From marcel at wintasy.com Mon Feb 16 09:01:49 2009 From: marcel at wintasy.com (Drs M. Feenstra, MALD, MBA) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:01:49 +0100 Subject: [theforum] I made stickers. In-Reply-To: <498F3E2B.4040508@seastorm.com> References: <498F2904.7020208@seastorm.com> <002701c98a25$52f34ef0$f8d9ecd0$@com> <498F3E2B.4040508@seastorm.com> Message-ID: <000001c99047$7efb83a0$7cf28ae0$@com> Erika Meyer wrote: > They'll go out in the mail on Monday. The stickers arrived today and they look great, thanks! Marcel From ekm at seastorm.com Mon Feb 16 12:50:54 2009 From: ekm at seastorm.com (Erika Meyer) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:50:54 -0800 Subject: [theforum] updatez Message-ID: <4999B58E.7090406@seastorm.com> Hey just wanted to let everyone know I'm in the midst of moving and dealing with some back pain (always a fun combo, tho moving hurts less than using my laptop...) thanks for the notes about the stickers; will send out the next batch this week. I'll prob be MIA in the rest of evolt affairs etc for the next week or so. Erika From adrinux at gmail.com Fri Feb 20 06:01:55 2009 From: adrinux at gmail.com (adrinux) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:01:55 +0000 Subject: [theforum] Design by community Message-ID: A bit of Friday pondering... Just read Leisa Reichelt's blog "design by committee vs design by community (things we learned from the Drupal.org project)"[1] about the approach taken to the drupal.org redesign. There's an attitude around evolt that any design/redesign or evolt should be carried out by privately by a small group away from public view because 'design by committee sucks' - very true. Also that users of the site shouldn't have to be involved in the running of it, leave that to enthusiastic volunteers... But it seems design by community is not the same as design by committee. After reading Leisa's article I wonder whether evolt.org wouldn't actually benefit from wider community involvement. Maybe it's a bit early to say, drupal.org has yet launched it's redesign. Maybe the evolt community is now too small for this to work well. Anyway, have a read: [1] http://www.disambiguity.com/designbycommunity/ -- Adrian Simmons | http://perlucida.com From tara.cleveland at gmail.com Fri Feb 20 06:45:15 2009 From: tara.cleveland at gmail.com (Tara Cleveland) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:45:15 +0000 Subject: [theforum] Design by community In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2a6f84150902200445u2d3bb77aqeebcfbf6c8a18e28@mail.gmail.com> Hi Adrian and all, After the reading the article I'm not sure I'd call that "design by community", but would call it "surveying your users after design and making adjustments". The other questions you'd have to ask are: whether we'd get the hundreds of responses she says are necessary for the results (I don't think we would), and whether or not you think the drupal.org redesign was a successful bit of good design (which I think is debatable). Nevertheless, it's an interesting idea. I'd still do user testing and a survey of users after a design - regardless of what you call it. :-) My 2 cents. Tara On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 12:01 PM, adrinux wrote: > A bit of Friday pondering... > > Just read Leisa Reichelt's blog "design by committee vs design by > community (things we learned from the Drupal.org project)"[1] about > the approach taken to the drupal.org redesign. > > There's an attitude around evolt that any design/redesign or evolt > should be carried out by privately by a small group away from public > view because 'design by committee sucks' - very true. Also that users > of the site shouldn't have to be involved in the running of it, leave > that to enthusiastic volunteers... > > But it seems design by community is not the same as design by > committee. After reading Leisa's article I wonder whether evolt.org > wouldn't actually benefit from wider community involvement. Maybe it's > a bit early to say, drupal.org has yet launched it's redesign. Maybe > the evolt community is now too small for this to work well. > > Anyway, have a read: > > [1] http://www.disambiguity.com/designbycommunity/ > > -- > Adrian Simmons | http://perlucida.com > -- > TheForum Archives: http://lists.evolt.org/theforumarchive/ > > evolt.org wiki: http://wiki.evolt.org/ > teamwork site: http://evolt.teamworkpm.net/ > From adrinux at gmail.com Fri Feb 20 08:22:00 2009 From: adrinux at gmail.com (adrinux) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:22:00 +0000 Subject: [theforum] Design by community In-Reply-To: <2a6f84150902200445u2d3bb77aqeebcfbf6c8a18e28@mail.gmail.com> References: <2a6f84150902200445u2d3bb77aqeebcfbf6c8a18e28@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/2/20 Tara Cleveland : > After the