Wednesday, January 25, 2006

New developments. I was looking through my folders today and as you can imagine, I have a lot of work in there that has simply never been used. Whenever I am involved in doing design for one of our sites, it's very rare for me to just go away, make a design and then come back with a 100% finalized site. Generally speaking the preliminary work will revolve around the specific needs of the site. Those needs are usually given some kind of heirarchy, which is factored into the design. Initially, all of the work relates to the actual layout (this includes what elements are viewed on the page and how they are positioned and accessed). Obviously that's the most important part of any design and that's the thing we focus on first. In the past, I would make some kind of raw layout and we'd discuss it or we'd begin building it and make changes as we work through the project. But in more recent times, Adam has taken the time to build what I call a "Site Skeleton", which makes my work significantly more effective. Adam's Site Skeleton will be nothing but a blank page full of text, plain HTML boxes and links. That's it. The idea there is simply for Adam to show me visually what kind of data the site needs to display and generally how it should be arranged. Using that as a basis for any design work means that we're all on the same page from day one. It's usually after that process (and sometimes during it) that an actual aesthetic or art design emerges. In some ways that is the toughest part for me; I am generally very good at developing a functional layout, but finalizing the art aspects is always tough for me, because those things can be so subjective. Although there are certain rules involving the use of colour and imagery, the fact remains that everyone has different tastes and we have to try to be aware of what our visitors may like. Generally speaking, I will actually design several entire concept sites before we ever zero in on a final design. The development of one concept design might take me a week or two of solid work - hours of experimentation are involved in each concept (including drawing/re-drawing, shifting elements around and in many cases, deleting the entire thing after five hours and starting again). Usually we may go through two or three very different concepts before we really decide on something that we'll use in the end. Quite often, Adam and Justin are happy with the first concept and if they aren't, it's usually only minimal changes that they require. In most cases I am the one who isn't happy and wants to develop multiple concepts before actual development begins. In one way I'm sure that can sometimes be frustrating for them, but I like to think that it helps us formulate something better for the end result. I thought I'd take a little time to show you the work that has already gone into the new myOtaku site, before full development has even commenced. myOtaku ReDefined It should be noted that this is a static image and normally, it would reach the top of the page and be centered (that is, if it were a functioning web site). This is the very earliest work that was done on myOtaku by me. I was not involved with the development of v1 and my involvement with v2 primarily related to testing and consultation/supervision. So my heaviest work will probably be on the third version, where I have been working on design and features from the beginning. Adam, Justin and I actually worked very closely on sorting out features/upgrades and so on for the new site and it'll be fun for that to continue. Anyway, as I said, this design is my first first attempt to develop a conceptual design for myOtaku. As you can see, in terms of layout and general details, this design is quite similar to theOtaku.com. Originally we had planned to launch myOtaku ReDefined at the same time as theOtaku, but we felt that it would be better to focus on one thing at a time, so as not to hurt the quality of either site. theOtaku.com's current design is far more conservative than what you can see here, which is very deliberate. With myOtaku, I was actually given more free reign to introduce elements that made it a little more exciting and fun to work on. Apart from the colour scheme that you can see here, you may also notice how the links on the left menu have been significantly changed and re-worded. I was (and am) unhappy with the overly-confusing nature of the links we currently use and so this was my first attempt to divide things up and group things in a more easy-to-understand way. As you can see here, we were also planning to introduce different colour schemes for the backroom. I had planned to do about five of them, each named after a different fruit. None of that would impact the front end design (ie: your own public page), but it would allow you to choose what scheme you like most for your own backroom. Of course, as a conceptual design this is still incomplete. There are large gaps underneath the flavour selector and there's a lot of white space there - we had several ideas about what would be included there, but I can't tell you about that right now. I can only say that, yes, we did have plans for all of that space. myOtaku 3.0 (incl. Premium) This design is far more recent. We were developing this design up until the last couple of months of 2004. With this design, we had gone beyond raw conceptual work and had actually begun construction. As you can see, this design is noteably different from anything we have done before. Not only is it more bold than any site we have online at the moment, but the actual layout is completely unrelated to theOtaku.com or any other site in the network. This is primarily because we wanted myOtaku to become the new center of the network; the access point through which all other aspects of the network would be found. We also recognized that myOtaku is currently completely devoid of any imagery, other than the logo in the top-left corner. The idea here was to dramatically enhance the site through the use of imagery, while simultaneously eliminating our own imagery from members' public pages (and this is something we still plan to do - our new myOtaku will not carry an image-based logo anywhere on your own page, so all of the images will be your own). Once again, the plan here was to introduce different backroom flavours. This one is obviously Lime and at least for a while, we were going to go with this as the default scheme. But I was simultaneously working on a red version and a greyscale version as well. This design would also have been more elaborate in the sense that it'd have featured rollover buttons and would rely more heavily on the use of imagery, though obviously we were careful to keep the imagery fairly subtle (rather than have a billion pictures and giant icons, we wanted to focus on imagery used for small details, like buttons and soft gradients and so on). This design also shows the very first introduction of the Premium service, by way of a large introductory link at the top. Clicking that link would take you to a page with details on the service. Clearly, we wanted to make Premium the most important feature of the page, though we'd obviously still allow free membership. In addition, I was trying to go with a visual theme that would suit