[ZWeb] Re: Design Mock Up

Heimo Laukkanen huima@fountainpark.org
Fri, 26 Jul 2002 07:33:55 +0300


Jan Smith wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I just happened to discover your post today on design mockups for zope. Then
> I did a search and discovered you are writing a set of New to Zope
> Tutorials.  This is fantastic. The design side and the newbie journey are
> two areas the Zope community haven't really taken seriously enough imo.

Well this is allways very nice to hear. Even a small ' liked your ideas 
or you suck' -message means a lot in these open source businesses. 
Atleast for me. ,-) These first mockups are a product of one nigth 
stting in front of computer so please give you feedback more.

In general the issues about making Zope accessible better for designer 
community is an issue that could mean a great deal for making Zope look 
good in the public eye. Meaning, if we could lure people allready 
enthusiasticly working with webdesign into creating something usefull 
with Zope that could create a new generation of Zope sites that both 
look good and have content about something else than technology.

And that would be good.

I just sent mail to Paul telling that it would be nice to see Macromedia 
  dropping ColdFusion some day in favour of Zope. ,-)

> I like the way both your mockups address the forgotten audience.  That is:
> designers, newbies.  I prefer mock-up one, the second mock-up is too
> detailed and general.  With mock-up one I think the strong part is the
> header, this is clearly laid out in an logical way.  The idea of a photo is
> good, that is a photo with a person/people in it (rather than the images you
> provided which are a bit ho hum for me being a woman:)  

There is also a downside in the header. Could it be that in later time 
it works against making zope.org better. Possibly not, atleast if the 
navigation on the left is used wisely and the header is used to lift up 
the most important issues. Period.

About the photo and copy in general, it is making a point. 'This does 
not have to be dead serious - life is not dead serious'. While I worked 
on mobile industry with one fellow designer I got bored seeing everyone 
writing lame slogans and using basicly the same genre of imaginery. That 
was in general wrong also with dot.bombs ,-)

The usage of these scoops - feature stories or what ever you want to 
call them - has been really well for example by Macromedia and Apple. I 
have liked their way of web publishing in general, since it has touched 
also my visual nerves. But then again - I am soft for everything that 
looks pretty and has clear message.

The downside in this kind of web publishing and communications is that 
it requires muscles. Something like slashdot is much in a sense much 
more easier to do than a community site that looks good and still has 
good content. To make things work there should be editorial staff for 
Zope.org or the whole Zope community thinking about the issues to be 
talked about and developped. Meaning making the cool things visible to 
the bigger public. Possibly Paul - kudos to the man - has the 
possibility to get something something like this together.

Oh. A couple of things again on the picture. It is a Stone image library 
picture, which is actually visible in the sheer quality ,-) The problem 
with stock images in general at the moment is that the good images cost 
money - Even thousands of euros. And eventhough if the money would not 
be a problem, it is hard to tell stories well with images. It is not 
just throwing an image and some words together. It is hard and requires 
some skills too. Thats also the reason why they pay such a good money 
for good advertising talents in the area of AD and copy writing.

I'm now a bit on the sidetrack, but possibly somewhere here is a thougth 
or two. Possibly what I am trying to say is something like if we want to 
lure the big masses into spending time with Zope instead of spending 
some money or time on other packages, we - people of community - may 
have to think also a bit in marketing way. How do we sell Zope.

That was it. And it wasn't so hard to say afterall.

>The news feed is a
> good idea.  I am not so sure about the content of the left hand navigation
> bar.  It seems too programmer oriented for me it would be nice to include in
> a mock up some links to interest a zope/design/useability interest group.

Well the left hand navigation is ripped from java.sun.com so the content 
is what it is. The idea of interest groups visible there is good. Really 
good.

> One group - managers, interested non programming types could still be
> further addressed. Perhaps a link to a description of Open source Software.
> A what is Zope link for the non programmer. I've tried to do that on
> ozzope.org by linking to Australian Developed Zope Sites and an article for
> managers.  But hey I am nitpicking.  I like what you've done.

Good ideas too!

Could you put these ideas to the wiki yourself, so that we would have 
all the ideas growing in one place?

-huima