Blog Design and Interface

As everybody has already noticed, I've been making a lot of edits to the design of the blog since last wednesday. Now I think I have almost everything ready so here you have a post on the entire process I went through in order to arrive to this solution.

As with every web project, I started off (even before thinking about anything else) trying to structure the information into different levels (according to usability and interface, this means the amount of times that the user has to click in order to arrive to the information that he or she is interested in).

With this in mind I created a framework or map of the Blog, dividing the information into the different levels wich I thought were important.

Now I'll try to explain myself.

For starters, a blog is not like an actual webpage so the homepage has already "embedded" with lots of information that you wouldn't normally see in a site (meaning an introductory page). That is why on the first level of information we have 4 menu buttons. Which would translate as the 4 main subjects of the blog.

For this menu buttons I tried to use names wich are as closer to the content of the page as possible to eliminate any kind of confusion. That is why the page posts, is called posts and not home (I believe that blogs have no homepage).

If you analyze the posts page, you'll see all of the sub-menus come into scene.

In order to make access to information easier, I took advantage of the sidebar. This way the information is always available independent from where you are inside the blog (it doesn't matter if the user is in the page with all the posts or inside an specific url within the blog, the access to these assets will be always available). In terms of usability this is an advantage, and prevents the end user (wether is us or somebody else) of digging into subsequent menus in order to find the information that he/she may find useful.

Apart from including blogger default gadgets I also "embedded" external applications for the same reason, you don't need to create new pages in order to have this information available, since it will always stay on the sidebar.

There are a lot of ways in which the end user can find information that is useful. I added 3 gadgets for that purpose, the search bar, the blog archive, and the labels (tags). I did this in order to once again facilitate the access to specific themes/information/subjects to the end user.

Right now, I just added this few gadgets, applications, and external links; but we have to keep in mind that this is an ongoing process and this sub-menu can always change. One of the things that comes into my mind is that we can add a photo gallery, or even a video log after we return from the trips, but that is for us to agree on it and see if we find it useful.

You'll also see that I've put 2 about buttons, in my opinion I think that it is important to differentiate what is social business from the actual purpose of this blog (although they are both related, they are still different concepts).

One thing that I eliminated was the contributors gadget. I transformed it into a page (menu item) of its own, since we are already preparing a profile for each one of us, this page could contain that same profile, including a picture of each one as well as a link to our different webpages (in case we have one). This will add up, and it's a resource for anyone that wants to investigate more about the authors and the blog itself.

The colors are chosen following the palette that we have been using so far (red, gray and dark gray). The only thing that I changed was the typography of the post titles to make them stand out a little bit more. Once again, this is subject to modification, we have to discuss and agree in which colors best identify us as a group or as a course.

One thing that is very important is that we ALL have to agree on the visual aspect of the blog to make it consistent. How are we going to put the images; always on top? Always on the bottom? Are they going to go all toghether? What font size should we use for sub-titles?. All of these questions have to be taken into account to make our blog visually consistent. You'll see that I have re-"designed" some of the posts in order for everything to look more or less the same, but we should try to embed this way of thinking and apply it from the beginning of the process.

Another thing is, how are we going to do the labeling? From my experience I think is better to tag word by word instead of using frases or compound words such as social bussiness. This also will give us a very clear visual reference of what are the words (concepts) that we are tagging more (therefore writing more about) when we see the Tag Cloud.

Once again, all of these questions are subject to change, I'll wait for your comments, critiques, etc. In what is it that you think we can do in order to improve the blog not only design wise but also the way we use it...

Hope that I explained myself (I'm not really good at writing)

about cooperation _ week two

A team consists of…

… a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and [a common] approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. (J. Katzenbach & D.Smith)

The first thing we pointed during last week class was that, even if we work as a group pursuing the same goal and sharing similar interests, we also are different and independent human beings, with various way of thinking and approaching work and projects.

From this perspective becomes really clear the reason of having such a platform as a blog; a choral reality in witch every one of us can be considered an unique voice that can share ideas, thoughts, news or complains.

