Making it easier for users to find what they are looking for, that is a key feature of next weeks’ update of Joinup, the European Commission’s collaboration platform for digital government professionals.
No longer will site visitors need to come to terms with Joinup’s aggregate of communities, repositories, and projects. Studying how Joinup’s users navigate the site, we noticed that many struggle to differentiate these sections. To fix this, we have improved site-wide search and, in the redesign have broken down the virtual walls between these segments. Users no longer need to choose between using one of the repositories or joining a project or community.
To remove the walls, we have regrouped all of Joinup’s components into ‘Collections’. Clustering the semantic solutions with their related interoperability solutions, the underlying open source tools, and their communities of users, makes the platform much easier to access. In addition, these collections are linked to best practices, news and studies, providing context for public services and private sector organisations, and helping them to work together.
So, starting on Wednesday 4 October, when the new version of Joinup goes live, please take some time to get familiar with the new collections. At first, it might be a little disorienting, but we trust that our regrouping of the site’s content has made it much easier to navigate, find the right tool and get to the information our visitors need.
Please note that, today, Thursday 28 September, some of the functionality of the current Joinup will be limited. Visitors will still be able to access the portal, but it will not be possible to change or add content until Wednesday next week, when the new version will be in place.