In the context of our recent discussion about the home page...
Here's a pretty common thing that happens in communication between a
user (Bob) and a designer (Alice).
Bob's Perspective: Bob wants to give Alice some feedback about an email
application he uses. Bob keeps hitting the delete button when he means
to hit the save button. He wants to give good feedback, so he
brainstorms a bit, and finally tells Alice that he thinks the
application would be better if the save button were bigger. Alice
replies, saying she won't make the save button any bigger. Bob is
frustrated, and argues back with Alice.
Alice's Perspective: Bob emailed Alice with a suggestion to make the
save button bigger. However, if Alice did that, it would break the
aesthetic of the application, and moreover, she's not sure if it would
actually solve Bob's problem! Alice is frustrated, because she's
arguing with Bob, and because Bob has an unsolved issue.
Analysis: When Bob sends Alice only a suggestion, Alice is left with
only two actionable options: implement (bad because Bob's suggestion
introduces new problems) or not (she can also follow up with Bob, but
Bob's still attached to his solution and upset it didn't happen). The
problem is twofold: in his zeal to provide good feedback, Bob is
actually providing a suggestion -- essentially, doing design work --
rather than feedback. However, he can't be expected to know what would
be most helpful without Alice letting him know what kind of feedback is
helpful. As it is, Alice is stuck trying to work backwards from Bob's
suggestion to exactly what his problem is.
What should really happen, is a discussion between Alice and Bob to
figure out what Bob's issues is (for example, the 'save' and 'delete'
buttons are too close to each other and have icons that are too
similar). Then Alice has the flexibility to design a solution that
fixes Bob's problem without introducing new issues.
It's also worth mentioning that if Bob provides only a suggestion, then
even if Alice follows up with, "I'm not going to implement that
particular suggestion but let's try to figure out a better one," Bob is
still left with a sour taste in his mouth because he has a tendency to
become attached to his solution.
With that in mind, I'm going to try to give a bunch of feedback such
that we can have a discussion about what should change, rather than
arguing about whether the scene needs more trees. More indented -->
more specific suggestions --> more change-able as long as the
higher-level stuff doesn't change.
---
I believe that our landing page should provide a 1-second emotional
explanation of why we care (or, why an arbitrary internet user should
care) about Snowdrift.coop.
"Together, we can uncover this awesome thing that's currently being
suppressed."
- They'll get a longer explanation of why they should care deeper into
the site, but I think this is important as a hook, to get them to be
invested immediately and keep them reading.
Thoughts on how to achieve this.
- I don't think a sense of "path" is important.
- I think a sense of "barren wasteland" is important to *keep.*
- HOWEVER, I also think there needs to be a sense of "If we cleared
away this snow, it'd be a vibrant place!" I think this is the sense of
vibrancy that Aaron was missing. Unlike Aaron, I don't think it needs
to be explicit.
- I think having something like a streak of green on a tree could
have this effect.
- I think version 27 is the worst offender in this regard. It feels
like if you cleared away the snow, you'd still be standing in the
middle of a tundra.
- Bonus points if there's a sense of the awesome thing being communal /
a community.
- I think the houses in the background in version 1 do this well.
- I think the latest, version 33, does this better than version 32,
because the mountain in the background is a little more prominent.
- I also personally like it because there's less of that blue strip
next to the path. I really don't like that strip of blue.
- I'm talking about visuals. I think it's supposed to give a sense
of a snowbank, but only because I've seen previous iterations. As it
is, it just looks like a flat shape on the ground. It barely even gives
me a sense of depth. It's really hard for me to look at the picture
because it's *SO* flat. v33 does help with this, but only a little.
Cheers,
Stephen
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