As a new beginner in coding, I am trying to level up quickly, but am always scared that I don’t understand what is going on and want to not feel stupid when asking obvious questions. Can OTS give me that chance? And where can I find more resources to learn?
As a company, we are interested in trying to understand your impact on the community and need to gauge who is using your services and what kind of clientele is coming to your events. Give me an exec summary on OTS and present me with possible ways for us to contribute.
As a seasoned developer, I want to be able to contribute to the project, but only if it is worth my time and I can also learn something from it. Show me what I can do to volunteer support and what I gain from joining up.
@UTCplus8 yeah unfortunately i just notice you can’t open this pic as gallery and they are pretty small
You can join our gitter channel #www.opentechschool.org
There you find all this pics.
I will try in the mean time to understand if we can make more user friendly the image situation here in the forum
Hi Giorgia, here are some notes on the current/developed website and a look at solutions in analogous spaces (how other organizations have tackled similar problems. Plus some notes on the current / developing website.
Next steps would be to create wireframes, define components and mock-up designs to start seeing ideas visually.
And refine them accordingly to tie it to the goals of the personas and the sitemap.
Hey, I’ve been assigned to work as a UI/UX designer for the design of new website and few other UI components. As you already started doing the UX research on the existing website, I can join you from where you are currently at and we can both work on creating the new website.
Hey Parimala, that’s great we could progress faster (atm I am under a lot of load on another project) do have a look and let me know if you identify any interesting insights regarding the UX side of things.
This is a braindump of the things I think we need to focus on, feel free to add to it:
Color
We need a contrasting accent color (find solutions based on the OTS blue hues)
“i’m not sure about this pinky… is completely new color. But i feel we need a contrast and I was trying to follow some material design ideas”
Current colors OTS Blue (3 hues), black, accent color in two hues
Typography
Establish a font pairing or a family with enough weights to accommodate the necessary contrast (Open Sans, Roboto, Lato)+1?
Preferably open fonts
Current font: Montserrat (logo is in Open Sans)
PT Serif / Open Sans
Playfair Display / Open Sans
Merriweather / Open Sans
Merriweather / Source Sans Pro
Roboto Slab / Open Sans
Navigation
Create a clear, comprehensible navigation following the sitemap flow
Learn / Contribute / Community / About
Create a sub-nav with either icons for the three social or headers (but more descriptive like chat instead of gitter
Donation
Rethink the donate button, separate element on sub-nav?
Above the scroll
Hero image, enhance the social aspect of OTS through the use of more appropriate imagery, communicate the feel the openness and inclusivity of the events.
Try a selection of treatments with messages on the hero image
What other elements could we include?
What is the clear goal we want from the users in the abs section?
Body
Create clear/legible section titles eg “Who we are”
Create headers for the three user pathways (learner / Corporate / Coach) to clarify and make the selection easier. Could you use more unified iconography / more fun more targeted?
Establish what information we want to include in the data visualization (the mock-up can be created with fictional data)
How could you make a more engaging experience for the OTS event search? (map view, stats, counters, locations?)
Get in touch / Include some small visual hint, (letter icon?)
UX / Semantic
3 Key users (Learners / Coaches / Partners) make a clear differentiation
Inclusivity is one of the key USPs of the organization! (unlike many other orgs)
Stories / Blog, Engage the Community
What is the goal of the landing page?
Social media
Focus on 3 social media / Website is the main anchor
Footer
Connect / Turn the titles into icons
Increase leading
Establish some contrast through different hierarchy of information
Branding
Open to a new logo/identity (but not a primary concern atm)
Sounds great to me. I will take a deep look at OTS current website and see if we need to add anything else to the list you mentioned. I will take a day or two to analyze and come up with rough sketches for few pages of the ‘to be designed website’, that way we can add modifications easily and then we could do prototyping based on the need and then we can immediately dive into the build part once the design is approved.
I addressed issues mentioned by you for the redesign and added few points myself and used them while prototyping. Please do let me know if you want me to further modify the design , layout or colors, or anything else.
If you like the design and want me to further finish prototyping for remaining pages, I can do that, just let me know.
PS:
Don’t bother about the text size, it is zooming way too much. I would reduce the text size in the actual web design and use letter spacing for text to give a cleaner look.
In the footer, all links are in white color and the remaining text is in ‘brinjal’ color.
Hey Parimala,
I think this is more complicated than the original design, there are a lot of competing elements and not a clear visual consistency/information flow. I would initially try to find an appropriate font or a font combination, establish a color palette (we have the primary blue, just need probably another secondary color for contrast. Have a look at your layout and try to think from the perspective of the user, see how some parts are not legible and how the typefaces change in different titles?
I will try to make a mock-up by the end of this week to show you my design intent, I think it would be easier than trying to comment each section.
Hey guys, great work! @UTCplus8 your analysis looks great! Some notes here:
What do you mean exactly?
Yes please!
@Parimala thank you for your big work!
I agree with @UTCplus8 tho, the design is a bit inconsistent. Also i would like to give a bit more fresh look.
In general, it would be very helpful if you, designer, could focus on core design concept like font, colors, buttons, UX, …
And on page templates. We need some layout for general website section so we can easily re-use for each new page / section we will build.
@UTCplus8 waiting for you mock-up so we can talk further from there.
Thank you for your feedback. Even I’m reconsidering the design which I did and working more on a pleasant and simple flow of webpage with existing colors and fonts.
Hey Dimitri, I’m waiting for your mockups. Any idea or flow of one webpage would give me a better idea on how to work on the design. I am really looking forward to your sample design which would help me a lot to prototype focusing on the core elements required for the webpage.
Hey, here is the direction I have been working on,
It is still in progress but sets a few foundations of the visual language which in my opinion should be about clarity/useability I think we can combine some of the sections or rearrange them according to our prefered hierarchies. I created a sample color palette which is based on OTS blue / one tint and one accent color.
