Blog redesign version 1.0

 

FOR IMMEDIATE REVIEW BY CO-CROWDSOURCERS

 

Contacts: PRF&P students, Eric Chandler

 

How many students does it take to redesign a blog?

 

MIDDLESEX COUNTY, NEW JERSEY October 27, 2011 – PRFandP’s crowd sourcing assignment is now available for review. As part of a forward thinking experiment. Eric Chandler has nudged the gray matter of his students in a collaborative frenzy.

 

“Once more unto the breach dear friends...” again we find ourselves victims..errr..participants of progressive thinking. Each of us will have a turn as administrator of this blog in the creation of a new design. What we want or expect from this design should be foremost in our minds. Do we want it to have a social impact? Is it to be a model of digital instruction for professors with loud cats and lack of sleep? Who will be our audience? Yadda, yadda. You got wind of it already. Lets begin.

 

Take a look at our little  PRFandP blog. You’ll see I changed a few items, notably color, but I wanted to do more. I implemented a dynamic template which left out the tabs for signing in and such. I didn’t like it. I couldn’t change the layout much and any pictures uploaded distracted from the visual design. I converted the blog back to a simple design. Take a look and take note of the following design elements:

 

• relationships and connections of key points as you scroll across the page
• good use of white space
• line spacing and kerning (spacing of letters)- is it too tight or loose
• chunking of paragraphs and their alignment- does it flow naturally
• color-for contrast or to be complementary to each other

 

In addition, I found a few rules that we can apply to this redesign, courtesy of Josh Catone @ http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/crowdsourcing_million_heads.php 

 

Crowds should operate within constraints. To harness the collective intelligence of crowds, there need to be rules in place to maintain order.

Not everything can be democratic. Sometimes a decision needs to be made, and having a core team (or single person) make the ultimate decision can provide the guidance necessary to get things done and prevent crazy ideas and groupthink from wreaking havoc on your product.

Crowds must retain their individuality. Encourage your group to disagree, and try not to let any members of the group disproportionately influence the rest.

Crowds are better at vetting content than creating it. It is important to note that in most of the above projects, the group merely votes on the final product; they do not actually create it (even at Cambrian House, where the group collaborates to create the product, individuals are still creating each piece on their own and the group votes on whose implementation of an idea is best).

 

These are just suggestions folks. I am certain Eric will gently guide us in this endeavor. Have fun everyone.