Let’s work on this together
We’ve been discussing some subtle tweaks to improve the ‘interactive’ pieces of the Democracy Player interface. We want to make the email-to-a-friend links more obvious and the bomb-this-video button more obvious– both are a little bit hard to find in the current design. We’ve worked out some tweaks to the layout, but we need some nice new buttons. Inspired by Holmes’ previous post, we thought we’d ask you to help us make them.
Here’s a rough (ugly) sketch of how we want things to go:
–click the picture for a full-size version–
The video that we’ve changed is the one in the ‘unwatched’ section, the other ones are how it looks currently. These might not look like big changes, but they really are– interface is a game of inches, and by inches I mean pixels. So that’s the layout, but we need beautiful, consistent versions of these buttons in order to make it real:
1. a ’send to a friend’ button that will go above the search field (could also say ’send to friend’)
2. bomb and email icons that will go to the left of the blue ‘info area’ on each video (as you can see, we want to put more emphasis on these, but the way they look in the image above is a little too big and garish, so we’re not sure what to do).
3. save and delete buttons that will go in the bottom part of the blue info area.
Want to help? Send us some designs! You can either email them to nicholas-at-pculture.org or post a link in the comments on this entry. Don’t feel bound to the rough sketch above (for instance, the ‘Send to a Friend’ button doesn’t need to be a speech bubble) and, as always, feel free to send ideas for other parts of the interface also.
Keep in mind that we are very, very picky about stuff like this, so don’t feel bad if we don’t use your stuff– every idea helps us see things in a new way and gets us closer to something great. And as Holmes pointed out in that post, if you don’t like the way something looks, you can always change the Democracy Player interface yourself. Someday we might even have a theming system for you.
March 11th, 2006 at 8:36 am
That’s too damn messy. Way too much stuff in such a small area…
Keep VideoBomb seperate imho.
March 11th, 2006 at 10:58 am
I agree, the changes make the interface look quite cluttered. I’m especially against the mail & bomb invading the whitespace surrounding the video description.
The icons do need to be clearer, but they should stay where they are at the moment.
March 11th, 2006 at 11:15 am
I definitely hear you guys on these comments, we want to avoid clutter. However, where we’ve currently nestled the mail and bomb icons, they are just too small, and don’t really server their purpose. One option would be to extent the blue area left so that the new position of these buttons is still on blue. That would give better access, but maintian the cleanliness of the white area– we want the blue zone to be available for reference, but not in your way.
March 11th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Hey, I like it. The whitespace is essentially vacant, especially in full screen mode. I think the bigger bomb will make it more accessible and used more. I think the “bomb” feature and the emailing to a friend are valuable enough to give a bigger presence. Oh, we still need those navigation bars at the top. When I looked at the full size pic, it took some navigating just to get back to the blog. Oh, and the sketch ain’t that ugly!
March 11th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
I think you’re right, extending the blue area around the bomb & mail icons would solve the problem of invading the whitespace.
I actually like the new bomb icon, though I think it could do with a spark on the tip of the fuse. As for the mail icon, i’d be tempted to lose the arrow. There are too many diagonals in the icon and it looks messy because of it. A simple envelope should suffice. Anyway, most people should understand the concept of mail.
On a side note, I posted this from inside Democracy…
March 12th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Hey great program man. A little rough and buggy right now, but I’m sure it’ll be great when it’s finished.
March 14th, 2006 at 8:42 am
Might start looking like the redesign of the iPod box by Microsoft.:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4313772690011721857