a very large community. The "anonymous user" on the front page is male and we were going to have an anonymous female image for the backroom. By hiding the characters' eyes and melding their colours with the rest of the design, I was hoping to only hint at the idea that they were anonymous members, rather than try to actually put a real human face on the site (which would obviously be difficult with such a big community). One of the things that tends to hold me back from updating everything more regularly is not only my own lack of time, but also the lack of programming assistance. Justin is currently our sole programmer (other than the rare times when we outsource work), but obviously Justin is only one guy and he also has commitments outside the network. As a result - and considering the large projects that he has to primarily work on - it's very difficult to get large amounts of his time for certain things (OB for example). However, I am constantly involved in design and planning work for OB, even in the absence of my star programmer. Here is an example of a new design that I was working on for OtakuBoards a little while ago. I'm really quite happy with this design (sans the little logo experiment). You can see a bit of the upper-left navigation area in that image. My plan was to put a little icon of OtakuBot just above the speech bubble. The combination of the new banner and the updated welcome area would give the site a significantly cleaner look, I feel. The current format we have for the top-left area does its job, but it isn't my ideal choice. But again, as a designer and not a programmer, I often have to settle for the closest I can get to my actual vision. Of course, it would be easy enough for me to simply replace the banner and then go and redo all the images (though it would certainly be time-consuming), but there are certain changes that I just can't do. The speech bubble with the Private Message text is just one small example of a visual update that requires more than mere images. Due to the fact that a lot of my design work relies on core code changes, it is very difficult for me to always add or change what I want. But as you can see by what I've shown you here today, I am always thinking about the future and I am always playing with new ideas for existing sites. I am comfortable showing you these things because none of them (with the possible exception of the OB image) will ever be used. I currently have an early conceptual design for myOtaku 3.0 which is very different to anything I've shown you here. It is far more user-friendly and the visual design is far more appealing to a wide variety of ages (so it isn't nearly as polarizing in terms of colour and so on). I don't think I will have the chance to update again before I leave, so I thought I'd give you something a little meatier in this update. ~_^ Deb: I posted a response in my own comment box but you may not have seen it. So I will just paste it here: The problem is that I was only told not to talk to ghosts and no reason was given. Once we'd passed that quest, how am I to know that I can't take another one myself? None of that was explained and it could have been done pretty easily. All someone had to do was say "if you accept any quests here, enemies will spawn, so only take quests that the group agrees to". Pretty easy. ^_^ Alexus: Same as with Deb: As I pointed out on AIM, I am aware that the comments from the other player were not condescending. I didn't make any reference to them being such in my blog. What I said was that the best way to deal with that situation would have been to forewarn me, rather than to overreact afterwards as if I should have known (even though I'd made it clear that I'd never been there before). I am pretty capable of understanding how it all works, so all I needed was a one-sentence warning at the start. lol Moreover, I tend to agree with what you're saying in general about "the best way to learn it is to do it". But again, I'm not arguing against that at all. That's just logical. I'm simply pointing out that the reaction in this situation was inappropriate and frustrating, given the lack of reasonable forewarning. That's all. Of course, you never really get it 'till you do it. But at the same time, I don't think anyone has the right to be frustrated or annoyed at me taking a quest if I've had no real warning about it. It wouldn't even be an issue at all if that hadn't happened. It wasn't the way I learned that was the problem; it was the reaction that was inappropriate. In regard to the last part of your comment, as I said, none of that really relates to the guild. There are more hardcore players and there are more casual players. I have nothing against the more serious Guild Wars players - they have the time and energy to devote to the game and they enjoy the finer details. And that's 100% fine. The only time I object is when that is used to drive a wedge between the hardcore and the casual. As I stressed, this is not something which happens in QKT and I am glad about that. But I do see it happening in other circumstances and my most recent experience was a very slight example of it. It was simply a matter of that event triggering a general thought about the game (and some relief that QKT is an exception to what is often a rule in many online games). CosmicSailor: Unfortunately my little brother has no such moral standards, lol. Actually, no, I have to say...he's a very good kid usually. But he's incredibly selfish. He's already claimed several thousand dollars worth of my audio equipment, simply because he knows I probably won't be moving it up to Brisbane anytime soon. So, by default, he assumes it becomes his. As for being lighthearted...well, I think in person, I'm pretty disarming. But sometimes things don't come across in text on the 'net as you are thinking them in your head (or as you'd say them in person). That can sometimes make things difficult. In regard to OB, I'm afraid that sometimes technical issues like that crop up. I don't think it's any deliberate oversight by us, it's a problem either with the software or with how your computer/browser handles the software. I'm somewhat surprised that you promised never to return though...that does seem overly serious for what is basically just an Internet message board. I'd hate to think that technical errors were forcing people away forever, lol. But having said that, if you can't access it, then that point kind of becomes moot anyway. I hope that the new version will fix some of these problems, but I really have no control over the fundamentals of Virtual Bulletin. I suppose that if you are being paid to do a hobby, it then becomes more of a job than a hobby. That does not necessarily make it any less rewarding though; enjoying your work is key to success in most cases. I'd be interested to hear about your sense of friendship. Usually I will treat people as they treat me, although even when I've been abused beyond belief on the 'net, I've never really responded the same way in return. It's really not in my nature to get down to that level and really aggressively abuse someone. I might complain about it or point out why I'm annoyed with their behavior, but that's about it really.

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