[OH-Dev] OpenHatch site redesign: progress report, demo site, and some mockups

[Asheesh Laroia]

Excerpts from Karen Rustad's message of Tue Nov 01 14:26:09 -0400 2011:
> Ahoy Devellers!
> 
> So, as you may or may not have heard, Asheesh and I have been slowly
> working on a redesign of OpenHatch's website over the last two weeks or so.
> This redesign includes integration of some new functionality that we've
> been planning for a while (the buildhelper, IWH handler, etc.), a sleeker
> look and feel, and a very new front page layout.
> 
> It's going slowly but steadily -- harmonizing all of the OpenHatch tags and
> templates so that they reuse UI elements in a sensical way, and documenting
> the changes / new rules in our growing style guide:
> https://openhatch.org/wiki/Front-end_style_guide  We're definitely nowhere
> near releasing the new design for this milestone, though maybe it'll be
> ready by the next one!

Sweet! More documentation! That's really exciting, actually.

> Additionally, here are some paper mockups of what some of the other
> OpenHatch pages might look like:
> http://littlegreenriver.com/stuffs/openhatch-mockups/

Okay, so on the paper mockups:

Events page
-----------

http://littlegreenriver.com/stuffs/openhatch-mockups/events.jpg

I presume this is for events.openhatch.org

I think the calendar would be really far down the page, if we keep
this layout. I guess somehow it'd be nice to put them both above
the fold.

Alternate proposal:

* Keep the top image

* Keep the top text that explains why we do events

* Split the rest of the page into two columns: Left column
  contains our events; right column contains a calendar.

I'm not sure if that actually improves things, but it's my suggestion.

Project search
--------------

http://littlegreenriver.com/stuffs/openhatch-mockups/projects-search.jpg

I think this makes a lot of sense. One thing we need to address is that
users often say things like, "I want to work on a project related to
scientific computing." It'd be good if the UI let you filter by some sort
of tags or on the full-text of the project description.

This could be fixed by replacing the "Name" search field with "Full-text",
likely.

http://littlegreenriver.com/stuffs/openhatch-mockups/project-page.jpg

This looks like I was imagining, I think!

Front page
----------

http://littlegreenriver.com/stuffs/openhatch-mockups/front-page-logged-in-tab-1.jpg

http://littlegreenriver.com/stuffs/openhatch-mockups/front-page-logged-in-tab-2.jpg

Right now, this only directs you to work on projects, either by maintaining
their information within the site (e.g. managing wannahelpers) or finding something
to work on.

I would prefer if this were more similar to the current front_page_demo you
can see at http://rose.makesad.us:9000/ where there are obvious calls-to-action
for the training missions, *and* finding a project, *and* events.

I imagine one common path through the OpenHatch website would be:

* Go to front page
* Create account
* Do some training missions
* Go to project search
* Discover that WordPress is looking for people, even though they have no indexed
  volunteer opportunities, and plan to attend their next weekly meeting

That's all
----------

I think that's it. I can explain more by email or IRC, or answer other specific
questions.

-- Asheesh.