I dare to say that i agree, it is repelling at first sight.
On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 1:12 PM, James Fisher <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > > I've recently fallen head-over-heels in love with CouchDB. However, this > (my first) email will probably be at best, constructively critical, and at > worst, offensive, but: > > Does the CouchDB project have any agreed visual brand identity, or is it > being worked on? I speak mainly of the pages at > http://couchdb.apache.org/. I'm the kind of person that judges a book > by its cover, and it took > consIiderable effort for me to stop my eyes being repelled from that page. > Compare it, for example, with the simple design at http://www.mongodb.org/ , > where many newbies (like me) to document-oriented DBs will be making an > active comparison. > > CouchDB's slogan is "relax", but that web design gets me all agitated. > There's no room to breathe: logotype squished into a corner, small font, > subheadings imprisoned in dark green cells. No ample footer telling me I've > reached the end of the page and where I should go next; just a niggardly > copyright notice. Rather than relaxing, the guy on the sofa looks like he's > trying to squirm as far away from the page as possible. > > The sofa logo I'm not particularly opposed to, but: entirely saturated > primary red? That's the universal visual symbol for "PANIC!". I have this > passage from The Vagina Monologues indelibly imprinted on my memory: > > --- > Then he began to undress me. > > "What are you doing, Bob?" I said. > > "I need to see you," he replied. > > "No need," I said. "Just dive in." > > "I need to see what you look like," he said. > > "But you've seen a red leather couch before," I said. > --- > > ... blech. > > And: who could ever relax on such an angular sofa? > > The index page just doesn't sell it. A needless <h1> "The CouchDB Project" > tells me what I already know from looking at the logotype. The messy design > schema, which could be a quirky feature (though its appearance on the first > page is questionable), instead sits awkwardly on top of other headers and > squashing text out of the way, with an inappropriate yellow background that > together with the green suggests vomit (oh dear, on my nice new sofa). > There's no big bold text telling me that I should use CouchDB. > > The first paragraph: "Apache CouchDB is a document-oriented database that > can be queried and indexed in a MapReduce fashion using JavaScript. CouchDB > also offers incremental replication with bi-directional conflict detection > and resolution." This jumps into jargon way too soon -- as a prospective > user, the first thing I want to hear is something simple, comforting, and > whetting my appetite: "CouchDB is a new kind of database; it will change the > way you work; come with me, and I will take you on a tour of its secrets." > > Next, the colour scheme. Red and dark-half-saturated green (I'm not even > sure whether that colour has a name)? Under no system of colour theory is > that an appropriate combination. I suspect it hasn't consciously been > decided upon as a palette -- the red appears nowhere else. > > What's with the needless breadcrumb trail across my entire 2000px-wide > screen? It might be appropriate for a massive site where getting lost is > easier than finding anything, but not here where every page is easily listed > down the left. > > And the diagonal pinstripe background -- that's so 2003. Nothing else on > the site implies that 45 degree angle. Get rid of it. > > Futon displays a different scheme: red with shades of grey. The slogan, > "relax," sits in a different place to the same slogan in the logotype on the > website. The text sits under, rather than aside, the sofa logo. The > "contract the sidebar" arrow inexplicably points up rather than to the > right. > > I'm getting into nitty-gritty now, but I hope I've made a point: CouchDB is > surely losing users by pushing them away with bad design. The main slogan, > "relax," I really, really like, but it unfortunately doesn't come across > anywhere. It should. The whole visual design specification should use this > one word as its starting point. > > I don't just want to criticize. Perhaps I can help -- I have no experience > with Erlang, and I'd be much better suited to PR in this case. AFAICT the > site is hand-written static HTML/CSS, so a redesign is not a massive > undertaking. > > Opinions? > > > > James Fisher > -- Greg Tappero CTO co founder Edoboard http://www.edoboard.com +33 0645764425
