Re: [Sigia-l] New (beta) IxDA Site

From: Subir Kumedan (alwaysoutbound_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Tue May 29 2007 - 16:04:39 EDT

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Given that the site is in one way representing IxDA, it has to be a solid, if not stellar example of IxD itself. I agree that the site has to sell IxD. I could say that it needs to do for IxD what ZenDesign did for CSS.

With that in mind, I found that the site didn't measure up, even to the basic usability yardstick. Tag clouds, while helpful, are not meant to organizing content in a forum. Then there's the forum design as well - is it a blog or is it a forum. I find it quite odd to see a blog being used as a discussion forum.

Its been mentioned, that there are certain technical limitations that are driving this design. The fact that it has technical limitations should not dictate how the user experience should be. The user experience, in my 15 minutes of poking around is not up to a level, that I would feel comfortable recommending to a colleague or a non interaction designer as a place to learn about IxD.

Another nitpick - on the Discussions page - http://beta.ixda.org/discuss.php - the primary blog post (aka discussion topic) takes up prime real-estate, and all the other discussions are relegated to the sidebar.

I would encourage you to look at a forum tool like Vanilla (http://lussumo.com/community/), as an example of how to do flat, categorized forums. They have, in my opinion, an elegant solution to see all discussions at once, or see them by categories. And their minimalistic design also brings to the fore the most important thing, the discussions themselves. And that is something I am looking forward to, assuming the kinks get worked out.

Cheers,
Subir

Subir Kumedan
Director of Information Architecture
Agency.com
a: 55 Union St
   SF, CA 94111
t: 415.817.3839
e: skumedan_at_agency.com
w: www.agency.com

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