Matt W's Feedback
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[edit] The Miro Design
I like the new logo, which is vivid, vibrant, and memorable - a vast improvement on the Democracy logo. I like the look of the top menu (when indicating which page you are currently on) and the idea of using more vibrant colour scheme throughout the site to engage the visitor. I like the overall direction of the design, which is clearly attempting to be more exciting than the Democracy design, and in this it largely succeeds. So congratulations on picking a good direction to move toward, and creating some nice graphics to go with it. I like the interior pages.
However, I'm sorry to say that I find the design of the homepage a huge step backward from the democracy site (by far the most troublesome page on the new site). In fact many of the following points are at their worst on the homepage - the interior pages tend not to suffer as badly, if at all in many cases.
[edit] Homepage Problems
My general problem is with focus and visual clutter. There's little focus and a lot of clutter. The page looks confused and messy, mainly because so much colour (and so many of them) has been used in trying to establish focus; but size, proportion, and placement have been mostly side-lined (with the exception of the logo).
Nothing lines up with anything else vertically, and that gets more and more evident as you work your way down the page. The space created by the large logo and adjacent tag-line at the top feels like it is un-intentional space, because the language switcher starts encroaching on it - which would be fine if the left and right edges lined up with anything - but neither do. It'd also be fine if the language switcher wasn't there, as the space would feel intentional. But it is there, so it feels wonky.
The tag line is far less prominent than on Democracy, being both smaller and less contrasting. On Democracy the very first thing anyone reads (thanks to good design) is "Democracy. The only video player you need." BANG - success, you've just told every visitor all they need to know in order to want to continue reading. No such message comes across in the Miro design. After seeing the Miro logo, there is no longer any natural focus item - just blobs of colours everywhere, none aligning with any other. The eye wanders around listlessly and the visitor will start to feel frustrated and/or un-engaged pretty rapidly unless they are already on the page for a specific reason.
If I understand the designers intent correctly, the orange block-out for the 'miro features' is intended to bring focus to the enclosed points, and possibly to stop that section from feeling 'floaty'. It does this, but at the expense of presenting the contents well. By creating a box for it all to sit in, the whole page 'above the fold' becomes cluttered and visually confusing as margins and positions compete with each other and nothing falls in a natural rhythm either inside the box or outside the box. The effect is made worse by the enlarged pixelated grid texture (which also lines up with nothing) used instead of a flat orange. I'd like to see the orange box dropped and the contents re-aligned so that natural flow is restored and the page looks less visually cluttered, in the same manner as the existing democracy page - which, truth be told - is presenting all the same information, but making it look simple and more approachable. The 'boxes within boxes' appearance hampers the attempt to feel simple, and natural focus on the screenshots means the box-out isn't needed anyway.
My second problem is with colour selection, and specifically on the homepage with that orange box-out. 8% of all caucasian men are colour-blind. Most are red/green colour blind - I'm one of them (yes, I am a web designer) - the green button which is intended to be an immediate focus item (to encourage downloads) simply blends into the background for colour-blind users. It may as well not be there as far as impact is concerned. The one on the democracy page is far more noticeable, and also better placed. The eye naturally falls on the largest most contrasting item on a page (the tag-line for Democracy, followed by the screenshots) - on Miro this is the logo followed by the screen-shots. The button would also be more effectively placed exactly next to the area of focus - not offset under some text which is itself next to the main focus.
In short the layout and proportions of most items is more effective and visually preferable on the democracy homepage. Colour is great - but it should not be relied upon to such a large extent, nor so many different colours be used all at once in one area (purple, green, orange, red - in multiple shades!). If everything is uniquely emphasised - nothing is emphasised because nothing is unique! It's like using a mix of caps and bold and italics all over the place. Use too many and none of them get your focus.
