The thing I find most interesting is the left menu. I think showing the table of contents here is not that useful but I think the fact it encourages exploration of content is interesting. When I first glanced at this I thought the designer was showing categories which did seem like an interesting concept that encouraged better exploration of knowledge on the site.
Every time I talk to someone about Wikipedia I'm interested to see if they can name 3 menu items in the Wikipedia left menu. I then do the same for Facebook. I'm yet to find someone who can name 3 in Wikipedia's menu that are not active Wikipedia contributors. It would be great to make use of this space in a more engaging way that encourages more time spent on the site.
On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Daniel Friesen daniel@nadir-seen-fire.com wrote:
At first glance it starts to look a little interesting. But after looking closer it looks like the same old failures others keep making are sitting there as well.
A few points:
- Like others they seem to completely pass over things that are
fundamental to Wikipedia. Like eliminating the well known logo entirely.
- And of course they completely skip any thought on how to handle the
other parts of editing. Such as move/rename, delete, protection, etc... -- They even come up with an interesting idea for disambig (although there's a good chance that said change could actually be counterproductive) but make no effort to figure out how to fit in things like protection notices.
- And they go a little bit too far with the flat Metro style and get
really close to committing some of the same usability atrocities that Microsoft made. Some of the items on the page don't really indicate they are clickable like they should. For example the TOC ("Content" on the left) looks exactly like page text.
The first few images even make it look like they are aiming for a nice vibrant look with a good use of colours. But when you drop below that top part with almost the only real colour on the page. It turns out even duller than monobook, much less vector. It feels more like reading a 20th century newspaper instead of reading a 21st century digital encyclopedia.
~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/]
On 13-01-28 10:33 AM, Patrick Hendricks wrote:
I thought you guys would like this link, if you haven't already seen it.
http://dribbble.com/wirwoluf/projects/104912-wikipedia-redesign
Pat
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