A few comments
Great work by Max, Juan Cruz, and everyone else who had a hand in the new site design! I can tell that a lot of work and great ideas went into it. I also think its wonderful that staff get a chance to comment on the design like this! So without further ado, here are my comments:
The homepage is confusing to me, and I think it might be confusing to our users, as well. The paragraph about the invite campaign asks you to sign up, but we also ask you to "Join now!" in the login box to the right. From what I can tell, they are two separate things. You can sign up for Idealist and not sign up for our campaign--as evidenced by the fact that in the Idealist profile you are asked to sign up for the campaign on the right side (or your comment shows up if you did sign up). Maybe this is for existing users and all new Idealist users are signing up for both, but it's not clear to me.
Also, if the campaign is really just the new Idealist and not a separate program or initiative, it doesn't come across that way (to me, at least).
I can't help but think that if an existing user comes to Idealist.org they'll think "Where did the jobs and volunteer opps go?" and users who have never been here before will not realize that they exist at all. I know we're trying to highlight all of our programs, but it seems that the homepage only highlights one (the campaign), at the expense of the databases, grad/career fairs, and resource centers.
This brings me to the icons/action verbs. I like the idea of organizing information by action, but currently the icons/verbs are not as effective as they could be. I agree with everyone who has said that they're too vague and it's hard to know what you're going to find when you click on them, even with the rollover text.
My suggestion for the homepage would be: consolidate the action verbs to something like four, and have a little blurb about each on the homepage. We did this with My Idealist, Organizations, and Consultants on the old Idealist (the one from a year ago), and I liked it.
On the design side of things, we're moving in the right direction--this version seems more current than the design we have now. I just worry about losing an element of friendliness. All of the gray, blue, and green make it seem very cool (as in temperature), and we don't use any of our warmer yellow. I might be wrong, but it also looks like the text is a dark gray, not a black, which adds to this sense of coolness. I'd like to see some more impact on the site, something that says "Get involved!" :)
A couple of random observations: The blue/green bar in the header gives me the idea that the columns in the body of the website should also be those widths. Indeed, in these mockups they are. But if we wrap this header and footer around existing pages that don't have columns that line up, it'll look awkward. This happens on the current invite site here: http://invite.idealist.org/if/idealist/en/MyIdealist/PeopleSummary/default Maybe we could have just one color across the whole bar?
Also, lots of the content on the left side of these mockups seems to be wrapped in some sort of box with rounded corners. Will any new page have to have content wrapped in a box to make it compatible with the new site? Do the additional boxes give the wrong impression about Action Without Borders? :) Just a thought!
Again, great work by all involved in this new site. I think we're moving in the right direction, and I think that all of the suggestions offered so far are great and deserve some thought. I'm sure I'll have more to say, but I think that's all for now.
The homepage is confusing to me, and I think it might be confusing to our users, as well. The paragraph about the invite campaign asks you to sign up, but we also ask you to "Join now!" in the login box to the right. From what I can tell, they are two separate things. You can sign up for Idealist and not sign up for our campaign--as evidenced by the fact that in the Idealist profile you are asked to sign up for the campaign on the right side (or your comment shows up if you did sign up). Maybe this is for existing users and all new Idealist users are signing up for both, but it's not clear to me.
Also, if the campaign is really just the new Idealist and not a separate program or initiative, it doesn't come across that way (to me, at least).
I can't help but think that if an existing user comes to Idealist.org they'll think "Where did the jobs and volunteer opps go?" and users who have never been here before will not realize that they exist at all. I know we're trying to highlight all of our programs, but it seems that the homepage only highlights one (the campaign), at the expense of the databases, grad/career fairs, and resource centers.
This brings me to the icons/action verbs. I like the idea of organizing information by action, but currently the icons/verbs are not as effective as they could be. I agree with everyone who has said that they're too vague and it's hard to know what you're going to find when you click on them, even with the rollover text.
My suggestion for the homepage would be: consolidate the action verbs to something like four, and have a little blurb about each on the homepage. We did this with My Idealist, Organizations, and Consultants on the old Idealist (the one from a year ago), and I liked it.
On the design side of things, we're moving in the right direction--this version seems more current than the design we have now. I just worry about losing an element of friendliness. All of the gray, blue, and green make it seem very cool (as in temperature), and we don't use any of our warmer yellow. I might be wrong, but it also looks like the text is a dark gray, not a black, which adds to this sense of coolness. I'd like to see some more impact on the site, something that says "Get involved!" :)
A couple of random observations: The blue/green bar in the header gives me the idea that the columns in the body of the website should also be those widths. Indeed, in these mockups they are. But if we wrap this header and footer around existing pages that don't have columns that line up, it'll look awkward. This happens on the current invite site here: http://invite.idealist.org/if/idealist/en/MyIdealist/PeopleSummary/default Maybe we could have just one color across the whole bar?
Also, lots of the content on the left side of these mockups seems to be wrapped in some sort of box with rounded corners. Will any new page have to have content wrapped in a box to make it compatible with the new site? Do the additional boxes give the wrong impression about Action Without Borders? :) Just a thought!
Again, great work by all involved in this new site. I think we're moving in the right direction, and I think that all of the suggestions offered so far are great and deserve some thought. I'm sure I'll have more to say, but I think that's all for now.
posted by Dave at 7:19 AM
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