Michael's Notes

I'm going through the whole SUMO experience and taking lots of notes as a Firefox user and as a SUMO contributor. I'll also be looking at how other great support systems work. These are my raw notes and ideas.

Raw Audit Notes

Getting started with SUMO

• Can't find the help menu or people don't know to look in the help menu. I think the help menu is associated with OS built in help which is generally pretty crappy. They don't really expect to be taken to a website. We need other ways to let people know about the support site.
  • Mac help menu has a search but that doesn't search SUMO - it searches unrelated documents on your computer.

• Searching - in general you have to think about what to type - how specific should you be? Need good browsing options.
  • In a test search results keyed on the word "not" and listed random forum topics resulting in lots of searching through the forums (and not the KB - because the search offered only searched the Forums).
  • The search should have picked up on "passwords" instead of "not" and show https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Username+and+password+not+remembered as the first result. We really need to take a closer look at optimizing the search results.
  • As a result of the poor search results, the tester ended up in an almost endless forum thread loop, which isn't an ideal problem-solving experience (if a KB article exist for the problem, it's always better than specific forum threads)

• SUMO start page doesn't really tell the story that it's made by the community. That info is in a tiny box in the sidebar.

• The word crash doesn't appear anywhere on the SUMO start page yet it seems like a pretty big deal if you look at live chat or twitter.
  • If you have Firefox quits or crashes as your problem and you go to SUMO you see lots of problems but not quits or crashes - so what do you search for? What is it called? Is it (crashes) called something else because it's not listed on the page with all the other problems?

• Suggested searches in the big search box seem to me like they should take me to a category page, i.e. the "Bookmarks" category page – not a search results page. When I click a link I expect to go to a page not search results. Yes the link is in a search box/section but still it seems off to me.

• Search results are kind of overwhelming. After finding SUMO, I have to figure out what to search for and then I have to weed though a thousand search results!

• What is up with the navigation on the top right? It's different on the start page and all the internal pages. Why?
  • When you try to follow the right hand navigation in order you get skipped around - it's very disorienting.
  • Navigation in upper right - "Get Personal Help" confusing wording

• All the main SUMO pages have a big yellow search box at the top even when the supposed purpose of the page is not searching. Also some of those search boxes search different things - that's not obvious at all. I didn't notice that until many many times through those pages.

• Difficult to tell where the search results take you - Article or Forum (they are not distinguished from each other).

• Clear and straight-to-the-point language should be the general theme of the whole website.
  • We have rainbow dolphins on mozilla.com - the language of the site should compliment it.

User Experience Videos

• Dylan - finding answers to questions and finding more information about Fx features. Ogg video 25min
• Ryanne - answering a question on the support forum and finding out more information about getting involved as a community member. Ogg video 24min