Re: [Tails-dev] Making our website cuter, friendlier and more engaging
Yes, we should definitely work on this from the bottom up, i agree. I think there is indeed lots of hidden information, like the press page or pages about funding. We should discuss about what would be important to bring to the surface out of this whole existing mass of information. Is there something like a sitemap? This might help already to find out what we are dealing with. There's no sitemap until now, but if you have a local version of the wiki, you can generate one using ikiwiki: either with a !map directive: http://ikiwiki.info/ikiwiki/directive/map/ -- sajolida signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Tails-dev mailing list Tails-dev@boum.org https://mailman.boum.org/listinfo/tails-dev To unsubscribe from this list, send an empty email to tails-dev-unsubscr...@boum.org.
Re: [Tails-dev] Making our website cuter, friendlier and more engaging
sajol...@pimienta.org: Yes, we should definitely work on this from the bottom up, i agree. I think there is indeed lots of hidden information, like the press page or pages about funding. We should discuss about what would be important to bring to the surface out of this whole existing mass of information. Is there something like a sitemap? This might help already to find out what we are dealing with. There's no sitemap until now, but if you have a local version of the wiki, you can generate one using ikiwiki: either with a !map directive: http://ikiwiki.info/ikiwiki/directive/map/ thanks. Could be nice to have that on the official website too i think. with a link to it somewhere in the footer? cheers. ___ Tails-dev mailing list Tails-dev@boum.org https://mailman.boum.org/listinfo/tails-dev To unsubscribe from this list, send an empty email to tails-dev-unsubscr...@boum.org.
Re: [Tails-dev] Making our website cuter, friendlier and more engaging
u wrote (16 Apr 2014 10:34:33 GMT) : Could be nice to have that on the official website too i think. We've had this in the past (see logs of wiki/src/meta/sitemap.mdwn). Now that most of the forum has been cleaned up, maybe it would be doable to re-add it. ___ Tails-dev mailing list Tails-dev@boum.org https://mailman.boum.org/listinfo/tails-dev To unsubscribe from this list, send an empty email to tails-dev-unsubscr...@boum.org.
Re: [Tails-dev] Making our website cuter, friendlier and more engaging
u: What I'd like to see (but will *not* do myself) === Of course, considering the context provided above, all what follows shall be taken with a pinch of salt, criticized, and entirely revisited by people who are either experts in the design field, or more easily affected than me by this kawaii thingie, or both. * I'd like someone who visits our website for the first time to feel welcome and, perhaps more importantly: personally engaged. * I'd like to have enough cute-ish graphical hints on the homepage to make the people who're into this kind of things more comfortable. Don't worry, people like me probably won't consciously notice these hints, as long as we're not displaying kitten fullscreen. Oh, but even if we don't notice it, it might help making us more comfortable too ;) * I acknowledge that any implementation of the above requires to leave more room for calls to emotions, personalized messages, examples... and thus less room for cold, hard, general facts. (As a side note, I guess that reorganizing the important info we'll drop, so that it is still easily discoverable, will be a challenge, but oh well, some people are just good at this kind of refactoring :) * All this probably calls for revamping our homepage, and perhaps even (as suggested by Tchou) for creating different landing pages, aimed at different audiences (e.g. first-time visitor, existing user, potential contributor, you name it). Agreed, this is also what i would like to see on the long run. Rather than insist on the cute-part, I'd say that the website may need a little bit of non-intrusive, real, graphic design. Graphic design which improves readability and makes information easy enough to find, while being appealing to the Reptilian Brain through colours and forms that make people feel welcome. I fully agree with u on this, and I like that vision much better than the initial proposal by intrigeri. Don't take it personal :) I'm sure there are billion ways we can improve our website. But I think it would be a mistake to focus more on the way it look, say at the surface level, than in the content and its structure; and try to make it look cute in an attempt to make it better. 