Le lundi 20 juillet 2009 18:08:50, brendan at artvote.com a ?crit : > Hi All, > Over the past couple months I've been speaking with Ian about your > fascinating project and recently, he's asked me to give feedback on the new > site design so I've included a previous email addressing that below. > Looking forward to more conversations with each of you! > -Brendan > p.s. Here's my brief bio: I am a digital product designer, interested in > interactive design, information architecture, user experience, business > strategy, and generally making life easier and more fun. > > ////////////// > > Hi Ian, > > Overall, I think that this visual design is a nice step forward. The > navigation is clearer, and having a single column structure gives you room > for a left hand navigation down the road on lower-level pages, should you > need it. > > As far as color, do you have sense of what you want the brand colors to > be? It looks like the new release of the app, and the logo mark, are blue. > Perhaps consider having a blue-tone color theme rather that the black grey > theme. Having the header black makes it feel "dark". I would be mindful of > the connotations that "darkness" has (good and bad). Might be interesting > to see a lighter treatment. Perhaps blue and grey of beige? > That's true that we (I and my girlfriend) didn't think of that when we choosed the colors. We took black and gray color because it generally looks clean, and it help making a contrast with the reading zone (which is white here). But I agree those colors don't mean anything. With the current site, I choosed a blue gradient (which looks old) to white, because it give a feeling of "freedom" (sky, ...). Anyway, all that to say : I'll try with the colors you mentioned :) > (As far as information design and the presentation of the content on the > pages, see the comments below on structure and content. It makes sense to > address the larger questions prior to focusing the presentation of > page-level content.) > > That's pretty much my first blush on design. > > I think there are a couple quick-wins that are usability related, that > I've included below (1&2). > > PAGE: Home page: > http://amphibian.dyndns.org.nyud.net/freenet/newsite/index.html > > 1. Since you've opted to have the app installer automatically begin the > install after they click (instead of downloading first) Here are a few > preparatory steps you might want to include to prepare the suer. Make the > label on the button more descriptive and consider adding a few bullets > above the button to describe the installation process. For instance: > "Getting started is easy! When you install, you'll do the following: > > ? Download and automatically open the installer > ? Set your security preference and connection speed > ? Explore the feature through the Getting Started Tutorial" > ["Install Freenet now" = button label] > Hum, that's a good idea, but I can see a problem : we use javascript to detect the OS, and display only the right button. But, if javascript is turned off, or the browser doesn't send the name of the OS it's running on, we show all three buttons. So, if we add the little paragraph above, with no js, it will looks like this : [Win button] [Paragraph above] [MacOS button] [Linux/unix button]
And I'm not sure it would be clear for the user. > 2. Screenshots are great to have. Consider adding a trigger that says > "Click to View Screenshots" under the one on the right, and on the > destination page, add more screenshots and label what those screens are. > Currently the destination page is just a single larger screenshot. Add a > description telling the user which screen they are looking at and add > additional screens of other parts of the app beneath it on this page and a > link at the bottom to take the user back to the previous page, the home > page. > Yeah, screenshot suck right now. To tell the truth, I didn't focused on it, since we don't have any good looking screenshot, and I was waiting for it. Plus, we don't know what to do : one screenshot, as it is now, reduced (which looks ugly), linking to the screenshots page ? several screenshots focused on features, like http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/ ? I'd vote for the second one (but it needs more screenshots...). > I like the "Latest News" item. Feels like a 'heartbeat' on the site. > That's good. > Cool :) > Here's some additional food for though regarding content and structure. > > Have a look at panic.com or http://www.panic.com/transmit/ and check out > how they have loads of features on the product page. Consider having a > "product features" page with iconography and a quick description of each > feature. This is a nice way to pay off your central product 'value > proposition' (Ex. "Share, Chat, Browse. Anonymously. On the Free Network." > - Then give a list of features somewhere on the site that explains this in > a bit more detail.) > Good idea. > Here's a big structure idea. It looks like there are two main content > areas: Content related to the app: And, content related to the Freenet > Project. In the future, restructuring the site, and making a clear > distinction between these two types of content, could really help the > overall UX and usability of the site. This type of structure would also > help a broader audience to self-segment and get to their desired content > more easily. Well, I'd like more input on this if it's possible, because that's what I wanted to do, but didn't figure out how to do that (for instance, do the about/people page concern the app, or the project ? I'd say it concerns the project, so, where do I put it (since I can't let it in the same menu than app related items) ?). The problem is how to make this separation visible on the site (separate menu, domain, ...) ? > > Best, > Brendan