The simplicity and natural rhythm of the layout has been lost. I get the distinct impression that the homepage is trying to say too much in too small a space. The font is smaller, the sentences longer, there are more boxes clambering to get higher up the page, there are no less than five coloured box-outs fighting for attention. As an example : "Democracy. The only video player you need." vs "The only video player you need. Free, open, awesome. The best HD experience anywhere." That's seven words as (effectively) one sentence vs fourteen words as three! And despite there being twice the word count the new tagline is less than half the size! Guess which one will be read and which will be skimmed over?
Visually, I love the footer. It's one of the strongest things about the re-design. But, again - there's possibly too much going on, and it's all so small! Are people really going to read through that to find what they want? Experience tells me that dedicated repeat users might, but almost everyone else will not. My tack would be to re-factor the website to present most of this information on separate pages and make the pages look simpler and more friendly by truncating the number of links in the footer.
[edit] Interior pages
Interior pages are mostly very good, I particularly like the orange box-out in these sections (oh yes, irony!) I think that's because the orange section, and the pages in general, have far better focus as they are not trying to do five or six things all at once. Interior pages have a much simpler and far more effective two column layout which really helps. In fact, for most internal pages, the only real criticism I can find is that the text is too small - but that's a site-wide issue. I really rather like the side-menus, and the orange box out, and once the tag-line is dropped that header area looks perfect (clutter free at last!).
[edit] Misc
There are a number of trivial but annoying validation errors on most pages. A simple run through a validator will pick all of these up and make the site feel more professional. Remember to close your link elements, expand all attributes and values (selected="selected"), etc.
"Watch TV, Make Tv, Code" - this was great on Democracy. It targeted the three core users of the service immediately. It asked a user what they wanted and sent them to where to get it. I really miss this in the new design, which forces you to think about where a website might put the stuff you're interested in. I shouldn't need to figure out where it might be filed - talk to me directly!
[edit] Conclusion
I like the new site design for the most part, but my honest opinion is that the homepage didn't need a redesign so much as a fresh lick of paint. The only areas I can say hand-on-heart have been improved are the logo and the footer. I like the idea of where the homepage design wanted to go - more friendly, more vibrant, less cold and technical - but it has not worked in this iteration. More unhappily, I honestly think that this new homepage is much less effective at what it needs to do. It feels like hard work to use, and I predict that while initial positive reactions to the colour will be good, usability and effective communication are worse.
[edit] Suggested new homepage
I was asked to submit any suggestions or ideas I had, and I'm sorry it has taken nearly a week for me to get the spare time to do this. What follows are my suggestions based on my current understanding of the Democracy/Miro project goals, and how the getmiro.com homepage relates to those goals.
The first thing to state is my belief that users are not sold by software features, they are sold on benefits. They like things which solve problems and/or make life easier for them. They don't care how that is achieved, just that the benefit is there. It's only the developer that will care about the actual execution of the functionality, so the homepage would be wasting its time talking about tehnical jargon - that belongs in sub-pages, where the user has already had their interest piqued enough to read it.
[edit] Specifying the homepage
The Democracy/Miro project has a mission objective which is to "keep video open". This is achieved in a number of ways; through the player software itself (which enables any user on any platform to watch any video format), through community sites (which spread the message and community of shared and open video ideas and methodologies), and various 'family' projects such as Broadcast Machine (which allows users to become publishers) and so on.
Groups that stand to benefit from the Miro project include:
- casual users* These are people that are completely ignorant of any of the agendas that Miro want to push, they simply want to watch videos and have somehow found Miro's website (we don't care how yet).
- power users* These are people that are already video savvy, they know what HD is and how to get it. They know about torrents and how to use them. They likely have a sizeable video collection which is sitting in directory structures on their hard-drives.
- publishers* These are people that are into making video and want to find a platform with which they can maximise their exposure, and therefore their viewers.
