Ask Fedora UX Redesign Updates #2

So taking into consideration most of the suggestions I had obtained during the recent Design FAD at Red Hat, the initial slides of desktop version are also ready. Maybe these are enough to start off with a basic CSS template which we can build upon iteratively while we work on more mockups for other major pages in parallel. Here is the updated mockup:

Just a reminder that the color palette used here is not standard and its indicative. The standard Fedora color palette will be used in the code. The next mockups to be done are for the views for individual question pages, contributor/people page, the ‘ask question’ page and maybe the registration page if required. Most of the other stuff I think would be best done directly in the code. I was anticipating a bigger challenge in streamlining the design but personally I think, as Askbot apes the StackOverflow and similar Q&A websites’ UX to a large extent, the users already are familiar with flow of AskFedora. In any case, later on we can have something like this : http://askubuntu.com/tour – an Ask Fedora Tour page for beginners/new users so that the initial user-inertia reduces.

Contributions and comments welcome.

Ask Fedora UX Redesign Updates #1

The recently concluded Fedora Design FAD 2015 at Red Hat’s Westford office turned out to be quite productive where my idea of redesigning AskFedora user interface gathered some momentum. I met so many faces I had just always known as IRC nicks and above of all, enjoyed Sirko complaining to everyone for not playing Champions of Regnum that well during the gaming nights we had 🙂

So coming down to the point, I was joined by Zack (sadin) and Sarup (banas) for the initial redesign efforts. With their suggestions, I completed some high-fidelity mockups for the mobile and desktop interface intended to be used for Ask Fedora. As suggested by Sarup, we started with Mobile mockups first to get a simplistic view of user requirements. It can then be “stretched” for a desktop interface later on. After some feedback from Sirko, Emily, Mairin, Marie et al. here is a first mockup slide.

To get a context of changes, you will have to visit the current AskFedora instance and observe the changes. Newer slides and the desktop views are on the way. Even though this takes time, its important to have an idea of how you want your interaction with the application to be and FAD gave me a change to do some mockups before we dive into code and CSS. Which reminds me, that Zack and I managed to setup an Openshift repo of an askbot instance one night and would be mostly using it for testing out our design. (I also learnt Openshift awesomeness that night). Most of real usable UI updates will be posted on this repo : https://github.com/fedoradesign/askbot-test

Your comments and suggestions are welcome. More updates on the way.