Onboarding & User Orientation

You can read my post below. You can also listen to an audio recording of a portion of it. Used ElevenLabs....

Onboarding the OSS external cohort will be immensely helpful for all of us. It’s going to help create a framework to build upon. The current idea is to create an onboarding framework that progresses through nine connected areas: Understand, Orient, Create, Share, Collaborate, Return, Interrogate, Your Big Idea, and Resources. Together, these stages establish a mental model of OSS, build confidence navigating the platform, introduce core creation and collaboration workflows, and encourage participants to experiment with their own ideas.

++++++++++++++++++++DRAFT++++++++++++++++++++

Onboarding External Cohort 
User Orientation: Workshop & Resources

Introduction 
The OSS orientation should focus first on what users are trying to accomplish, rather than simply introducing features or interface elements. The experience should quickly move users from “What is this?” to “I made something, shared it, and understand how collaboration works.” At the same time, the orientation provides an opportunity to test the platform itself, including its functionality, feature set, workflows, and overall usability. Users should be encouraged to identify what works well, what creates friction, what is unclear, and what may be missing. Together, these two perspectives help us understand both the user experience of OSS and how effectively the platform supports creative collaboration.

Workshop: Exercises/Tasks
One or Two Virtual Meetings (1-2 activities) - Synchronous
Investigation & Integration (2-3 activities) - Asynchronous 

Draft Workshop Framework (This structure also helps define all related resources, etc.)

1. UNDERSTAND — What is OSS?
Goal: Establish a mental model.
• History of OSS
• History of the new OSS
• What OSS is
• Who it is for
• What they can create
• What “collaboration” means within OSS
• What is private, shared, or public
• What might break and not work right
+ A simple framing might be: Create → Share → Respond → Discover → Build Together
+ That becomes the conceptual map for everything that follows.

2. ORIENT — Where am I?
Goal: Build spatial/interface confidence.
• Dashboard — your starting point
• Pages/Projects — things you create
• Cohort — people and work shared with you
• Activity/Notifications — what has changed
• Profile/Settings — your identity and preferences
+ This is less “here are 27 buttons” and more “here are the five places you'll spend your time.”
+ UI & (some) Function Explanation

3. CREATE — How do I make something?
Goal: Get the user to their first meaningful success.
• Create a page
+ New Draft → Add Content → Add Metadata → Design → Categorize → Save → Preview
+ The orientation should happen inside the act of creating, rather than through a long tutorial before creation.
+ Become a Member, Login, Run thru left side menu, Create a page, Write text, upload image,
+ Tagging (for finding/remembering/collaborating

4. SHARE — How does my work enter the community?
Goal: Explain the transition from individual creation to collaborative work.
• Who can see something
• How something is shared with a cohort
• What happens when it is updated
• Whether sharing and publishing are different
• How users find shared work
+ For an artist tool, this distinction is especially important. People need confidence about when their work becomes visible and to whom.
+ Sharing w/ others
+ Giving/Sharing comments/thoughts

5. COLLABORATE — How do we work together?
Goal: Demonstrate the distinctive value of OSS.
• Pages shared with the cohort
• Filtering and discovery
• Annotations
• Categories/tags
• @mentions
• Replies
• Notifications
• Activity
• Direct messages
+ Rather than teaching each independently, give users a small collaborative task: “Find someone else's page, identify something interesting, tag or annotate it, and respond.”

6. RETURN — What brings me back?
Goal: Establish OSS as an ongoing creative environment rather than a one-time publishing tool.
+ The dashboard should answer three questions every time someone returns:
+ What changed?
+ New pages, updates, comments, mentions, system messages.
+ What needs my attention?

7. INTERROGATE — How can we make OSS better?
Goal: Use your experience to help us test, question, and shape OSS.
+ Test the Experience — What feels intuitive, confusing, useful, unnecessary, or incomplete?
+ Identify Friction — Where do you hesitate, get lost, encounter extra steps, or struggle to accomplish something?
+ Question the Model — Do pages, cohorts, sharing, categories, tags, and collaboration work the way you expect?
+ Test the Functionality — What works reliably? What breaks? What behaves differently than expected?
+ Look for What’s Missing — What would make creating, organizing, sharing, discovering, or collaborating easier?
+ Evaluate Collaboration — Does OSS actually help you discover ideas, respond to others, and build something together?
+ Recommend Improvements — What should be fixed, simplified, added, removed, or reconsidered?
+ Imagine the Next Version — Based on your experience, what should OSS become?
+ The cohort is not simply using OSS; it is actively helping shape OSS.

8. YOUR BIG IDEA — What could you build here?
Goal: Move from learning OSS to using OSS.
+ Encourage experimentation rather than requiring a fully formed project.
+ OSS can help the idea evolve through creating, organizing, sharing, feedback, discovery, and collaboration.
+ Develop Your Thinking — Use pages as a flexible space to explore, document, and evolve ideas over time.
+ Organize What Matters — Use categories, tags, terms, and connections to give structure to your work.
+ Make Connections — Discover relationships between your ideas, other people's work, and shared themes across OSS.
+ Find Inspiration — Explore what others are creating and use those discoveries to spark new directions.
+ Get Feedback — Use annotations, comments, mentions, and responses to develop ideas through conversation.
+ Build on Ideas — Respond to, reference, connect, and expand upon work already happening within OSS.
+ OSS doesn't tell you what to create. It gives you the tools, connections, and community to help an idea grow.

9. RESOURCES — Where can I find answers?
Goal: Give users a clear, reliable place to find help, learn more, troubleshoot problems, and contribute feedback.
+ Documentation — Some instructions, definitions, terms, workflows, and feature guidance.
+ Submit a Bug / GitHub — Follow development, known issues, feature requests, and technical documentation.
+ Office Hours — Get direct help and ask questions.
+ Submit Your Thoughts — Share observations, ideas, questions, and recommendations for improving OSS.