March Voting Begins

April 05, 2004 | View Comments (21) | Category: Version 2

Summary: March voting begins.

Time to start voting, which you can do on the March Version 2 Voting Page. The site is not complete so if you wish to play a game of find the "missing pages" than feel free. I am in rapid development so if there is a page missing, there is a good chance it will be there in 10 minutes.

For everyone that has forgotten here is the site that was being redesigned: The Cooperative Bug Isolation Project.

Here are some guidelines for you to follow presented by the ever so helpful Emperor Zelnox. Remember these are just guidelines (damn good ones though) and not rules.

Before Viewing

During Viewing

While viewing any of the participants' work, you are encouraged to ask these questions. Any design work is part-objective, part-subjective. The original goal was to separate the checklist into an objective and subjective part, but that has failed. Still the check list comprises both type of questions. Of course, some questions may not apply that well to only a front page.

Visual Structure

Navigation

Information Architecture

Readability

Usability

Audience

Metaphor

Color/Imagery

Feel

Good luck to everyone. Use this entry as a discussion as to why you picked the entry that you did. Please refrain from saying who you voted for.

Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/197

Comments

#1

Glad to see some guidelines, but I think the sheer length of the list might be a bit intimidating....

Ben Scofield (http://www.culann.com/)

#2

Well people have about 7 more months to memorize them :)

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#3

Quick question - is it still (up to) 3 votes per person?

Ben Scofield (http://www.culann.com/)

#4

Nope, just one.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#5

Michele has a great writeup concerning the redesign process.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#6

Thanks Paul, I was going to post that link on this comment but you anticipated me. :)

Good luck to all the contestant!

Michele (http://michele.f2o.org/)

#7

Wow ... it looks great! There are a couple things that I'd mention, though:

You've done an amazing job redesigning the site but overall, I think that you should think more of people that have been casually linked to the page and don't really know whats going on. The site has been prepared well for me, but for the first-time user, it might be confusing. Changing some of the things I mentioned above might be the first step to helping those users.

And I know that the site is still 'beta', so if you've already though of changing some of that, more power to you.

Thanks again for holding such a wonderful contest and maintaining such a great site - I just wanted to return the favor by offering a little constructive criticism. ;)

thomas (http://gendes.elivy.com)

#8

Paul,

When are we going to see your attempt at a V2 redesign?

Andrew (http://kempt.org/design)

#9

And what happened to Jeremy Johnson design?

Andrew (http://kempt.org/design)

#10

Thomas: You are right in the sense that there is still a lot to do with the site. However, I think it improves on a lot of things on the old one so I had to get it up. Time seems more precious nowadays.

Andrew: It's there. Right after Alex Keeny.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#11

Andrew: Hopefully my version 2 comes out this month. Not easy running all these sites, looking for a job, doing side projects, finishing up last month of graduate school (HELL YEAH!!!) and then designing a site that no one will laught at ;) But I enjoy doing it all, so I am not one to complain...

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#12

I really don't like the thumbnails. By taking a screenshot from 1600x1200 (or something like that) you change the whole look of a site. It seems unnatural and I can't imagine that a large userbase actually surfs at such high resolutions. Is it possible you can make screenshots of sites at 800x600? This would give a much less disfigured picture. All IMHO, of course :-)

Jeroen Coumans (http://www.jeroencoumans.nl)

#13

I dont think you really change the whole look of a site, but since most people design for their sites to look OK at 800x600, theres a lot of whitespace on the sides at 1600x1200. And for those with 100% widths, there's a lot of whitespace on the bottom of the page, since there isn't too much content at the cbip.

It's not really a problem, though - keep it how it is.

thomas (http://gendes.elivy.com)

#14

I honestly figured people click on the images anyways to see the whole sites. Hopefully, people are not voting based on the looks of a screenshot. Same thing when it comes to the CSS Vault.

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#15

I think some of the criteria might be hard, since it's only the homepage.

Usability is one, since you can't set up error pages, among other things.

Tom

#16

After discounting all entries that merely repeated the existing CBIP text, because it just confused me, I was left with half a dozen. These all gave the message much more clearly. My original favourite, viewed without CSS, then lost its best bit. Better coding would have made it my number two. Another which will be many people's favourite could not be read at 800 x 600 and the colours were not distinct in Opera. Another with good graphics on a popular theme had an excellent intro but this disappeared without CSS.

Of the three remaining that worked well on all browsers and without the stylesheet, one was mainly text and looked a little boring. So I have picked the one that is clearer to read, laid out more logically, and which I think would be more reassuring to visitors who might want to co-operate.

peter moulding (http://www.mouldingname.info/)

#17

On the matter of thumbnails, it is normally better to just show a small part of the page in the thumbnail, maybe a section of the logo out of each design. This will entice the user to click on them to view the site, instead of them just scanning through the thumbnails and not getting a good picture. It also makes for much nicer thumbnails.

I will be introducing this concept into my portfolio when I rebuild it.

phil baines (http://www.wubbleyew.com/blog/)

#18

There is a major security issue with the email voting system. Many people won't even bother voting at all this way. A basic php system would be safer, plus would make the whole process more transparent, allowing the people to see the results of the votation in real time

I am sure you have planned to di that :-)

eric

#19

I agree eric. It also comes on as unprofessional that will make people think the the contest is pointless and just run by a bunch of kids (even though it is not).

Tim

#20

I don't think showing the ovting results in real time is a good idea no matter how the voting is done. That would most likely tend to skew the results.

Good job on the redesign of this site, btw!

Mike M

#21

Sure. That makes perfect sense. HOw about you go back and read the extensive discussion on choosing a voting system where the php solution was discarded as insecure. It's too easy to stack votes. IP addresses change, cookies can be deleted. Yes, you can stack votes with an email system, too, but it's more work, and if scrivs gets a large number of throwaway domain votes for a specific site, he can guess it's phony.

The only system we came up with that was pretty safe was requiring payment to vote and dividing the total payments equally among those that didn't win (or let scrivs keep the money to go towards hosting expenses). And obviously that was not a popular idea.

JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)

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