There's a lot in here that I like. I also feel that Diaspora could use a little bit more visual polish, but as others have said before me, first we must get everything set up on BootStrap.

I just setup my environment to start contributing to the bootstrap porting in process.

Besides that: what do you guys think about this "minimum effort" strategy of doing polishing without changing the layout. The benefits are:

• It's faster than actually changing the layout
• Won't alter the existing flow for current users
• Won't affect any possible underlying JS (won't break anything)
• Will put Diaspora in another level, better looks could lead to more engagement both for users and devs.
• Less discussion needed (except for a few new minor features, like choosing your own background).

Sad reality is, that the common user don't care about the backend, if it's Ruby/Rails or Python/Django or whatever, they will feel more engaged if we present a polished UI.

To achieve that, I would use InvisionApp (the one on the mockup link), which I currently use for my UX work with clients, it's just a bunch a JPGs with clickable areas, and I can do some "interactive" mockups in top of the preexisting bootstrap layout.

InvisionApp lets us all comment and discuss mockups before implementing, it's a real time saver.

We all agree on the porting to Bootstrap side, it's mandatory, so let me know what you think about the approach, and we can start thinking on doing some serious UI refinement other than updating the CSS framework.

Awesome @hola nice to have a UX guy here - that mockup looks totally awesome. It would be nice to have mockups on big changes - and I think we've been slowly going in that direction, just with less bling-bling ;)

Welcome aboard!

I've summarized all the feedback I had in the proposal:

https://www.loomio.org/d/KZJhVLgM/diaspora-ui-enhancements-with-minimum-coding-effort

Vote!

@rasmusfuhse great! Designs are of course far from being final. I was experiment with some textures, styles are yet to be defined.

One small point: Diaspora currently uses Entypo for icons, and a decision was taken not to move to FontAwesome.

The first stage would seem to be conceptual: what Diaspora is for, and what sort of experience we want people to (be able to) have. From this design ideas will come.

Although it would be good to have a common strand running between the various elements of the project (Diaspora itself, the project site and the wiki) I don’t think the design needs to be completely unified throughout. As long as there is a common ‘feel’, that is enough.

We can use the minimal amount of branding necessary for users to know that they are using parts of one project. We’re not a commercial operation needing to ram home the branding at every opportunity.

If we’re going to change the design of the UI in Diaspora itself (and no reason we shouldn’t), we should allow users to keep the current ‘classic’ design if they want to. I don’t think we should force a change on people unless they want it.

I absolutely agree with your points about (a) accessibility and (b) responsiveness. Ideally, Diaspora should be equally easy to use for people with all levels of (dis)ability and on all devices.

If the Diaspora UI can be made completely responsive, it might be that the mobile version will no longer be needed. But that decision should be made as part of a separate discussion.

It looks as though you’ve made some decisions already (e.g. ‘Foundation will have a warm color palette suitable for discovery’), and it would be good to have some discussion about these things, but your input about them will be valuable.

It would be good to work out a minimum set of criteria for compliance with Diaspora’s design and branding, so that pods which want to customise their look can do so while still recognisably remaining part of the Diaspora ecosystem. I think this is what you address at the end of your proposal. Customisation of the UI of individual pods should, I think, be welcomed and encouraged.

Thanks again for all your valuable work on this.

Hi @goob thanks for taking time on your input!

Please mind anything I say as merely suggestions and not decisions! However, I have strong belief in those.

Didn't know about the FontAwesome thing, I think Entypo is pretty much the same... as long as they are vectorial and free, have no special preference. Of course Diaspora* could have its own set, but that will be another phase, since it's much more work.

Thanks again!

Oh, two things which I have been wanting to redesign for a while, but haven't had the energy/expertise:

• the default landing page (boring and unwelcoming);
• the default sign-up page (uses the 'beta' design concept which got ditched a couple of years ago).

If you'd like to help me also with those, I'd appreciate it.

@goob of course! Also, we should definitely need to build a proper list of things that are in need of some design.

@Pablo: Would it be possible to see a mockup of your ideas for the default, light daspora design? The one that is linked from your proposal is a bit vague as it builds on a background image and a dark header with completely new icons, and personally I find it hard to see where you're heading exactly :)

I have by the way been working on some icons in a slow pace, tinkering possibilities to symbolize pods, users, notifications and so on. I'm pretty sure we could come up with our own personal and communicative iconset in the future, and maybe make use of svg as delivery format instead of converting all icons to an iconmap. Vector graphics are getting better support in browsers all the time, and would work out better on a responsive site as the dimensions don't affect file size. This is an off-topic discussion though, sorry for that ;)

Hi! The UI design for that part is just an attempt for making D* look better without even changing the layout that much, using the current one with just some CSS tweaks.

So, not much innovation there, think of it as a first iteration of a progressive enhancement approach; much more could be done by actually freeing the layout, but I wanted to be as realistic as possible with the current resources.

Background image is just a sample of how some basic customization that could enrich D* experience with little effort.

