Create Landing Page guidelines, w/ SD branding a priority citation

[ninavizz]

Problem

Without a coded landing page template, it's a !

Solution

Create a page for RTD that guides newsrooms in co-branding themselves w/ SecureDrop.

Design principles for the layout of the landing page would be great, too—but the primary issue for now, is creating some uniformity around the expression of the SD brand in this one venue. Co-branding guidelines should be highly prescriptive, much moreso than traditional brand use guidelines.

cc'ing @huertanix as FYI

[ninavizz]

Slideshow of all existing LPs from today's SD directory.

• Takeaways:
  • Many orgs do NOT co-brand (woo!)
  • Why do we call this a "Landing Page" when that makes zero sense in most contexts? "Listing" page makes far more sense to me, off the cuff... but this shd be explored in further depth.
    • "Landing Page" is something at the end of an experience, or the starting-point of a marketing micro-site. It's advertising jargon, and most of these pages are carefully considered w/in the IA of the sites.
    • "Listing Page" makes more sense to me, off the cuff... but this shd be explored in further depth. The word "Page" feels off, as the page itself does have technical mandates—but our recommendations for content do not exclude things outside SD. The page is in and of itself, not all about SecureDrop, despite having an SD prereq.
    • "Broadcast Module" makes more sense to me? That could be simply a container on a page with other listings, or its own page; but the point is, the .onion address technical governance is still required.
  • A few orgs do have screenshots of the UI on their LPs, and should be reached-out to in Redmine to update those screenshots w/ the 1.0 UI updates.
  • A user-centric Source Guide is clearly needed and would be very helpful to link to, from this page. Too many orgs overwhelm users with verbose/poor content that would otherwise live in such a guide.
  • Design principles and layout recommendations for 2 distinct LP page types; the "Directory" view and the single SD Instance guide, could go a long way, in addition to co-branding guidelines.
    • For co-branding, orgs should be reminded that their own branding should be presented consistently w/ how it is across the rest of their sites, w/ the SD branding only shown in a very secondary fashion—if at all. Provide examples.
  • LucyParsons and Barton Gelman both branded their SD instances uniquely. Why? This should be discouraged.

I would also like to interview orgs about how they setup their LPs to learn more about that process, as well. Not as a part of this ticket, but as a to-do for future UxR work.

[ninavizz]

Added @rocodes to this, as it will likely be a joint DOCS effort. Not a big lift, but a reformatting and possible expansion on what was already created for the 1.0.0 PDF.