Proposal for OpenMRS website redesign and build

Project overview

The OpenMRS website redesign project aims to create a user-centred, accessible, highly functional and visually appealing website that effectively serves the diverse needs of our stakeholders including Businesses / Implementers, eHealth Leaders and Healthcare Staff. The project will involve Community research and engagement to inform the content design. We will utilise an information architecture design methodology that roots the organisation and access of content inline with stakeholder mental models and Community best practices. By restructuring the information architecture, we will aim to strengthen our ecosystem by lowering the barriers to becoming more engaged, collaborative and mature contributors to the OpenMRS Community.

Project phases

1. Discovery

Leadership

• Create OpenMRS leadership vision and understand organizational needs for the website

  • Identify and understand our key personas

  • Identify key stakeholders for engagement

  • Prioritize target audience in agreement with the leadership

Community research and OOUX methodology

• Conduct in-depth community research to understand the needs and preferences of key stakeholders.

• Utilise the OOUX methodology to design a content structure that aligns with user mental models, tasks and jobs-to-do.

2. Information architecture design

• Develop a clear, intuitive, and scalable information architecture that facilitates easy navigation and content discovery.

• Create content pathway for funder/donor engagement

  • Impact dashboard, success / impact stories, value proposition messaging

  • How to invest in OpenMRS

  • Review/validate with leadership

• Create content pathway to guide MOH & implementers discovery/understanding/use

  • Review/validate with leadership, Beryl, Grace

• Create content pathways to help mature contributors' involvement:

  • Ideas to support contributors:

    • Clear links to documentation and guidelines for contributing.

    • Links to Interactive tutorials and onboarding resources for new contributors.

    • Recognition and reward system for active contributors (both individuals and organizations).

    • Information on hackathons and coding events to encourage participation.

    • Clear signposting to Talk and Slack (let’s talk about Slack and how to direct folks).

    • Call out online events, webinars and conference sessions.

    • Community-driven content creation, such as blogs and tutorials from the Implementer Community and other eHealth leaders.

• Validate the information architecture with key user groups and Community stakeholders.

• Identify content needs and gaps; work with Beryl and Grace to identify priority content updates/gaps to be addressed and assigned person to do so.

3. Tech stack

• Work with DevOps to set up any infrastructure you will need to build out the website pre-production / launch. I’d also like to make sure we have monitoring and backup setup, plus, a space for updating/changing prior to production pushes - such as a staging site (like Wordpress does, or whatever tech/platform is chosen).

• By deriving the content requirements from phase 2 and 3, Paul and Grace will work together on a stack to support the new website.

  • The current Wordpress implementation will be one option, together with exploring other CMS and front end technologies.

• Review/sign off from leadership

4. Visual style guide

• Create a comprehensive visual style guide that defines the website’s colour palette, typography, graphic, photography and basic UI components to ensure a consistent and engaging user experience. (Similar to the OpenMRS Logo Policy wiki page but with more detail.)

  • Template pages and elements will be created in the website tooling for easy re-use by future website maintainers (such as page templates and post templates).

  • Bandwidth considerations will be applied: g.g. Attention to making the site engaging and visual, without being heavy to load, such that users in low-bandwidth LMIC settings do not struggle to see the content.

  • Accessibility standards will be rooted at the heart of the design thinking and execution, where possible. Where time constraints do not allow for fully accessible content and design, recommendations will be noted for future improvements.

5. Design, build and test!

• Create responsive and accessible page templates tailored to our users needs, ensuring compatibility and accessibility across a diverse set of devices and breakpoints.

• Moderated sessions with OpenMRS website users to test the site structure and visual design.

6. Training and dissemination

• Design training materials for core team to make updates to the new website

• Announce and celebrate at OpenMRS Conference in Sept 2024

Project timeline

Open