[ocaml-infra] Fwd: Redesigning OCaml.org

Amir Chaudhry amc79 at cam.ac.uk
Fri Aug 9 08:02:09 BST 2013


Oops. Meant to send this to the list. 

Best wishes,
Amir

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Begin forwarded message:

> From: Amir Chaudhry <amc79 at cam.ac.uk>
> Date: 9 August 2013 08:59:43 CEST
> To: Daniel Bünzli <daniel.buenzli at erratique.ch>
> Subject: Re: [ocaml-infra] Redesigning OCaml.org
> 
> 
> --
> sent via mobile
> 
> On 9 Aug 2013, at 02:37, Daniel Bünzli <daniel.buenzli at erratique.ch> wrote:
> 
>> Le vendredi, 9 août 2013 à 00:18, Amir Chaudhry a écrit :
>>> Despite that, I disagree that we need proper text to assess the design. If it doesn't work with lipsum, then adding text will *not* miraculously save it.
>> 
>> 
>> That's not what was said. What was said is "it's not because it works with lipsum that it will work with the content" hence it's better to check the design with the real content, for the reasons you mention yourself.
> 
> There will be content in due course but when that happens, I don't expect it to have a huge impact on the design or layout. I expect only minor tweaks. In other other words, I'm saying "if it works with lipsim it's very likely to work with text." 
> 
> I'm concerned that folks may be reserving their comments until much later in the process, when they will be more difficult to incorporate. 
> 
> 
>>> *Reducing* the density of content and effective use of white-space makes things easier to navigate (there's less to mentally process before making a decision).
>> 
>> 
>> This is wrong in general. It highly depends on how you define "easier to navigate", especially easier for *who*, e.g. recurring visitor vs casual one, etc. Besides reducing the density may imply scrolling and inability of seeing all the options at the same time. But sure, there's a tradeoff and the right balance has to be found. 
> 
> I'm not making any claims about the general case, only the front page. Apologies if that wasn't clear. 
> 
> For the front page specifically, I am thinking of people new to the language who've come to explore. Reducing the number of options reduces the cognitive burden in figuring out where to go next (I experienced this myself on my first visit). I think this is important if we want to encourage more folks to try/use OCaml. It places constraints on the amount of info we put there and I want to *avoid* the case where there are lots of options. Again, I'm talking about the front page specifically. 
> 
> Perhaps we can think about this more concretely. What content have you recently accessed via the front page of ocaml.org? Obviously, the question is for everyone and even though it's not particularly scientific, anecdata has its uses. Last time I checked, the 100 lines of ocaml was the most visited page on the site (after the home page). 
> 
> 
>>> I completely agree that 'popular' is a misnomer. 'Most downloaded' makes way more sense. I did find the list useful when I saw it in OPAM as I had no idea that so many things depend on ocamlfind.
>> 
>> Note that this is not what this number tells you, reasoning with a flawed metric implies flawed inferences. A more reliable way of asserting your proposition is to consult the "required by" field on this page:
>> 
>> http://opam.ocamlpro.com/pkg/ocamlfind.1.3.3.html
> 
> Ok, I was being lazy with my words but it doesn't matter to me. As a new user, I'm telling you that I found the information useful (incidentally, the very next thing I did was to click through to the ocamlfind page, so I got to the same page you cite because it was properly linked). 
> 
> 
>>> ## Aside: Good designs last forever?
>> 
>> Stricly speaking long lasting <> lasts forever, but to exemplify there are many pieces of industrial design made around the middle of the last century that don't look outdated at all. Some of these things even made it in many people's pockets these days, see for example the iphone calculator (braun ET66 calculator) or the ipad clock (swiss railways clock).
> 
> I'm primarily concerned with web design, not industrial design. I think the two are quite different (with hugely different constraints). 
> 
> Re: your specific examples, I'd say the calculator itself does look quite dated and the version on my phone is 'inspired by' rather than a repetition of the original. The iPhone seems to have a different version of the clock, but even then we're now talking about clock-faces. They've been around a long time. 
> 
> In both cases, how those apps look is partly driven by what people expect to see. That's arguably a whole other discussion about skeuomorphism though!
> 
> 
>>> Designs change.
>> Fashionable designs change.  
> 
> I feel that this (and the above) are great discussions for the pub. :)
> 
> Best wishes,
> Amir
> 
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