

Hi folks, any suggestions for this design?  - radianthex

Hi folks,
I've been working on this for some time, I'm finding it very hard to settle down with the design. I would be really grateful if you guys could give me a few tips.<p>The site is meant as an aggreagator, such as popurls and such, but it organizes articles using various algorithms. Articles can also be saved with a temporary account.
This is the site http://www.whizis.com/<p>I'm not sure how usable it feels or if the design might be in some way confusing.<p>Any comments?
Help would be very much appreciated!
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tjpick
The html escaping looks broken, I can see escaped entities in the description
text.

Also the contrast between the description text, button text etc and their
backgrounds is way too low.

It feels really stripy, you could probably remove some of the horizontal lines
and let it flow a bit more.

I thought the "tweetmeme.com", "reddit.com" descriptors were buttons but
apparently they aren't. They look like they are.

~~~
radianthex
thank you tjpick for your suggestions and pointing out details like the
"tweetmeme.com" descriptors looking like buttons.

I agree with all your points, I'll see what I can come up with.

By the way, are you suggesting me to loose the horizontal lines separating the
articles?

~~~
tjpick
> By the way, are you suggesting me to loose the horizontal lines separating
> the articles?

yes, separating the articles and in the sidebar. You could consider it. I
personally find a horizontal line breaks vertical reading/scanning flow, and
people generally overuse the technique to separate sections where a heading in
slightly larger/bolder font and a bit of white space is much more pleasant.
I'm not a visual designer, just my personal preference. Up to you.

------
mschaecher
More of a UX suggestion, but I think you need to explain the purpose and why
of the site better. If it wasn't for your statement on here about what the
site is meant to be, it would have been even less clear to me. What is the
value proposition?

The 'What's This' tip links and the 'About' section aren't working.

Under the choose your algorithm sections, when I select one of the choices it
highlights the choice, but nothing else changes. This leaves me unsure if they
are not working or if I am doing something wrong.

There are also a lot of people out there who might not be familiar with the
term algorithm, even less understand what they actually mean. If you are
aiming to reach 'normals' it might be helpful to use more common language like
filters instead of algorithms.

Same thing with the copy where you describe the algorithms. To me, it seems
like you are describing more how the algorithms function...rather than how it
will effect what I see as a user. I'd say figure out in plain, concise
language what the benefits of each 'filter' are to the user.

Terms like renewal rates, site voting power, and slow rate change don't convey
to the average user how each filter effects them. I think a good place for
including and describing these terms is probably in the 'What's This' tool tip
for that section.

I'm not sure what the purpose of the 'State of Social Media' section is. What
does that mean for the user? Why is it important to the user? What exactly
does that information tell me?

The site source labels do look like buttons as tjpick mentioned. But I would
also add that the Reddit and Tweetmeme labels look/are the same at least for
background color. When I scroll the page almost all of the submissions are
from Reddit and Tweetmeme, except for one for digg. Since the green is so much
more pronounced than the grays used on the other two, I feel like it is
highlighting it as something special I should look at or click. I would use
the gray background color for all of them, and just use different colored
font(maybe with a more pronounced font so colors(sites) are easily
distinguished).

The gray description text is hard for me to read, in that I actually have to
try and focus on reading it. The submission time and user are highlighted
which usually signals important information in context to the info around
them. Is that the important information you want to highlight? Seems to me
like those are second or third tier pieces of info, where text like the
description, site source, etc., are actually the important/useful parts.

Need a footer. Footer makes it clear that this is the end. Right now it looks
like the page just hasn't loaded entirely because I was expecting to be able
to go through multiple pages.

~~~
radianthex
mschaecher, thank you for your elaborate reply.

The suggestions and points you have made a really useful. I am really happy.
Not everything is working 100% as I'm still working on the site, I felt stuck
on the layout and design. I'm changing features constantly.

I'm thinking of inserting a small description of the site in the top part of
the sidebar, or in a box above the articles. I've been suggested to add a
popup such as wefollow's one <http://wefollow.com/>, but I'm not sure if it's
a good idea.

Thank you for pointing out the problems about the terminology I used, I
haven't thought about this and you have given a great explanation on why and
what you suggest me doing.

About the "tweetmeme" and "reddit" boxes, I applied the theme colours for each
one. I'm thinking of maybe only displaying theme colors when a relevant
container is being hovered, although this might disrupt the user's attention.

I'll also change the text contract, and level them a better. I'm thinking the
following order of importance: \- Title \- Description \- Domain, Source \-
Time ago, Poster, Options

I'm a little undecided if to consider the description more important than
"domain" and "source", or the other way round.

I'll add a footer asap!

Thank you mschaecher, this was top advice!

~~~
mschaecher
Keep up the good work. If you ever want some more thoughts/comments or someone
to bounce ideas off feel free to drop me a message at schaecher.michael at
gmail

