June 29, 2007
Posted in About this Blog, Web at 14:44
Time to add some color.
I inspirationgoogled (a verb for the 21th century) for “color” and ended up on a site about color blindness. There I found an illustration for how people with Tritanope (absence of blue retinal receptors) see the colors of the rainbow – all different hues of baby blue and passion pink.
I thought it was kinda neat (even though it was clearly never intended as a color scheme) so that is why the blog currently looks like a battle between two infants with very gender-traditional parents. I’m a bit unsure if it is completely appropiate for the content but for now it will do.
June 27, 2007
Posted in About this Blog, Web at 09:22
The blog redesign is progressing.
I’m pretty happy with most of the generated code right now and will now start cranking out the css. Right now everything is default grey – perhaps subconsciously inspired by the weather outside my window? It is my own twist of Jason Santa Maria’s Grey Box Method for wireframing web sites, but I do my prototyping in XHTML+CSS instead of Photoshop (a horrible truth just hit me: this probably means that I’m more of a coder than a designer…).
Some design decisions taken along the way:
- Latest article featured – The latest post is probably the most interesting one for most visitors (guesswork obviously, have to back this up with usage statistics later) so it should receive the most screen real estate.
- No sidebar – Allows for nice readable width for the text and big pictures at the same time plus it allows for some cool design solutions, such as…
- Horizontal archives listing – A new approach to archives brought about by the decision of going with no sidebar. This will function more like the Wordpress calendar than the regular, vertical archive list.
- About box, no About page – At the moment, I haven’t got enough stuff to write in the About section to warrant a whole page so a box should be enough for now
June 24, 2007
Posted in Communities, Usability, Web at 09:58
I thought I would follow-up my last post about game mechanics in social communities with a good (and well-known) example – Linkedin.
The professional networking site Linkedin is a social community that uses all the game mechanics Amy Jo Kim talks about, except for points:
Collecting
It’s all about collecting business connections and recommendations.
Feedback
Two percentage progress bars display your profile and network completion, coupled with helpful hints on what to do to become a more “complete” Linkedin user. The statistical benefits of completing your profile are also described (this much more likely to become hired etc.).
Exchanges
Linkedin boasts an introduction system for getting in touch with users through other users and ability to ask your network a question and rewarding the best example with trophies (”Best answer in…-tags).
Customization
Pretty much everything on your profile can be customized contentwise and the controls for this are embedded into the profile instead of put on a separate “Preferences” page.
Growing and cultivating business connections can appearently feel like playing a game. Good work Linkedin!
The blog redesign is progressing.