For anyone thats interested, I decided to donate time to Open Home Pro. Here's a quick outline of what I looked at:
- Quick logo design and colour palette to establish a more credible brand
- Added related illustration to help sell the idea
- Moved the call to action up and made it more visible (download button)
- Restructured the content so the user understands why the app could be use before diving into more detail with the video
The freelance design business is great right now, sometimes I get work on interesting projects, but rarely in the startup world. Thats probably the most interesting space to be doing UX right now hence the post.
Getting great content that is a true refection of sentiment is going to be a challenge. We do have a few ideas on how to make it tough to game, but I'm quite happy to have that problem.
Mobile is an interesting space for this content type. I can imagine a user getting relevant lists depending on their location. Actually location and localised content is going to be a big challenge for us - we can see patterns developing where users are creating lots of location specific content that may not be relevant to you.
Fair enough. That is one of the things we plan on doing soon enough, we have a list of features to get through but it will get ticked off at some point.
What is it?
List Gorilla is a place to find and create lists of all the things you care about. The items in each list are sorted and curated by you and the community. Whether you are into food, science, cinema or something more obscure, make a list about whatever interests you and watch how it evolves.
Feedback
Any feedback on the idea, execution and performance is much appreciated. We have some ideas about where we would like to take this idea but I'm also very curious to hear yours. You can also email me directly at [email protected]
I agree, you have some of the most important things right. It communicates very efficiently and probably works well for your market. One thing to be careful about is it does look very generic, that makes you less memorable.
Curating content in one place is going to be compelling, that's definably going to be a big part of this. Conceptually that's a big change from traditional news where a journalist publishes a piece and ends the conversation while things are still unfolding. Its the equivalent to walking out the room while you are in the middle of a conversation with someone.
When I say we will compete with NYT/CNN I mean that those are the users we hope to attract, I am not saying we will use that model. User generated content and content aggregation both need to be there to make a compelling experience.
I don't want to replicate anything that has been done previously, I think we are all trying to figure this out and its going to be an interesting ride.
And thanks for the insightful comments, there are some really smart motivated people here.
I can imagine when I talk about this stuff you are thinking digg, reddit etc. But its quite different to that.
The biggest difference is this is a competitor to traditional news (New York Times, CNN) and not digg and reddit.
I believe we are going to share some of the mechanics that drive digg, but where this is very different is when you view story it is not a link to someone else's content - the content lives within the context of the site.
Also I will say that the idea is not fully formed yet and needs some more thought. The biggest problem is how the content gets curated and how it gets seeded.
Find someone that cares about UX... and actually knows what that is. Its also important to for the designer to understand what it is you are tying to communicate and what the mechanics of the idea are. What is it that makes users come back? Who are you focussing on?
I guess I am not really answering you question :) But I find crowd sourced design very hit and miss. You don't get any real thinking, you also don't get any solid UE stuff... and that's where it counts. let me know if you need a hand.
[email protected]
- Quick logo design and colour palette to establish a more credible brand - Added related illustration to help sell the idea - Moved the call to action up and made it more visible (download button) - Restructured the content so the user understands why the app could be use before diving into more detail with the video
You can find the mockup here: http://www.jasonstrachan.com/clients/openhomepro/
Thanks, Jason