v rough mock up

http://process.gianticebox.co.uk/dev/osgd-dev1/

That is a pretty rought mock up of how I imagine the open source graphic design website to look. Clearly there are some design issues in the mock up, and plenty of pages like posting pages and register pages to be created, but that shows a pretty clear way of making the website work.

Places that might need futher conceptual work are:

• The main front page. it shows just a list of projects whereas some imagry might be nice. However I do think that on many levels the design site doesn’t need to appeal to those who are not previously interested in the concept. A way of browsing the projects on the site is pretty imporant, but more so for the members than visitors.
• The project pages content needs to be slightly better separated to make it clearer.
• The user/member system. How much social network should be involved? Should there be a internal message system or just rely on emails sent thru the website to users emails addresses?
• Hosting content on the actual website, such as thumbnails for projects, project resources, and the like.
• The level of public private. Interestingly for an open source website I am feeling like I want quite a lot of the site to only be open to registered members. While the open source is about openness, I don’t want people to abuse the system. I think that having to register would put off some people who might just take from the system.

I also am being very sure to realise that this site [if i build it for the deadline] will be a very rough version of something. However of course because it is open source that almost makes more sense than not; the site will need to be improved after it is created. Because I am being careful to remember this I don’t need to worry too much about implimenting complicated features such as internal messaging or rss feeds of changelogs etc.