2023 Planning

[zackkrida]

This discussion is a conversation surrounding 2023 plans for the Openverse project. There have been several disparate discussions in different channels and formats. This discussion aims to aggregate those conversations into one place and come up with a process for prioritizing and discussing Openverse goals and projects for the upcoming year.

Due Date

2022-12-22

Prior discussions

• Monthly Priorities Meeting Notes
• Thinking towards 2023 Post
• Preparing the next migration of the Catalog

[zackkrida]

Project Prioritization

Prerequisite Todos

• Add proposed projects to the sheet [WIP]

Assignment

For each project in the project sheet

• Link it to a corresponding lighthouse goal
• Identify possible participants and their roles
• Rank the project on a scale of 1-5 for the scope, with 1 being “smallest” and 5 being “largest”.

Any issues or concerns with this process can be discussed here.

[AetherUnbound]

For what it's worth I personally don't feel a sense of urgency in resolving this aspect of the project planning before the deadline. Perhaps my own priorities are misaligned and I'm not sure if that helps, but I think we'll certainly want to assign scale before we start deciding which of these projects to focus on (which seems doubtful to happen in the next two weeks).

[fcoveram]

It seems that we agree with each member scoring ideas and then discussing discrepancies. I have thinking about this, and FigJam coulb be a good tool for the following steps.

One project per post-it

Create a FigJam file, add the Lighthouse goals as sections, and move each idea into its associated goal.

Scoring each project

Each of us scores all ideas on a 1-to-5 scale. The score comes from our personal backgrounds, so it is ok to miss technical knowledge. The score is for detecting discrepancies and discussing them later.

Discuss discrepancies

Since most of us will attend an IRL meeting, we can either discuss the discrepancies there and add the final score in the FigJam file, or discuss them async here in this post, and add the final score once we reach a certain consent.

What I am missing from the above is the prioritization list for the forthcoming tasks. The funnel we are following is:

1. Defining the 2023 goals → Done ✅
2. Brainstorming projects for each goal → Done ✅
3. Scoring those projects from the effort side → In progress 🎯
4. Solving discrepancies in the efforts required.

But then I miss the prioritization stage, where we list what comes first and spread them out through milestones within a tentative 2023 time schedule.

The effort scoring is great for assessing our tasks, but it does not take into account how impactful they are. For instance, the “Perceptual image quality detection” project requires higher efforts than “Browsing through shortcuts”, as noted in the spreadsheet, but it might impact less how visitors use Openverse.

For this step, I propose adding two more steps to the list.

5.Impactful scoring

On the same scale of 1 to 5, score each project on how impactful for users we think it is. Again, a non-technical approach aiming to detect discrepancies

6.Prioritization matrix

Based on impact and effort scores, move each project into an “Impact vs Effort” matrix to have a clearer picture of projects and decide next steps.

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What do you think of this idea? Indeed I can create the FigJam file and move all the work made.

[AetherUnbound]

This is an excellent idea Francisco, thank you for outlining it so clearly!

[sarayourfriend]

I personally find FigJam really difficult to work with and even harder to get an idea of what went on after the fact of a meeting. But if it is the preference of most of the team then I of course will participate.

My only concern with the plan is that it does not account for having scores not be revealed (or at least nominally hidden) until everyone who wants to has voted on a score. My understanding of scoring is that it's important for scores to be revealed all at the same time, otherwise people's scores end up being implicitly influenced by the people who've shared their scores before them.

I do really like having the impact score as well.

As for the prioritisation matrix, I previously suggested in the Google document notes for the initial meeting from a couple weeks ago that we use a Gantt chart for that and there are several very nice tools for building Gantt charts. It would allow us to plot projects on a timeline all together in a linear, easy to understand view and easily reveal dependencies.

[zackkrida]

@WordPress/openverse I have created a template for individually ranking projects according to scale and impact. Please see the template for full instructions:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OXBLGdsFisiUh6o73rTLo_DOAmunQCaDGC1UzCZ3bn0/edit#gid=0

If all the sponsored contributors could aim to complete this by 2023-01-13, that would be ideal. Thank you!

[zackkrida]

Lighthouse Goals

"Lighthouse" goals refers to goals which inform and illuminate a path forward for Openverse contributors. These are concrete things to be accomplished but also principles that can informa and steer all of our work for the coming year.

Let's discuss and refine what our lighthouse goals for 2023 should be. To resurface the ideas already shared that I've seen consensus around:

• Quantify our work.
• Spread awareness of Openverse.
• Improve search result relevancy.
• Reduce data inertia.
• Content safety.

Additional ideas that either weren't discussed in detail to my knowledge:

• Improving user search experience on the front end: make it easier to search by provider/tag/creator.
• Devex/Tech debt [Things like the Nuxt 3 migration]

In the comments here we can attempt to settle on a final list.

[fcoveram]

Spread awareness of Openverse

Very much agree with @zackkrida on the subsequent points.

Improving user search experience on the front end

I agree with adding the "improving user search experience on the front end" point as a lighthouse goal, but the "search by provider/tag/creator" is a specific task that I am not sure impacts bigger than other pending improvements like the modal browsing. Going back and forth between single results still feels forceful as it requires clicking on "back to results."

This does not block us from working on features to see filtered results from the single result page, but my prioritization goes to the modal implementation first.

[sarayourfriend]

This does not block us from working on features to see filtered results from the single result page, but my prioritization goes to the modal implementation first.

I added the modal results to the project spreadsheet 👍 Which lighthouse goal do you think it falls under, @panchovm? I feel like it is actually leftover work from the redesign goal we had last year...

[fcoveram]

Oh, I completely forgot to mention that @sarayourfriend! I think it belongs to a goal by itself. Pondering that these goals will generate a set of tasks, "search by provider/tag/creator" is one of them, alongside other similars like "sorting results."

[obulat]

This does not block us from working on features to see filtered results from the single result page, but my prioritization goes to the modal implementation first.

I added the modal results to the project spreadsheet 👍 Which lighthouse goal do you think it falls under, @panchovm? I feel like it is actually leftover work from the redesign goal we had last year...

I see this as part of the "Improving search experience" (the frontend side).
Other frontend tasks can improve the perceived relevancy because the search results can become more relevant when you select providers, or tags, or sort by update time.
Adding the modal can improve the user flow for selecting the most relevant result. I don't think that it needs a full-blown project planning process, but it might be nice to collect metrics before/after.

[obulat]

I'm thinking a lot about the 'spread awareness' goal and would like to find a way for it to encompass more things. To not just be about advocacy/evangelism, but to capture more things like:

• Community contributors and the quality of their experience
• Outreach about Openverse at WordCamps and other conferences
• Partnerships with existing image providers, potential providers
• Partnerships with broader 'open access' movements and organizations

Perhaps something about community would be better phrasing. I'll keep thinking about it.

Maybe something like "Develop Openverse community" could be a good name?

[sarayourfriend]

Once we have a specific set of lighthouse goals for 2023, could we create issue labels for them to apply to individual issues? That could help us strike a balance in driving towards each goal and ensure that none of them fall by the wayside due to low visibility or getting forgotten about in the midst of other exciting work.

[AetherUnbound]

That's a great idea!

[zackkrida]

This would be very nice in a dashboard / GitHub project view as well with a column or section for each goal, which could give us a sense of which goals we're allocating the most time to.