Anybody Care to Review My Re-Design

[Simon Thomas]

I've mentioned in other forum posts that I've been redesigning my blog, and I've received some great advice from some community members here. But today, about an hour ago in fact, the time came to release the new design into the wild.

We discussed the ideas of doing community reviews previously, so I thought I'd volunteer to be the first. Take a look at the new design at http://www.oakinnovations.co.uk/blog/ and for a bit of background read my post describing my goals.

If you have any comments to make, please do. It would be greatly appreciated. You can comment on my blog directly (on the post linked above), on your own blog or here. But please, if you do post your review to your own blog, please leave a message here so we can all read it.

I look forward to hearing from you.

[Christine Martell]

Hi Simon,
You've been doing some great work on this. I also appreciated reading your post on what your goals were, and how you went about thinking through the process. I've never built a theme, but someday would like to learn more about how, so I'm not just limited to hacking other themes.

I decided to do a screencast while looking at your blog, since you are a usability guy, I thought it might be helpful to you. I just read the post then clicked over to the homepage and started recording, so you are getting an unedited look at my response.

Did I mention this is my second screencast with Camtasia?....Oh yea, it will be obvious from the chipmunk voices that regularly pop up. Anyone know what I am doing wrong?

Anyway, not very compelling video, but I hope it will be useful to you.
SimonBlog

[Simon Thomas]

That's fantastic Christine! Thanks for doing that, it really helps to see it the way you are.

A couple of things I noticed right off the bat, the search field is much larger on your view than it is on mine, you also have a different font on the navigation bar. You're also spot on about the headline changing size. This is an SEO trick I picked up (in case you're interested, they say to use the top level header [h1] for the blog name on the home page, and the post title on a post page) which then accidentally presented a visual difference, which it wasn't supposed to. The difference is far more pronounced on your screen than it is on mine. I also found myself looking for a comments button at the bottom of the post on the main page, even though I knew there wasn't one. So that's clearly something that needs looking at.

It's also interesting that you say you didn't find the About and Contact links until right at the very end. They are in the main navigation bar. I guess that needs they're not quite prominent enough.

I think you did a great job with the screencast, it's much appreciated and I'll be making some revisions over the next week or so. I'm sure the chipmunk/Darth Vader bits will iron themselves out! They sound like compression problems.

[Christine Martell]

Well, it's always a shock to me to see things on Windows. Never looks as good as on the Mac. I don't know enough about this computer to know how it is set up, to know if it's anything out of the norm (it's a computer I use at home set up by my husband).

With the About and Contact.....I bet that's just because I was looking at the visual design of the nav bar since we had talked about it before....so I didn't even read it :) I can be SO visual, and certainly out of the 'norm', so I wouldn't worry about that unless you see it again. You got my spontaneous nonthinking responses, which I know can be helpful, so I didn't go back over them to do any 'fixing'.

[Simon Thomas]

I've made some tweaks based on your review Christine. Thanks.

[Cammy Bean]

Christine,

What a fabulous way to do a review! I watched the whole thing...and Simon, it looks like you've done some great things with her feedback.

[viovio]

I like it. I never saw the old one, but I like this one.
The color is a little too greenish for me, but I understand that it has to do with the brand. I know nothing about blogging design (as you may realize from looking at my own blog) but I can tell that this one looks professional.
I specially liked the explanation under the suscription topic (at the bottom). There are many people that still don't understand the concept of "feeds" and this really helps.

[bmtrnavsky]

Very nice... easy to navigate! I like it a lot!

[Mike Ryder]

I think you made great use of photos. My only suggestion for the text is just a personal preference on word choice. When you start the paragraphs with "Firstly" and "Secondly," it distracts me from the message of the rest of the paragraph. Part of it is that I would prefer "First" and "Second" if you are going to stay with that format, but ultimately, I think the writing would feel a bit more professional if the paragraphs didn't start with First or Second and just got right into the substance. I think my feeling on that structure comes from how I was taught to write a paper in Elementary School. I was taught to make the thesis statement and then do 3 subpoints that would undoubtedly all start with First, Second, and Third. It's just my opinion. If you don't agree with it, feel free to ignore it.