Hi All,
While I'm sure Matt Arnold's effort to redesign perl.apache.org is greatly
appreciated by everyone on this list, it seems to me that a bit more
preparation and interface design should actually go into the final product.
Before we redesign the mod_perl site, we need to have a more common vision
of the goals and limitations of any redesign efforts. Design is not simply
an exercise that exists to make things 'pretty' - it is a discipline to
solve communications problems, and then to make things look 'pretty'. I ran
our community's site by a 'human/computer interaction designer with more
than 5 years web interface design experience' and he spit back a few quick
questions:
1. What browsers are different percentages of your user populations using?
2. What screen resolutions are different percentages of your user
populations using?
3. What purpose will the site serve - simply providing information, or a
marketing/evangelical need? How important are each of these considerations?
4. Who is the ultimate audience? - Who needs this information, and why?
5. What does the audience already know, and what do they need to know?
6. What is the feeling or mood to be?
7. What are some of the positive attributes of the current sites as you see
them? What are some of the negative attributes?
If some of the 'powers' that be could answer these questions to the best of
your ability, it would greatly aid any web site redesign process to take
place, especially those that have the access logs and can give us better
insight into Question 1. I think it's great that someone (thanks Matt) took
the initiative to get this "redesign perl.apache.org" ball rolling again,
and if we get enough responses to these questions I think we'll wind up with
something great that really improves on the usability of the current site.
I'm more than happy to compile the responses.
Thanks,
Alex
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Jesse Kanner
> Sent: Monday, October 11, 1999 11:12 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: please comment on new art for perl.apache.org
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, 10 Oct 1999, Matt Arnold wrote:
>
> >I have created a new page layout/template for perl.apache.org.
> You can take
> >a look at it at http://www.novia.net/~marnold/mod_perl/sample_3/
> Please let
> >me know if you think it's suitable for use on perl.apache.org.
> If not, how
> >could it be improved?
>
> The look and feel seems OK, although I too like the idea of making it
> more 'desert-ish'. I'm more curious about your plans for content
> organization. The current perl.apapche.org home page is a bit of a mess.
> There's very little sense of organization - just a lot of text and links
> scattered all over the page.
>
> Will you have any comps of the second level pages? Which information would
> go where? So far, your left hand nav seems pretty good, provided the
> current home page content will fit nicely into the buckets you've
> proposed.
>
>
> -j-
>