1. Visual = Our site should convey visually the ideas behind Tails: it's easy and it's safe, but both at the same time. If it looks too geeky, newcomers might think it more complicated than it is actually. If it looks to frivolous, then it might not help users trusting it, funders taking us seriously, or hardcore and bored geeks feeling like joining the party. In the end this looks like, once again, finding a good compromise between been secure and being easy to use. But that time in what our website convey visually to the inner brain of our visitors. And to make a another analogy with strategies we are already using in doc writing for example, in doubt I would stay neutral. I'd like us to focus on doing our job (being easy and safe) but otherwise stay neutral. In other words, I don't care about people going oooh, it's so kawaii! as long as they go oooh, that looks easy, and oooh, that looks trustworthy. Looking around the Internet it seems to me that most major websites are going this way already. Check the websites of say, Windows 8, Mac OSX, Android, and Ubuntu. They use graphic design to support their visual identity and organizing their content, while staying quite neutral visually. They use quite more photos either from users or their product, but not many drawings for example. I didn't find much kawaii stuff, except for the Android which could rank on a similar cuteness level as our new one actually. All that work needs a graphic designer. 2. Content == Our site is full of tons of technical information. It's like a encyclopedia in a way. People should find their way around and get their questions answered. And I'm sure we could do tons of work on that. Once upon a time I learned that user interfaces, like websites, can be thought has having 5 planes: strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, and surface. See http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements_ch02.pdf. And graphic design rather comes at the end of the process. The rest is more information architecture or whatever you call it. Such tool might help us if we want to rethink the website, but then we should work from the bottom up, even if we of course already have the top planes from the current website to deal with. That might be the tricky part in the end: how to do small iterations while dealing with keeping all those planes in mind. I like the idea, but if we want to work on this together we'd need a mailing list to organize this type of work (like tor-www). I would be interested on working on this and on providing some information on what should actually appear on the homepage (could work this out with Tchou and sajolida). I think Frithjof (in Cc:) was also
Re: [Tails-dev] Making our website cuter, friendlier and more engaging
heya thanks, sajolida for your great input! I snipped it though as this thread becomes very long :) Furthermore, i can ask some graphic designers I know IRL for concrete proposals. There could also be a call for submitting graphical mock-ups/ideas like was done for the logo. I think we need to work internally on the content and its structure before calling for graphic design. But yes, starting with the homepage might be a good exercise. So, as a first step, does anyone feel like thinking about the homepage in abstract terms? created a ticket https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/7082 and attached a first proposal. This is a mockup, not graphic design, so please judge the contents, not the way it looks like :) Please read my idea for the pictures, what do you think about this? I'm all for recycling great ideas! ;) cheers! u. ___ Tails-dev mailing list Tails-dev@boum.org https://mailman.boum.org/listinfo/tails-dev To unsubscribe from this list, send an empty email to tails-dev-unsubscr...@boum.org.
Re: [Tails-dev] Making our website cuter, friendlier and more engaging
Hello again, was re-reading your mail and thought that i did not really answer some important points you raised. 2. Content == Our site is full of tons of technical information. It's like a encyclopedia in a way. People should find their way around and get their questions answered. And I'm sure we could do tons of work on that. Once upon a time I learned that user interfaces, like websites, can be thought has having 5 planes: strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, and surface. See http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements_ch02.pdf. And graphic design rather comes at the end of the process. The rest is more information architecture or whatever you call it. Such tool might help us if we want to rethink the website, but then we should work from the bottom up, even if we of course already have the top planes from the current website to deal with. That might be the tricky part in the end: how to do small iterations while dealing with keeping all those planes in mind. Yes, we should definitely work on this from the bottom up, i agree. I think there is indeed lots of hidden information, like the press page or pages about funding. We should discuss about what would be important to bring to the surface out of this whole existing mass of information. Is there something like a sitemap? This might help already to find out what we are dealing with. I think we need to work internally on the content and its structure before calling for graphic design. I agree. But yes, starting with the homepage might be a good exercise. So, as a first step, does anyone feel like thinking about the homepage in abstract terms? So the work on the homepage, this is clearly only the tip of the iceberg, but a good starting point - and could be done quickly without modifying the actual structure. cheers u. ___ Tails-dev mailing list Tails-dev@boum.org https://mailman.boum.org/listinfo/tails-dev To unsubscribe from this list, send an empty email to tails-dev-unsubscr...@boum.org.