Having an icon set would be great!, we can really nail it doing some basic user testing to check if the metaphors match the actions.

(I meant: "some basic customization LIKE that")

Just to see that I understood correctly. Is the plan here to change the design to reflect what is proposed in the mock-ups?

Not exactly, the mockups are just an attempt to show the potential impact that a redesign could have. The plan is to open the process (it's explained on the proposal).

However, I have to mention that I put some serious thought into it, and that design reflects my ideas on what it should be like. If you go outside and look for another designer, he/she will come up with something totally different (probably). And of course it has my style on it, as it will with any other designer.

As for the diaspora* design, I explained in a previous comment:

The UI design for that part is just an attempt for making D* look better without even changing the layout that much, using the current one with just some CSS tweaks.

So, not much innovation there, think of it as a first iteration of a progressive enhancement approach; much more could be done by actually freeing the layout, but I wanted to be as realistic as possible with the current resources.

OK, so the question is whether we should change the design? That sounds good to me :)

What goes for your design proposal I can sadly not agree because of several reasons:
* We have a minimal design that makes using diaspora* comfortable and gives it a clean sleek look, quite the opposite to the design proposed here
* when we redesign the current look we should avoid making the UI cluttered and full of slightly outdated transparent boxes.
* I see the point of choosing individual background pictures but I think the situation with the objects that currently are transparent should be solved in a different way (without the transparency :P)
* please, please rethink the buttons and their shadows! :)
* please don't forget that "good" design often is as little design as possible, KISS (Dieter Rams 10th principal for good design: "Good design is as little design as possible" focus on the important things, think them through thoroughly and then make them really, really good!)

Another issue, which probably is just an issue with the mock up, is that everything is a bit strangely unaligned and does not really follow a pattern. This of course leads to a messy and uneasy feeling. But that shouldn't be a big deal to fix :)

• elements I like are the round profile pictures, the current square one look a bit lost to me... I also think it's a good idea to make the top bar darker and maybe skip the pattern (?) as well as cleaning up the right column with information!

I really look forward to a creative and inspiring design process and good discussions! Let me know what you think. (I'll see if I can make a mock-up as soon as I have some time, maybe Wednesday) Ah, and don't get me wrong, it's great that someone takes the initiative to start a process of redesign, I just think we need to think it through carefully and consider all the possibilities :)

Great! Don't take anything for granted on the D* mockup, it's just something I did tweaking the current CSS styles without almost touching the markup.

There has been a discussion (the classic "flat" vs "skeuo/realistic" one), and I think (from the feedback I had) that we will go on a "not-so-flat" thing, developing Diaspora's own tone.

I made some experiments with shadows, but nothing final, I wanted the buttons and other elements to be more perceived as skeuomorphic than the content areas. So we can end up with a mix of modern and clean design, and more volume on some elements.

It will be great to have another mockup!, my goal is to build some alternatives (a few, not a thousand), and showcase that to the community, collect feedback and end up with a synthesis.

Yeah, we're kind of keen to keep diaspora* away from the temporary flat design. But minimalism does of course not mean flat design by default ;) And in our case the mission seams to be to create a clean, usable and nice-looking interface while preserving diasporas non-flat style/identity....

Just wanted to say I catched the usual seasonal flu (winter is coming down here) and the had a crazy week to catch up at work, but I'll keep you guys posted on the bootstrap porting contributions and some design proposals on the run.

Keep us posted! Looking forward to your ideas! :D

It's been a while. Is this still in the works?

The ideas here are great. I quite liked the way the two sidebars seemed to allow for easier emphasis on the sb- content and the way the text/page content pops out. (always been fond of the dandelion image) maybe with less colour though so that focus is still more on the center content.

This is sitll in the works, I'm trying to help on porting to bootstrap now, then I'm working on having an open design process/method so the design ideas can be presented to the community and maybe have some voting mechanism.

Hi! To all who were interested, here is a sample of what a new foundation page could look like.

http://diaspora-site.vispress.com/

I forked the code and made a home page sample, no internal sections, but at least you can choose language.

I've been working on developing a unique style for it, with a unique palette, the Diaspora's exclusive "not-so-flat" buttons ( :P ) , and Titillium as font.

The choice for Titillium is because is a free font with lots of weight options. From Campi Visivi, the Fine Arts Academy of Urbino, Italy.

Another option was Open Sans, many widths, but it's used in Google+ and all over Android apps, same with PT Sans.

Titillium is a light, modern sans serif font, with more personality than the classic Helvetica clones.

You can change the language on the top bar.

This is intended to be responsive, also.

Please feel free to tell me what you think.

The design looks neat, but the font would probably need a few tweaks in Fontconfig for Linux users. It looks a bit fuzzy by default for me:

Woah - impressive and pretty :) Will comment more tomorrow, but initial: taking the home page to 2014, which is what we need!

@jasonrobinson Awesome!
@shmerl Good font testing!

The design is cool; however, I'd make the user-image larger, and possibly add a header before the stream-feed- nice work!

-CK