We are planning to do a major update to Nokia Beta Labs website during October or so. Here’s the first draft 0.01, click the image: (special thanks to Stefan Constantinescu for his valuable feedback)
Let me explain the main points:
1. Name, punchline, and short explanation = top
The purpose of Nokia Beta Labs is to “engage Nokia users into co-creation of new applications and services”. That is, Nokia wants to create the future together with the users. We need to indicate this clearly. In addition, we need to ensure that everyone - both users and lawyers - understand what to expect. In practice, this means some kind of disclaimer like “Please note that the stuff here has some rough edges, yadda-yadda-yadda”, just like in Google Labs, Yahoo! Next and Windows Live Betas.
This part is not ready yet, but you’ll get the point.
2. Long list of beta applications = left side bar
At this section, all items would be listed, with their name/link and short description (max 3-lines). Now, we are likely to have more than a dozen apps & services available by the end of this year - and even more next year. As the list is growing, there is pressure to categorize the items somehow, and to highlight the most important betas.
About categorization, I’m not sure. Current categorization into mobile SW, PC SW, and services doesn’t cut it, because some of the items are likely to have all of these aspects. Another possible way to categorize would be to divide the items according to maturity: into experimental research concepts, previews of mainstream SW, and new versions of existing SW. What do you think, what would be the best way?
About highlighting the most important betas, it could be done based on:
- what is new
- number of visitors
- number of comments
- voting/rating system
- combination of the above (some kind of mathematical formula)
- editor selection (my professional judgment)
What would be the best approach? Or do we need to provide multiple views?
3. Beta Labs Graduates = right side bar
At some point, beta labs items will either graduate into an officially supported version, or withdraw quietly into an archive (some of the items at Nokia Beta Labs will be experiments that are not intended to graduate as such).
4. Beta Labs blog = middle
Here we could announce all new items, reply to public feedback about Nokia beta stuff, and get engaged in 2-way discussions about Nokia Beta Labs applications and about the whole concept. In short, this section will replace blogs.s60.com/tommi.
5. RSS
We’ll have an RSS feed for blog entries, and for the comments. In addition, I’m planning to tag each entry with the name of the app, so that we can get application specific RSS feeds. This enables the respective Nokia R&D teams to subscribe to application specific comment feeds.
6. What else?
I’m planning to ditch the discussion forums, mainly because we don’t have currently enough resources to moderate the discussion and to reply to people’s questions with any level of decency. This decision is not final, but let’s first try to manage without one.
What else should we have? You tell me. I promise to listen all suggestions, and then, make the final decision about what to implement at this stage. Some of your suggestions, of course, might be implemented later in future website upgrades.
Please send your comments by 26 September, as I need to freeze the concept pretty soon.
Heh. Let’s see how this works.