Re: [Tails-dev] Making our website cuter, friendlier and more engaging
hi, intrigeri: What I'd like to see (but will *not* do myself) === Of course, considering the context provided above, all what follows shall be taken with a pinch of salt, criticized, and entirely revisited by people who are either experts in the design field, or more easily affected than me by this kawaii thingie, or both. * I'd like someone who visits our website for the first time to feel welcome and, perhaps more importantly: personally engaged. * I'd like to have enough cute-ish graphical hints on the homepage to make the people who're into this kind of things more comfortable. Don't worry, people like me probably won't consciously notice these hints, as long as we're not displaying kitten fullscreen. Oh, but even if we don't notice it, it might help making us more comfortable too ;) * I acknowledge that any implementation of the above requires to leave more room for calls to emotions, personalized messages, examples... and thus less room for cold, hard, general facts. (As a side note, I guess that reorganizing the important info we'll drop, so that it is still easily discoverable, will be a challenge, but oh well, some people are just good at this kind of refactoring :) * All this probably calls for revamping our homepage, and perhaps even (as suggested by Tchou) for creating different landing pages, aimed at different audiences (e.g. first-time visitor, existing user, potential contributor, you name it). Agreed, this is also what i would like to see on the long run. Rather than insist on the cute-part, I'd say that the website may need a little bit of non-intrusive, real, graphic design. Graphic design which improves readability and makes information easy enough to find, while being appealing to the Reptilian Brain through colours and forms that make people feel welcome. I like the idea, but if we want to work on this together we'd need a mailing list to organize this type of work (like tor-www). I would be interested on working on this and on providing some information on what should actually appear on the homepage (could work this out with Tchou and sajolida). Furthermore, i can ask some graphic designers I know IRL for concrete proposals. There could also be a call for submitting graphical mock-ups/ideas like was done for the logo. However, there should not be such a tight schedule and there must be room for discussions on the different proposals. As I always say: a good design takes time and it is very important to respect a design process. The graphic designers themselves could get involved in these discussions via the mailing list. However, design is also a very subjective issue, so Tails core developers should absolutely take part at least in the final decisions before any real work would be carried out on the website. Not to forget, thank you all for the work previously done on the website. I found it always very unique. However, it's true that it's getting a bit oldish :) Cheers ! u. ___ Tails-dev mailing list Tails-dev@boum.org https://mailman.boum.org/listinfo/tails-dev To unsubscribe from this list, send an empty email to tails-dev-unsubscr...@boum.org.
Re: [Tails-dev] Making our website cuter, friendlier and more engaging
Hi, u wrote (12 Apr 2014 08:34:53 GMT) : Agreed, this is also what i would like to see on the long run. [snipping great ideas] :) I like the idea, but if we want to work on this together we'd need a mailing list to organize this type of work (like tor-www). I would suggest that we request a list as soon as more than two people have volunteered. But if you want it now, I'm happy to request it today :) However, there should not be such a tight schedule and there must be room for discussions on the different proposals. Fully agreed, we're not in a rush. Still, if a first *small* iteration could be ready e.g. for 1.1 and the buzz we want to make then, it would be awesome: getting something new *live* may be motivating for the people involved, and clearly communicate to potential graphics/web contributors that there's ongoing work in this area, and room to make more change. If not, definitely no big deal :) Cheers! -- intrigeri | GnuPG key @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/intrigeri.asc | OTR fingerprint @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/otr.asc ___ Tails-dev mailing list Tails-dev@boum.org https://mailman.boum.org/listinfo/tails-dev To unsubscribe from this list, send an empty email to tails-dev-unsubscr...@boum.org.
Re: [Tails-dev] Making our website cuter, friendlier and more engaging
Hey intrigeri: u wrote (12 Apr 2014 08:34:53 GMT) : I like the idea, but if we want to work on this together we'd need a mailing list to organize this type of work (like tor-www). I would suggest that we request a list as soon as more than two people have volunteered. I agree. However, there should not be such a tight schedule and there must be room for discussions on the different proposals. Fully agreed, we're not in a rush. great. Still, if a first *small* iteration could be ready e.g. for 1.1 and the buzz we want to make then, it would be awesome: getting something new *live* may be motivating for the people involved, and clearly communicate to potential graphics/web contributors that there's ongoing work in this area, and room to make more change. If not, definitely no big deal :) i can look into this, but won't make promises. u. ___ Tails-dev mailing list Tails-dev@boum.org https://mailman.boum.org/listinfo/tails-dev To unsubscribe from this list, send an empty email to tails-dev-unsubscr...@boum.org.
