Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Add more illustration to Alaveteli / WhatDoTheyKnow #6586

Closed
garethrees opened this issue Oct 18, 2021 · 14 comments
Closed

Add more illustration to Alaveteli / WhatDoTheyKnow #6586

garethrees opened this issue Oct 18, 2021 · 14 comments
Labels
f:framework improvement Improves existing functionality (UI tweaks, refactoring, performance, etc) t:design x:uk

Comments

@garethrees
Copy link
Member

At the 2021 retreat I had a conversation with Catherine where she mentioned (paraphrasing) "Trust = Competence + Warmth".

This made me think about this with respect to WDTK. We're high on competence, but less so on warmth. Adding illustration elements could re-address that balance. What do I mean by this?

At the most basic level, here's a little notice that @zarino (I think!) doodled while on breakfast duty. It's so much more human with the little drawing.

plates

We've got a bit of this, but it's largely around the Pro marketing pages.

Screenshot 2021-10-18 at 13 29 50

I also came across a holiday cottage site with context-specific landing pages ("by the beach", "near a pub", "with a hot tub", "with a log fire"):

illustrations

I could imagine something similar for our help pages and other topic-based landing pages (mysociety/whatdotheyknow-theme#442).

I think we could also use small illustrations on the home page, during the request flow, and to pull more case studies into the site (https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli-project/issues/143).

@garethrees garethrees added x:uk t:design improvement Improves existing functionality (UI tweaks, refactoring, performance, etc) f:framework labels Oct 18, 2021
@zarino
Copy link
Member

zarino commented Oct 18, 2021

Yes, the sticky note was mine! ;-) My thought process was: "People will be looking for a stack of plates, I should show them a picture of a stack of plates, because they’ll spot the picture way before they spot the word PLATES."

Illustrations do add character to a design, and I think they work really well on the WDTK Pro pages.

The downsides, of course, are that they take time and effort to create, and maintaining a consistent style between illustrations (especially produced at different times, by different illustrators) can be a challenge.

@RichardTaylor
Copy link

There is the related proposal to add public body logos #6172

Also there is the idea of bringing in maps showing the area covered by a public body brings in more imagery mysociety/whatdotheyknow-theme#818

We could encourage the use of organisational accounts (with organisational logos as profile images) #3056

What about header images for users and public bodies? Social media pages generally let you have both a profile image/avatar and a header image.

There are lots of images released via WhatDoTheyKnow - how can we do more to highlight those? https://www.google.com/search?q=site:whatdotheyknow.com&source=lnms&tbm=isch (It might be nice to separate photos, maps, images of text). Interestingly Google pulls often pulls out the front cover of a released PDF, we too could show an icon based on the first page of a linked PDF (aimed at showing the cover page of a report), eg.

Screenshot 2021-10-21 at 13 53 53

instead of

Screenshot 2021-10-21 at 13 53 33

@RichardTaylor
Copy link

WhatDoTheyKnow user feedback on the look of the site:

In the days I last used it you had a nicely composed witty photo of a shocked respectable-looking couple. I am sorry to see you have ditched it in favour of Microsoft-style blocked text. Not a good look. Despite Mr Blair's recantation of his sole positive achievement in office, the photo subtly reinforced the message that FoI is not some sort of extremist programme undermining good governance (the civil service line of attack) but is at the heart of true democracy and available for all of us, and may be needed even by the well-heeled as well as the downtrodden. That message is still needed, as I suspect FoI doesn't always have particularly strong friends in the current governing party.

I hope the abandonment was not due to whingeing from the ultra-woke brigade, whose many and varied objections to life as we know it now extend to people clapping at concerts.

Image in question from the old WhatDoTheyKnow header:

Screenshot 2021-11-16 at 16 55 30

On being told the redesign was not a result of outside pressure, but just modernisation:

Ah yes, the cult of modernity. Bless.

But the 'Microsoft look' unintentionally sends out non-verbal signals, of the "We know best, and you'll do things our way" variety. It's chalk and cheese. You are the goodies. You don't dictate to your users in a micromanaging way. (I did get the gentlest of warnings hinting that my FoI request was getting a bit long - a nice touch there). Whereas Microsoft is an aloof corporate that infantilises its users (remember "Clippy", or read the snarky support pages). We really don't need a 10 point or 8 point gap between every line we type even though MS says we do, or illiterate grammar suggestions or idiotic auto-reformatting. I have never forgiven MS for arrogantly setting itself as the user's default page without please-may-I. It hates its own customers so much that that it once portrayed them as dinosaurs in a lengthy advertising campaign.

Royal Blue masthead and blocks of monologue text? Uncomfortable associations. How about a golden colour scheme, seeing as you're letting the sunshine in, and a font that doesn't look like MS or TfL? Georgia and Verdana are not bad; lots of other possibilities. Something to ponder at the next house style meeting perhaps.

@RichardTaylor
Copy link

Showing response emails in HTML format (#4003) would bring lots more styling and illustration to the sites. Many public bodies include header and footer images - perhaps to try and make responses look as if they're on headed paper.

@RichardTaylor
Copy link

Is adding a photo to a body page worth doing?

eg.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/house_of_commons

Screenshot 2022-07-13 at 14 40 07

@RichardTaylor
Copy link

Banner style images appear to look better eg.
Screenshot 2022-07-13 at 17 35 15

@mdeuk
Copy link
Collaborator

mdeuk commented Jul 13, 2022

For what it’s worth, I think both examples look fine - logos themselves will probably look better in the box on the right.

We do, of course, need to be mindful of performance and usability before introducing too many elements here; but the experiment is certainly worth doing.

We’ve done a/b testing on elements in request pages before, I wonder if there is some value in doing something similar here?

@garethrees
Copy link
Member Author

+1, they look great and nice to experiment, but share same concerns around performance/usability and pushing our unique content of value (archive of requests + make new request CTA) further down the page.

Can do some pretty fancy CSS these days so might be able to make these more of a background banner.

@FOIMonkey
Copy link
Collaborator

I think the banner style pages look amazing and the images enhance the pages, rather than detracting from anything.
The pages without them now look quite dull in comparison.

2022-07-14 (7)
image

@garethrees
Copy link
Member Author

Discussion about images on body notes extracted to #7160.

@garethrees
Copy link
Member Author

Research for Action's recent Democratising Local Governance report has some great vibes. Nice and simple, but adds a bit of feeling.

@garethrees
Copy link
Member Author

Really effective example from FDS' about page.

fds-illustration

I don't even need to translate this to instantly get the vibe of:

  • Something to do with computers and documents
  • Shouting about them / campaigning / people power
  • Asking questions and piecing together the puzzle through the documents
  • Money and justice

@garethrees
Copy link
Member Author

This is desirable, but unlikely to be worked on in the next 12 months so closing for now.

@garethrees garethrees closed this as not planned Won't fix, can't repro, duplicate, stale Nov 22, 2024
@garethrees
Copy link
Member Author

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
f:framework improvement Improves existing functionality (UI tweaks, refactoring, performance, etc) t:design x:uk
Projects
None yet
Development

No branches or pull requests

5 participants