design

Two OpenSourcery site updates

by Thomas King
October 24, 2008

We're excited to roll out refactors of two sites OpenSourcery had the pleasure of working on in the past. Our clients had very different reasons for reexamining their content and design, but we think both resulted in tangible improvements.

The first redesign, for Fuel, took place because the film has been picked up for broader release. We're very excited for the team over there, and we wish them the best. Check out the website to learn more about times and locations. They've changed the title, revamped the site, added more multimedia, and generally created a more robust user experience.

The second redesign we've rolled out this week comes from Wellgram, which allows users to create email or text message reminders that help them achieve goals, improve self-control, remember important tasks, etc. Most importantly, you can schedule receipt of reminders to keep you on track. Write your own Wellgram here. Our work with Wellgram is another example of an Agile project gone right.

We urge you to check out both sites take advantage of the tools they've made available.

Thank you for reading.

Linux Foundtaion selects OpenSourcery for Video Site

by Thomas King
October 10, 2008

The Linux Foundation, which provides value to thousands of users every day, has decided to highlight the community's creative spirit by hosting a video contest. Of course, they needed the right tools to get the job done, so they asked OpenSourcery to design and develop a website for their user-generated videos and their internally produced videos.

We encourage you to visit their current video gallery, which is home to dozens of keynote addresses, panel discussions, and informative interviews. It's a wealth of information that already generates a lot of interest. We're very excited to redesign the site so it's easier for visitors to intelligently search for the content they need, explore related videos, and even give back to the community. It's the kind of work our user interface and informtion architecture lead, Randall Hansen, loves to take on.

OpenSourcery's Drupal developers will update the Video Upload module we created for Drupal 5, and make it available in Drupal 6. It's one of Jonathan Hedstrom's contributions, which you can learn more about here or read about in his blog. Since our team is full of Linux devotees, this project is like a dream come true. Keep your eyes out of the new site, which should be up and running before the holidays.

Rebuilding the public site, pt. 2

by Thomas King
September 26, 2008

Last week I talked about the driving forces behind the redesign and redevelopment of OpenSourcery's public site. Those forces boil down to: upgrading from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, improving the information architecture, and making it easier to administer content on the site without breaking the look and feel.

But today I want to cover the challenges of parsing site re-design into a three-part cycle: content creation, shaping content into a coherent design, and development. Repeat.

Content, design, development. We're discovering that this cycle is the most efficient way for us to move forward. As with any internal project, we could easily pull a hundred ideas out of the sky and try to implement them willy-nilly, but the time and resource constraints force us to be intelligently iterative. In other words, every minute of time devoted to the project needs to address the most pressing needs, and it needs to create immediate value. Sounds easy enough, right?

To me, creating copy in advance of design seemed like writing the lyrics to a song and passing them along to the composer so he or she could construct a melody around the words. At first I found it extremely difficult. I couldn't envision my words floating in the ether; I had to think of how they would look on the page, how they would be framed, etc. I wanted so badly to know the design before I wrote the copy so that I could simply drop my text into a beautiful box and call it a day.

But the mere act of releasing myself from the shackles of envisioning everything at once has provided relief. It refocuses the act of writing on the rhetorical aspects: what is the audience, what message are you trying to convey, how can you increase efficiency?

The three-part development cycle we've devised stands on its merits. My analysis is that both efficiency and focus increase as a result of parsing the huge task of internal site creation into manageable parts, and then handing those parts to the individuals best suited to deliver value.

Next week I'll share observations from the perspective of a marketing director acting as client in the office at which he is employed. I promise fireworks.

Thank you for reading.