This semester I founded an organization called the Cornell Open Data Initiative (CODI), which centralizes, documents and supports a number of open data resources for the Cornell (and Ithaca) community. As the goal of the organization is lowering the barriers to entry for utilizing these resources, a marketing site that is simple and approachable, while also building a very strong sense of credibility, is of the utmost importance.
Initial thoughts on user types/use cases that I used to guide my opportunity sketches.
One of the principal challenges of this project has been working with very technical co-founders, who often view design/marketing/business development as "fluff" or "veneer". Based on my intial usecase development, however, I was able to generate a series of opportunity sketches that gave my fellow stakeholders a much clearer sense of what a website could offer CODI, beyond a static pointer at our data.
A round of opportunity sketches presented to my co-founders. In addition to generating potential features for the website, the sketches helped convey that this website isn't simply "marketing veneer", but in fact a product in and of itself.
A sketch of the information architeture for the site.
One large point of contention with the more technical stakeholders was how much emphasis should be placed on the raw data resources (building credibility with developers) versus information about the organization and its mission (building credibility with administrators). I explored several variations of homepage designs to address this, eventually settling on the current design. With a large, mission-oriented tagline, it makes the intention behind the organization clear, but also highlights a strong, data-centric CTA. Further down the page is some additional information about the organization itself.
A range of potential homepage layouts, exploring differnet balances between a focus on the data and a focus on information about the organization.
The current homepage layout, subject to its perfformance in user testing.
Another key design challenge was creating a "get involved" page to attract and motivate potential contributors. While the organization has generated lots of interest, rallying and organizing efforts to contribute to the project has been a logistical mess. This page aims to make it easier by automatically pulling in issues from GitHub and sorting them by skillset/interst.
Variations on the "get involved" page.
The final layout for the "get involved" page, which will pull issues and tags directly from GitHub in order to present them in a friendlier way to potential contributors who may not be as comfortable with DVCS yet.
The site isn't live yet (I'm currently in the process of coding it up), but you can view the clickable prototype.