reading the article I'm not sure I'd call that "design by > community", but would call it "surveying your users after design and > making adjustments". True up to a point :) But it was a wee bit more interactive than that. The card sorting on layout of various page elements is what I'm thinking of specifically. > and whether or not you think the > drupal.org redesign was a successful bit of good design (which I think > is debatable). It's not actually live yet, and thus, I think, not even properly debatable (yet). > we'd get the hundreds of responses she says are necessary for the results > (I don't think we would) Agreed. We've shrunk too much already I think. -- Adrian Simmons | http://perlucida.com From jorachim at gmail.com Fri Feb 20 08:28:13 2009 From: jorachim at gmail.com (Jack Timmons) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:28:13 -0600 Subject: [theforum] Design by community In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <619a2e2e0902200628p323b24e0j4ef89bf35ae5843b@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 6:01 AM, adrinux wrote: > A bit of Friday pondering... > > Just read Leisa Reichelt's blog "design by committee vs design by > community (things we learned from the Drupal.org project)"[1] about > the approach taken to the drupal.org redesign. > > There's an attitude around evolt that any design/redesign or evolt > should be carried out by privately by a small group away from public > view because 'design by committee sucks' - very true. Also that users > of the site shouldn't have to be involved in the running of it, leave > that to enthusiastic volunteers... > > But it seems design by community is not the same as design by > committee. After reading Leisa's article I wonder whether evolt.org > wouldn't actually benefit from wider community involvement. Maybe it's > a bit early to say, drupal.org has yet launched it's redesign. Maybe > the evolt community is now too small for this to work well. > I don't think it's a mentality of "only a select few should do it". I just think it's more "only a select few have the time to commit doing a redesign." Ultimately, it's going to come down to a few people doing the footwork and getting feedback from the rest. Is that bad? Hardly at all. That allows people like me (who have an over-abundance of both projects and mundane things to do in a day) to sit down for their allotted five minutes of answering job-related emails and giving whatever change they have in their drawer at the time. Then again, I'm just a lurker who helps whenever said five minutes allow me. -- -Jack Timmons http://www.trotlc.com Twitter: @jorachim From adrinux at gmail.com Fri Feb 20 08:49:10 2009 From: adrinux at gmail.com (adrinux) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:49:10 +0000 Subject: [theforum] Design by community In-Reply-To: <2a6f84150902200445u2d3bb77aqeebcfbf6c8a18e28@mail.gmail.com> References: <2a6f84150902200445u2d3bb77aqeebcfbf6c8a18e28@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: 2009/2/20 Tara Cleveland : > would call it "surveying your users after design and > making adjustments". Having given it a bit more thought I'd say the difference is that what they did was an iterative process. They were soliciting feedback throughout the process ? logo, wireframes, home page layouts ? at each stage they publicized and requested feedback. More like "surveying your users *during* and after design and making adjustments". That's what made it a bit novel, a bit scary to think of and why I (and others) thought they were crazy to do it. -- Adrian Simmons | http://perlucida.com From ekm at seastorm.com Fri Feb 20 11:12:08 2009 From: ekm at seastorm.com (Erika Meyer) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:12:08 -0800 Subject: [theforum] Design by community In-Reply-To: References: <2a6f84150902200445u2d3bb77aqeebcfbf6c8a18e28@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <499EE468.80903@seastorm.com> adrinux wrote: > More like "surveying your users *during* and after design and making > adjustments". That's what made it a bit novel, a bit scary to think of > and why I (and others) thought they were crazy to do it. Adrian, though I haven't read the article (yet) (my 'net connection is brief atm... and my attention span briefer) but it sounds a lot like the "open source" mentality that I *do* think we have here at evolt.org... (glances at article... oh it's about drupal, an open source project, ok then) It also sounds a bit like how writers often solicit feedback as they are finishing a piece of writing... different than open source but riffing off some of the same principles.. "given enough eyes all bugs are shallow" We *have* been soliciting feedback (I have) but mostly on theforum. However, the survey we sent out was related to design, and went to the whole list. Erika