I agree with Owen's points below and want to highlight one of skippy's points again, namely that we have some social/participation features that we are hoping to add to the site soon, and it would be good for you to be informed about them while you are brainstorming. That being said, I do really like where you are going with the design, and would love to hear/see more of your thoughts.
One thing that I think will be helpful is to build out a wire frame of content first, so we can hash that out. Once we have the placement of types of content we want to provide on the site down, then I think there will be much less contention when it comes to the look and feel. That is my feeling at least. On May 22, 2009, at 9:12 AM, Owen Winkler wrote: > > Scott Merrill wrote: >> On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 8:09 AM, Alex Hempton-Smith >> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> I was playing with some ideas last night on the train, here's the >>> current >>> draft: http://is.gd/Cl4r, any suggestions on the design would be >>> great. >>> Current feedback is that the layout is good, but it may seem to >>> dark a >>> colour scheme. I'll be creating a port of the final theme for >>> MediaWiki, to >>> give the site a more cohesive look and feel. >> >> At first blush, I like what I see. But the website design has >> sometimes been hotly contested. It seems to be one of those things >> about which everyone has a strong opinion. > > Yes. I've been annoyed lately by the response I've gotten from > introducing a few new people to Habari -- "It's very bland". They > admit > to saying that under the surface she may be intelligent, witty, and > fun, > but she's not a looker. > > That said... > >> Rather than work in a vacuum on the layout and navigation, I'd rather >> see a public discussion about the ways in which the website is >> intended to serve visitors. What information is most important? What >> kind of navigation do we want to have? What examples of good sites >> can >> we look to for prior art? > > There is some early work on trying to sort out this question: What > does > the web site need to do for the different types of users that visit? > > Here: > http://wiki.habariproject.org/en/Designs/Habari_Home > > What I don't want to do is get into a big "Should there be rounded > corners?/Shouldn't the color be rust?/Should the feature list be > higher > and fiddled with javascript?/Shouldn't the site design match the > software's admin design?/Let's add this cool-looking thing that site X > has!" discussion. Historically, those haven't lead anywhere positive. > > I guess my point is this-- If you want to go away, design the hp.o > site > in private, and then come back and present it, then there are two > things > you need to consider: > > 1. You are assenting to an iterative process. Do not expect that the > designs you bring back will be embraced by everyone. Do expect that > community consensus will send you back to design with revisions. > > 2. Ultimately, what the site does is more important than how it looks. > It may not seem it, but some specific thought did go into the > construction of content on the existing site. Perhaps the words > aren't > the best, perhaps it's not showing everything that one might think > should go on the home page, but what's there already and why is worth > considering. > > Owen > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/habari-dev -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
