Notes on a redesign

Back in November of last year, I wrote about the experiment that this site is, and how I hoped to improve on it. I started working on the redesign shortly thereafter. Nine months later, the new site is here.

The process was by no means direct. As Lea Alcantara narrates in the latest issue of A list Apart, redesigning your own site is working for your worst client. Not only was I my worst critic, but I further compounded the challenge by tossing aside my proven project management process and not even bothering with wireframes. I figured I knew my way around the site, so moving a few things around would be easy.

Not so. The rubbish I produced quickly alerted me to the fact that I had no idea what I was trying to achieve. If I was going to make any improvements I had to take a scalpel to the site and examine what was working and what was not. That meant that I had to take my time and really think about what I wanted to achieve with this site. And for me that meant switching off the computer and picking up the paper and pencil.

The Purpose

The first thing I tired to do was write a clear statement declaring the purpose of my site. That statement was going to guide me through the rest of the redesign process so I wanted it to span the breadth of the topics I had covered on the site, while also placing limits on the complexity of the site.

I went through several drafts before I settled on Links and Thoughts about Uganda. It is a statement that declares the purpose of the site while also hinting at a preference for simplicity.

The Logo

Once I had a mission statement for the site, I knew I had to redesign my logo. The old logo (a "C" and "U" framed in maroon above a smile) was decidedly out of place alongside the new statement. I wanted something that was immediately recognizable, and certainly more elegant.

I knew right away that I was going to design the logo around the map of Uganda. I know there is a whole group of people who feel that this is crass and uncreative, preferring to use objects, colors and other artifacts to imply African. I usually fall into that camp, but in this case I felt that no visual would say Uganda as effectively as the map. The laurels represent that ancient Greek principle of citizenship and the star represents the ideas that give the country value.

This logo will undoubtedly evolve with the site over time, but I am pleased with what I have. I think it works very well alongside the mission statement.

Navigation

A simple site cannot have a complex navigation. The previous design sported a menu with ten links. Yes, ten. It was a complicated effort at compartmentalizing the content on the site, and from what I could see on Google Analytics, most of you did not really use it. So it is gone. In its place is a single block of text telling you where you are and providing links to the Home page and the Archives.

This is a bit of a gamble, as is keeping the search feature only on the archives page. These changes may make it harder for you to find your way around the site, but I am hoping you will be open to a little experimentation. If it does not work out, no big deal. I will change it.

The About page is also gone, replaced with a simple block on the right that tells you as much as you need to know about me and the site.

Content

Because I modeled the old design on a newspaper website I had comically created a lot of different types of content categories in the inexplicable anticipation of a great deal of content. This time round I am keeping it simple. The site has only two types of content: articles and links.

The links come with some custom icons I created in the final stages of the redesign. The icons denote the type of content the link points to, so you have a radio for audio, tv set for video, camera for image and so on.

The icons are not entirely the product of my own mind. I came up with the idea after looking at the Fresh Signals block on the Coudal Partners website. I think I have done enough to differentiate my set from theirs though.

As far as the articles go, I will still write some political commentary as events unfold, but lately I am far more interested in the emerging class of software developers and social entrepreneurs like the folks at Appfrica and Project Diaspora. Together with Erik Hersman and others on the African continent, these are the people pushing for constructive discussion and action to use emerging technologies to meet the needs of the people living all over Africa. If you do not already know those sites, I suggest you look them up.