The idea of using on on-line platform as a new interaction tool between us students and teachers it’s real interesting, and, speaking of Design I think that interaction can be considered a core issue, that's why we have to figure out the best way of using these new tools we are discovering.

In our particular situation we are trying to face an on-line interaction more than an off-line one for the first time.

I think that we are facing a new way of collaborating that potentially can give us competitive skills in the world of social business.

Learning to project and to use properly a collaborative environment could give us the chance to start a way better and faster collaboration between us thanks to such tools as videos, voice messaging (considered into the sphere of the synchronous communication ) or emails and shared files ( considered into the sphere of the asynchronous communication ), and could also help us in the achievement of an higher productivity in terms of final results.

Finally we don't have to forget the power that an on-line platform can have; It can be not only about us as studets or teachers, but also a point of interest for every other person interested in social business or design.

How to get the most out of your RSS Feeds and FeedBurner?

For those who don't know what a RSS Feed is, you should first watch this short video.



Perfect, now that everyone knows what we're talking about, let's get down to blogging business.

Now a days, every blog theme or template by default ensures the author his posts will reach out some readers such as Google Reader via RSS or ATOM feeds. However if you feel your voice and interests should be read by more people, you might consider using other free services like (Google) FeedBurner enabling features that can be added to your blog rss feed and subscription as well as tracking traffic received via feed.

Optimizing, redirecting and personalizing your feeds

Title/Description. First step should be personalizing your FeedBurner account by going to the feature called Title/Description burner (under "Optimize" tab) that can be used to change the default title of your feed. Use this to add the punch line or blog description to make your feed more attractive.

Full Feed. Second step would be publishing full feeds, switching from partial feed to full feed. People don't like having to do an extra click just to read the entire article. Here's an interesting experiment on this matter.

FeedFlare is another feature of FeedBurner that helps you to add your social sharing and bookmarking links on the footer of your RSS posts. This way readers can share your posts on their social networks just by clicking on the social bookmarks.

Smartfeed makes your feeds accessible not only from browsers, but also from mobile phones, various gadgets and widgets. With SmartFeed you don’t need to bother about compatibility of your feeds across different platforms, Feedburner will take care of it for you. To activate it: “Activate” button on the SmartFeed service page. You can find SmartFeed options page following this path: “Optimize/Services/SmartFeed”.

Socialize helps distribute your feed via social networks, with the first network being Twitter. If you use Blogger, you can already connect your feed to Buzz via the "Connected Sites" link in Buzz.

Offer email subscriptions. Feedburner will automatically send out regular emails to your email subscribers whenever new content is posted. If this feature is enabled, it is important to customize the confirmation email by putting a logo (for example). Also set the delivery option after finding out when your blog readers are most active. You can track the user activity by using Google Analytics.

Feed Image Burner service. Just like the previous emails personalization, it is important to do so with your feeds as well, since numerous modern RSS readers can display a special image associated with the feed. To activate it: "Optimize/Services/Feed Image Burner" and select "Specify custom image URL" in the “Image Source” dropdown. You can use FeedCount there, as suggested by Feedburner, or simply fill out the form with your site’s logo URL, site title and URL. For maximum compatibility it’s not recommended to use an image more than 144 pixels tall or wide.

Other tips. These tips can be a bit more subjective, nevertheless I think it's important to put them out there. Keywords and important text should be in bold, this makes the post more attractive. Avoid underlined text, in my opinion, it can be confused with links.


There are some more technical plugins but then we would be going into gueek-blogging-underground-universe, and let me tell you we don't want to do that, right?

By the way

I've been reading about how to blog, what are the rules of blogging and what brings success to a blog... and I realized the secret is that there is no secret. Take this experienced blogger word for granted: "Each successful blog has its uniqueness. It might be the personality or voice of the blogger, the topic, the design, the fact that they were first, that they’re funny, that they’re comprehensive and thoughtful, that they post 100 times a day, or that they post once a month… But each of them is unique somehow".

Bottom line is: find your own path and make the most out of what you've got.

Good luck.