Homepage welcome popup

[sophiakc]

👓 See wireframe in Figma + get CSS attributes

What has been updated from existing state:

• We do want to welcome people
• Get a sense of who they are and how they are willing to contribute, through main current categories (gardeners, developers)
• no need to diminish OF with "pretty new" (no longer true for recurring users), "please excuse bugs" (that's ok!)
• right now the member state is unclear, and "for free" doesn't bring any value
• there is no newsletter
• include the mascot eventually!

Based on the IP address auto-identification, do not show the popup again after the 1st visit. Showing the popup once is enough.

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Existing UI:

Existing text:
Welcome to OpenFarm! We're a pretty new project and community so please excuse any bugs you find in the website. Interested in helping out? Become a member for free and we'll be in contact via our email newsletter!

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Other UI proposition - w call to actions - STILL UNDER DISCUSSION


Possible user flow when clicking on call to actions:

• "I'm a gardener" could redirect to the invitation page for the Slack for gardeners? See discussion here: Page on OF to ask and answer gardening questions #863. Or another page, like a FAQ for gardeners or else (to be discussed)
• "I'm a developer" redirects to the invitation page for the Slack for developers (or the onboarding)

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@roryaronson @simonv3 what are your thoughts on that?

[simonv3]

I like this!

But I'm not sure we need to have people "pick sides". Maybe the last line can be "Want to help?"

Where do the buttons go?

[sophiakc]

@simonv3 "Want to help" is too vague.
Why are you not sure about people picking sides? What does this prevent OF from doing? What would best reflect the current state of the community right now? How could we phrase this differently?

[simonv3]

What about people who are developers and gardeners? I suspect that that might be the largest user group on openfarm right now?

I think "Want to help?" is more precise then "what's your side."

But maybe rather "Want to help us grow?"

[sophiakc]

@simonv3
I think it's better to target one user profile at a time. Either gardeners and understand their use case. Or developers, and to address how they can contribute in a separate section.

My goal here is mainly to update the text. So we could stick to the 1st UI proposition without the call to actions. What do you think?

[simonv3]

That works for me. I like the intent though and would love to continue working on something like that.

I just want to be clear - I think it makes sense to have the two buttons, one for developers and one for gardeners. I just don't really like the idea of immediately making someone feel like they're categorizing themselves, especially if they are both gardeners and developers. Very likely this is a non-issue though? Do others have an input on that?

[sophiakc]

@simonv3 definitely got your point
I was thinking of having a dedicated page about "how would you like to contribute? 1. As a gardener 2. As a developer 3. You name it". So this could be done somewhere else than the welcome popup.

Let's do the 1st UI for now and postpone the call to actions and role to later?

[simonv3]

Sounds good. I like the Needs Implementation column.

[gargi-gupta]

I think that having the option of 'developer' or 'gardener' on the welcome page popup gives the user the option to cancel the popup, and hence skip this step. Instead, these options should be present on the welcome page and the user should be redirected to appropriate pages after making a selection.

[sophiakc]

Hey @gargi-gupta, this has been agreed that the popup isn't probably the right location for that. So we'll keep it for somewhere else. Are you willing to work on implementing the popup?

[kkreine]

Hey @RickCarlino, it looks like the popup has not been changed. I'm happy to work on this issue. They decided on the first proposed UI design, would you like me to work on implementing that UI?

[RickCarlino]

@kkreine I am glad you are interested in contributing! If you think this could be finished without too many changes to the build system (or adding a lot of new assets), you could give it a try. Conversely, I don't think the app is in a good state to accept outside large contributions relating to front-end changes. The reason I say this is because:

• The app is still without a lead maintainer.
• The app is very behind in terms of dependency upgrades.
• Our frontend build system is especially out of date and needs a lot of attention. Much of this work may require large, sweeping changes to the way the frontend is structured.

Although I would really like to see UI/UX updates, I am concerned that it would add more layers to the list of things that will need to be handled during the eventual upgrade, and I certainly would not want you to spend too much of your time working on it.

If you are interested in making big changes to the UI/UX or helping in general, I think the best place to get started is with the upgrades. This is something I've spoken with @nihonjinrxs about over email and is probably the best place to put our efforts as we move towards revitalizing the app.

So the TL;DR of it is:

• Upgrades are the highest priority right now
• You are absolutely welcome to update the UI in small ways, such as fixing existing CSS, verbiage, etc..
• I would avoid anything that adds new assets to the build system, since it may need to be re-written in the near future.

[kkreine]

@RickCarlino Thank you for providing this direction and reasoning.

I think the first UI is a good proposal, but given the priority of the upgrades and potential need for re-writing, I agree, I will focus my efforts on the upgrades. I'll be meeting with @nihonjinrxs soon to discuss them. I'll be happy to revisit this issue when the upgrade is complete.