Support/Ideas

This is collection of ideas for improving SUMO.

Knowledge Base

Help Article Tabs

This Feature is a P3 in the KB PRD
I like this idea from the Chrome support site. I think it's pretty poorly designed but the idea is worth investigating.

• Here's the page I'm talking about.
• This is also similar to an idea on Microsoft's site where additional or advanced information/steps are hidden in a collapsed div.
• Here's a video of me walking through it (Ogg video 3min):

Different templates for different KB Articles

This Feature is a P3 in the KB PRD
Not all articles have the same type of information to display. We should different templates designed to best display a particular kind of article. For example a general, how to use a feature article could have a different layout from a troubleshooting article with multiple sets of steps.

Indicate Ogilvy’s Old-School Layout Still a Winner

How-to, overview, or tutorial videos

Howcast is working on a video for us. This is their first draft.

LOTS of support sites have these, including the sites for Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer. I'd love to see us have some on SUMO. I'd especially like to offer them at the end of a related KB article. Take the Bookmarks article for example. It has a nice screencast at the beginning that gives you a great basic example of bookmarking pages. At the end of the article it gives you LOTS of links to related articles that will show you just about everything you can imagine about bookmarks. Since this article is general information about a Fx feature and not a solution to a specific issue, it would be great is to have a bonus top Fx features/make your life easier video embeded here (and on other articles like this).

• Apple has a nice Safari video explaining it's top features (Ogg video 4min)
  • This is a nice video but it's REALLY boring.
    

• Here's an IE video that was featured on the front page of their support site (Ogg video 1min)
  • This is just meh in the way that all Microsoft stuff is.
    

• Here's a great Firefox video that highlights features but doesn't go into enough detail (Ogg video 1:45)
  • I love the style of this video. The kind of video I'm thinking of would have the detail of the safari video but be fun and engaging like this video.

Note: Howcast has talked to Cheng and I about wanting to make a couple of videos like this. It would be great if they did but I think we should have some whether they come though or not.

SUMO Video Converter

It's one thing to ask people to contribute text but it's another thing altogether to ask for special encoded videos. It would be great to have a super simple, no fail theora (or VP8!) encoder for screencasts. Miro makes a desktop app and Firefogg is an addon - both are open source and basically add a GUI to ffmpeg2theora. We should have a SUMO (app or addon) that optimally encodes things for the KB with drag and drop simplicity.

Screenshots with Flickr-like notes

This Feature is a P3 in the KB PRD
Instead of having contributors mark up screenshots in an image editing tool, we could build a notes tool right into the article editor.

• Video of me showing Flickr's notes and what we could do differently (Ogg video 1:30):

Also having a feature like this would integrate with the Chrome tab idea. In that there was a screenshot of an interface that linked to videos.

Notes for localizers

Add source code notes for localizers to help explain informal phrases.

Support Forum

Quickly narrow down forum posts for answering

This feature exists. Now it needs a better UI to expose it. Bug 591918
Being able to narrow down the field of posts to look through is especially helpful if you only have a short time to answer questions and/or you have a special area of expertise.

• Here's a video of what I'm talking about (Ogg 2min):

Badges, Points, Reputation, Stats

This is the Karma System goal (moving to Q4) that will be led by Kadir.
I'd love to have some automatic way to recognize contributor achievements. It would be nice to try to inject a little bit of fun or whimsy into answering questions.

• Here's a video of how a few sites handle this (Ogg video 3:30):

This idea on a whole other level would be to make SUMO into a game in the way that Jane McGonigal talks about them. Video - http://input.graymattergravy.com/post/456614213/prostheticknowledge-jane-mcgonigal-gaming-can

Gamification and Its Discontents

Misc Ideas

User focused blog - kick ass with Firefox

This is another idea about going beyond solving immediate issues. Maybe those cool videos I mentioned earlier could also live on a blog that collects great tips for getting the most out of Firefox. This is not the super technical things like messing around with about:config but easy tips that we all learned from living and working with Firefox.
Here's two examples from Deb Richardson's blog:

• Why I love Readability, with screenshots
• Firefox 3.6: Spacer trick for prettier Personas

New user mode/extension

What if there was an extension or Fx mode that turned on information buttons or extended tool tip like UI elements that linked to relevant support articles?

Crash reporter suggests a KB article(s)

This feature has a PRD
When Firefox crashes it would be great if the crash reporter could give users a link to relevant (I'm not sure how much info the crash reporter "knows") KB articles – Firefox crashes at the very least.

Live Help Video Show

Inspired by this. I'd like to do a live streaming show where I viewers ask me questions about firefox - either fixing things/solving problem or on general use and I explain and show solutions. I'd go back and forth between showing myself talking to the audience and showing what I'm doing on my screen. I'd also show how I look things up on SUMO and use the articles to solve problems.

Add a Join SUMO note to about:config

Idea from here.

Apple Express Lane

Apple has a kind of flow chart system to help you narrow down your issue and get to a support article (or other types of support).

Resources

• Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
• Visualizing Firefox 4 Beta Usage
• You ARE a marketer. Deal with it.
• Myth #16: Search will solve a website’s navigation problems
• Teach Your Users Well
• Why Your Customers Don't Want to Talk to You
• How Microsoft Xbox Uses Twitter to Reduce Support Costs