Great thinking on the Presearch ad, @fishman! One thing I noticed is that the image at the bottom of the page emphasizes the word “blockchain”. I wonder if that could be changed.
I think this is a great idea, and had been thinking about reaching out to @Miguelo on this as well. With Fleming (the next testnet) and beta coming up soon, now would be a great time for a refresh.
Miguelo—given your fantastic design skills, do you think you could help redesign safenetwork.tech to
More succinctly convey what Safe is about in a less text-heavy manner
Make it easier to integrate multi-language functionality / translations
Be structured in a way that makes updates easier
Be easier to navigate
In terms of resonant messaging, I’ll share the results of the survey (n = 672 so far) after it closes on Feb 28. The responses to what benefits and technical features matter most to people can help to provide guidance on what to highlight.
Sure, I can try to make a redesign proposal. I personally like the fact that the current design is not a traditional website design. That said, I think it needs some information architecture love and simplifying the design a bit.
What are the key points that the website should convey? Particularly the home page. I tried to make a quick mockup but soon realized It wasn’t that clear to me what are the most important points.
Multi-language should be easy enough to implement. Content is already separated in js files. I think @Dimitar has organized few translations already.
What kind of challenges you have updating the site content? Text changes should be easy enough to do, but are we talking about something else here?
Edit. Here’s the mock I was working on. A work in progress and I’m not happy with how it looks, but the idea was to make those key points visible in a more compact and maybe more traditional way.
Personally I think the overall design is fine, it’s eye catching and unusual but it takes too much mousewheel action to find anything useful. The key messages are being worked on as we speak, but I’d like to see everything relevant above the fold.
Edit: as I was typing I see you added to your post to address this very point!
This looks great! Thank you for taking the time to pull this together. I like where you are headed. Simplicity in communication is key.
The market research survey closed yesterday, and I’ll be spending this week analyzing the results. I’ll share out what insights float to the top, which should be helpful for determining key points to convey.
This is exactly why this work needs to be done!
Some time ago, some of us on the forum asked why multi-language wasn’t supported or why things aren’t updated quickly, and the response was that the structure of the site/pages made updates difficult. Perhaps @frabrunelle or someone else could shed more light on this.
Once again, I really appreciate your taking the time to work on this!!
I really like the idea of pulling some of the key points out, as demonstrated above, but in general I think the website is great already and the messages are super clear, and not using the usual tech jargon. Please… just a minor edit. I have used the site as an example of best practice comms for another blockchain project.
The current layout is artistically interesting, but from a design perspective, the information could be more succinctly communicated. Right now, the viewer can’t easily look at it and walk away saying, “Ahh, I get it. Safe is these short list of things.” The high volume of colors, words, and images are hard to navigate.
There’s no need to completely overhaul the site. Miguelo’s mockup does a great job of maintaining the look and feel of the current site while sharpening up the communication.
I never liked the site. It’s always grated and I avoid looking at it. I think I’m in a minority here, but I’d be happy to see it ceremonially burned and replaced with something that doesn’t feel like I’m inside a metal bin being hit by baseball bats while I’m trying to find information and understand what’s on offer.
I sometimes wonder if a single button with Time to take back our Internet (just realised we could use the front page of the new scientist where TBL and us were featured) with a 30sec video. Clicking the button takes you to a very simple page that says,
Download:
A Browser, Once click install (and uninstall) to access the future internet.
A farmer, give some of your free space to help us take back our Internet and earn tokens that you can trade for forever storage.
More Applications SiteBuilder, create your own SafeSite/Blog/Video site/Public file list and more. (you don’t need permission from anyone and your data is stored and available forever, no hacking or vandalism! In Safe your data is … well you get the message.
SafeGit - Develop new apps, create new inventions, innovate with others, secure in Safe, no takedown notices, no worries about “end of service” etc. Jams - Music, free, forever Decorum - A social space, no snooping, no controllers. A place for you using your data for you!
…
And so on. So we do the “marketing” elsewhere and not on the website. We could have an about Safe page to link to more info, but hide it from casual users (so a link or similar)
I don’t know what the answer is so I’m not knocking the effort or the people who created this. I’m giving very subjective feedback and I don’t like doing that when I don’t have the skills to do better even by my own judgement, but there it is.
I think a lot of what is the is excellent, yet there are particular things about it which which make it unpleasant for me.
So I’m just saying for me, don’t worry about changing things!
Just to contrast Mark, I actually love the site. It’s literally the best website I’ve ever seen in terms of design but I like it from the artistic and expression angle which matches up with the freedom of expression messaging on the site. Is it clear in terms of information? I think decently so but is it a bit much to navigate? Probably yes. The information is there but maybe hard for most to navigate.
It does seem to evoke a love or hate response though.
Absolutely Nick, my response is subjective. It’s not the navigation that gets me, but the aesthetic. Scrolling down and having text and blocks all over the place is constantly distracting, as is animation etc. That’s what grates for me.
I think this is where it’s important to highlight the difference between art and design. Design privileges function over form. Artistically, the site is interesting. But, the purpose of the site is not to be artistically interesting; the purpose of the site is to effectively and efficiently communicate what Safe is in a way that is digestible to a broad range of people.
I think we all agree with the first part. I believe it was intended to be a community endeavor as to not take away from the team. A good informative, up to date and easy to navigate website would be another good resource to point people interested in the project to.
Personally I think the site works, looks great, and is good enough but it could convey information and message more clearly.
I feel we maybe jumping the gun here somewhat as we are yet to pin down the and agree target groups, or layout the strategy. Diving straight in to a website redesign is perhaps maybe biting off more than we know we can chew to begin with.
Having aligned on objective, targets, perhaps we being testing hypothesis, and trialing tactics with lower risk endeavours; micro campaigns if you will, that we can learn from and iterate quicker on?
And perhaps focusing on tactics that can take advantage of the reach of the community, and getting that firing on more cylinders, before diving into things that are less easily spread across the community, resource wise? Along the lines of the sort of tactics that @m3data has been proposing.
The website can be polarising, I understand that, and people may have aesthetic preferences, or disagree on execution, but every aspect of it was considered and deliberate; from the messaging, copy, IA, typography, colours etc. These were not just arbitrary decisions.
I would also say, there are perhaps other more pressing needs within the suite of web assets we have at our disposal… but again, shall we align on the targets and have a first pass at strategy first?
Totally with you, it’s horrendous to the eye…a huge disappointment after the PR guy hyped it up.
I think a lot of the text copy is fine, but the design just seems to break the most basic rules of web design that I understood like ‘Dont make me think’ and ‘Arial for Titles, Verdana for text’
I would vote to demolish it and repurpose the text…at the very least, use the right fonts/sizes, get rid of the craft shop graphics and line it up so eyes dont have to do gymnastics to read it.
Couldn’t agree more. Everyone was gushing over how amazing it was when it was made. It’s among the worst websites I have ever seen in my life. This project needs to take a hard look in the mirror!
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are public in my github: 
