rarely use the home page."
There was no mention in the many interviews that participants wanted to know about the size of the database.

You can look at this very broadly ("what should lp feel like") or more narrowly along the lines of Ted's first comment ("homepage stats should focus on activity, not mass.")