Each of these groups will benefit from Miro, and the homepage needs to address each of these user-bases. However, trying to do too much on one page only dilutes the message and confuses users, resulting in an ineffective page. Therefor the homepage needs to concentrate on one specific 'sell' to be as effective as possible, preferably a 'sell' that benefits all of the user groups. Through good design and proper presentation it is then a matter of feeding the various 'secondary' benefits to a user who's interest and attention has already been captured.
It is my belief (I can't do any analysis as I have no statistics) that by far the largest of the groups that stand to benefit from Miro will be the casual user. There are likely to be many more casual users in the potential user-base than power users, and there are likely to be many more power users than publishers. Therefor, the homepage ought to cater largely for the casual user. Please remember that any casual user can 'migrate' to a power user if they like the software and community enough, in the same way they may migrate to become a publisher.
The question then becomes, what is most appealing about Miro to a casual user, but is also beneficial to other user groups? I would suggest (again, no evidence to back this up) that what most casual users want from a video player is for it to play their videos. All of them. It is likely that their existing video experience involves using multiple players to watch their videos, which is inconvinient. So, the primary thing to push in order to capture the attention of the most visitors to the site is "Miro is the only video player you need". We then exaplin that Miro can play all video formats, so there is no need to have multiple video players installed. This is a benefit which will interest all groups.
The next benefit I suggest talking about will appeal instantly to power users (the second largest user group), and also to casual users (though they may not have thought about it yet) - Miro organises and manages all of your video in one place, even allowing searches to find any specific videos on your computer. From there we could also mention automatic downloading of new episodes from your favourite internet video series. This should interest people enough to click-through to a new page which explains many more of Miro's benefits.
The last benefit worth mentioning on the homepage is that Miro allows you to publish your own content - become a video producer, and have your work automatically pushed to all your fans as soon as a new show is uploaded.
[edit] Mock-up
I've done a crude mock-up here http://mattwilcox.net/media/offsite/miro/homepage-1.jpg Please note that as I don't have the source art the top three logos have had to become grey-scale. I'd anticipate them being strongly coloured (though it might not work, I'd have to see it to decide - I actually like them grey as it give prominence to the Miro logo and the download button). As an aside - the logos used in the new site are not uniform - some have drop shadows, some don't. They ought to be uniform - as a matter of personal taste, I like the drop shadows.
I have attempted to simplify the page as much as possible. To that end I have removed the RSS logo and PCF Foundation links that were in the header - these are really footer information and don't belong in such a highly prominent area. I've also removed the top menu on the homepage - all of the pages the menu links to ought to be accessible from the homepage as it stands, without the need for a menu-bar.
I have removed the picture of the player software itself and would like to explain why. Firstly - the software doesn't look the same on all platforms (I know, I recently migrated from Ubuntu to Vista). Secondly, and more importantly - miniature screen shots don't add any value to the visitor, but do appear to present an over-load of hard-to-see information. I've replaced the entire section with the three 'big sell' benefits Miro offers to users. And as a nod to anyone that wants to find out more a number of the other features are listed beneath, along with a link to a new page which would explain Miro benefits in greater detail. I should add that I would envisage each of the three 'benefit' areas to be hyperlinks to a page that explains all of Miros benefits in detail (written from a user point of view, with technical detail thrown in - rather than from a software point of view with 'justifications' thrown in).
I have placed the download button all on its own - this is to increase impact and ensure the button is as obvious as possible to find.
I have created a "community strip" which is one of the secondary functions of the homepage which I had not mentioned previously. It keeps returning visitors up-to-date, and it made sense to group these items (news, blog, get involved) together.
I have ditched the other 'promo buttons' as they seemed to add clutter without communicating anything. The job of the existing "Make Internet TV" button is now performed by the third 'benefit' at the top. The shop doesn't seem to be right on the homepage. I would personally place it in the 'get involved' section of the site - I can't imagine new users are going to want to buy from the shop.
I've kept background colours muted so that the really important areas can receive strong colours and thus better focus (e.g, the three top benefits).
