Welcome
…to our very first first wireframe preview! In a few moments, I’m going to dive in and start taking you through some of the improvements that we’ve been working on for the past few months. But before I do that, I want to take a second to let you know that sharing these wireframes is only the first step in a big push to open our process to the community at large.
The whole point of this project is to increase artist and audience engagement. That said, it’s kind of funny that we have been criticized – somewhat fairly – for not doing enough to let people know what we are working on. Starting with this post, that’s all changed. Our new process moving forward will be:
- More open. We will let you know what we want to do so you can let us know what you think.
- More collaborative. Your feedback will help to guide and shape the development of the platform.
- More effective. By working together, we will create the tools you need for your art to succeed.
Okay… let’s go!
Home Page
Home Page – Before
The current home page is going to get a nice revamp. Right now, it features a lot of marketing and help material. But if you want to see actual artist offerings, you need to click on the “Explore” tab at the top.
Figure 1: Click the explore tab to see artist events
Home Page – After
We want to change the home page to put the artist offerings up front and center. Instead of having to click on explore, you start out by seeing all the amazing experiences on the site.
We have dedicated a lot more real estate to featuring offerings, which should drive more traffic to your offering and artist pages. And, we have incorporated a layout that should translate nicely to mobile and tablet based devices when we start to target those down the road.
Figure 2: Home Page Wireframe
You may notice a couple things on this page. First off, at the top, it says “Name”… that’s because we have officially selected the brand for our platform. Some of you may already know what it is, but for the rest, stay tuned! We will be making an announcement this week, and we will be showing you all the cool logo treatments that we have been looking at!
Dash Board
Let’s start off the dashboard discussion by looking at a letter we got on GetSatisfaction:
Hi All -
the design of the "organization dashboard" needs some work.
The current design means I get to the page and see numbers in a big font, and what
I have done in tiny letters... with the only clickable that has a name being the last
thing I worked on.I'm often going in to see something else - not the last thing - even
just wondering "ok, what have I done?"
Currently it takes around 3-4 clicks to get to a draft or list of what I've
completed/am working on - seems like a lot.
Figure 3: Numbers in big font, What I have done in tiny letters
We agreed with everything this letter said, so we changed the organizational dashboard to make it a lot more streamlined.
Org Dashboard Main Page
Below is a draft of the main organizational dash page. Keep in mind this is no work of art yet, but all the functional components are there and you will be able to see our thinking.
Tabs
The first thing we did was to separate things into tabs. The main tabs that are available are:
- Home - This takes you back to your main personal dashboard
- Following – Shows you all of the artists, experiences and collections you are following on the site
- Learn – One stop access to our learning center, where you can get help, ask questions, and learn how things work
- Add Account – This tab lets you add organizations to your account. When you first join, you have an individual account. But in order to create experiences, you need to add organizational account. This is where you do that
- Organizational Tabs - Every organization you have will get its own tab, where we store all the information related to that organization. More below.
Organizational Tabs
We created these so that if you have more than one organization that you are managing, everything related to that organization will be in one place. When you click on an organizational tab, you get the following options:
- Create - Your one stop shop to create new experiences to offer to your audience
- Promote – Go here to promote your existing offerings using email, social networking, and offline methods.
- Measure – Get statistics on your visitors, fans, offerings and more
- Portfolio – Addressing the letter we quoted above, this is where you will be able to see everything you have done
- Profile - View and manage your organizations profile on the site
- Settings - This is where you can adjust the individual options on the site
Create Button
Another complaint on the site was how to create events. There is a giant “Create” button at the top of the current site, but if you click it, it takes you to your dashboard. A lot of peole asked about this, and we agree that the way we have it set up right now is confusing.
We have changed that so that the big create button is still there, but when you click it, it takes you to a page where you actually can create the offering. More on that below.
Promote Button
In addition to creating events, we have made the ability to promote your events much more prominent. The goal here is to make it easy for you to promote your wonderful offerings to your audiences so that you can get more fans, more buzz and more success.
The Latest
This is where you will get all of your notifications related to a single organization. It’s all placed right in the middle, so that as soon as you visit your organization, you can see what is going on. We also have handy stats available in the “At a Glance” section.
Org Dashboard – Create
When you click on the “Create” button, you will come to the create page. The first thing you will see is a list of possible offerings.
You can either create an offering from scratch, or you can select existing offerings and copy them. To help get you started, we will make a bunch of cool templates that you can copy.
But a great feature here is that you can also copy offerings from other artists, or create and share your own with the community. This lets you leverage successful offerings of other artists, and lets you help your fellow artists learn from your success as well.
If you are not sure about what kind of offering you should make, we let you see what other people are doing, and we let you know which offerings are popular at the moment. We also have an extensive learning center that you can use if you need to learn about an offering. We will preview that in another post.
Create Form
Once you select the type of experience you want to create, you will be taken to this form where you can edit and customize it. We have designed this form so that, visually, it looks like what your visitors will see when they come to the site. That means it should be more intuitive and easier for you to use.
Lots of stuff on this page, so Ill just go over some of the features:
- Easily upload images and embed media into the page
- Edit all of the page elements in place, so you know where it will go and how it will look when you publish it
- Add a sponsor to your offering
- One-click ability to add and remove options from the page
- Fully integrated help system makes sure that you can easily create experiences and get help if you need it
More to come…
These are a few of the changes that we are considering based on your feedback and input. Please let us know what you think of them. You can reach us by:
Contacting us on Facebook
Talking to us on Twitter
Giving feedback at GetSatisfaction
Or, if you want to talk to me directly, my email address is rob [-at] aeplatform [-dot] org.
Stay tuned… in the coming days we will:
- Announce Our New Name!!!
- Show you some AWESOME logo treatments
- And release more wireframes
Thank you for reading this. Thank you for creating and appreciating art. And I hope to talk to you soon.
Mahalos,
Rob
Product Manager, AEP
Aug. 24, 2011, Filed under category Announcements
