My take on the design of JKAN - lightweight, a backend-free open data portal, powered by Jekyll. Learn more in the original .readme here.
And check out the existing design
To start the site, run rake run in the project directory, and when started go to http://127.0.0.1:4000/data-portal-new/ in your browser.
Enable folks to learn about, discover, and post links to open data.
Notes on similar platform from Code for America Regional Data Portal Webinar
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"It's tough to know where to start as a data user"
- Overwhelm homepage with newb stuff
- Trim down categories for data explorer
- Distinct flows for posting & getting
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"It's challenging to explain scientific data to non-scientists"
- State purpose of collection
- Explain what the metadata means
- Suggest usage
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"It's difficult to download an entire dataset and make it useful"
- Give examples of use
- Encourage documentation & walkthroughs
- Encourage guest lectures at meetups
- Strengths
- Streamlined
- Simple
- Lightweight
- Weaknesses
- Unwelcoming
- Assumes prior knowledge
- Doesn't demonstrate value
- Opportunities
- Welcome users
- Demonstrate value of open data
- Help with projects
- Threats
- Licensing Issues w/ Datasets
- Complexity
- Scope Creep
Make the data portal newbie friendly without disrupting the flow of existing users.
Make the design modular so that other cities can fork & replace our content.
As a newbie, I can arrive at the homepage, read about what's going on, see some examples, and feel like I know how to get started.
As a visitor, I can go straight to the portal page to accomplish my task.
As a visitor, I can browse datasets by category and contributor.
As a visitor, I can view projects which correspond to a dataset.
As a visitor, I can figure out how to become a contributor.
As a visitor I can view a resource page to learn how to structure & store data, what tools to use to work with it, & how to get a project off the ground.
As a visitor, I can mark that I've used a dataset.
As a visitor, I can leave an evaluation for a dataset.
As a contributor, I can post a dataset.
As a contributor, I can link to a project I made using a dataset.
Staying consistent with Open Austin branding makes a lot of sense.
The Opportunity Project provides examples of projects to demonstrate the value of open data.
The City of New York data portal is built on socrata but has designed around that. They must be doing something right since they are the #1 place in the US for open city data.
I decided to build out a homepage and resources page in addition to the portal.
Small (Individual files here)
Medium + (Individual files here)
Small (Individual files here)
Medium + (Individual files here)
