Website experience -- Project #1 -- Icon Design

[Tariq Nisar Ahmed]

As salamu alaykum wa Rahmat Allah wa Barakatuhu,

Ma sha Allah, Basim, your portfolio shows a lot of experience that would benefit the project immensely, in sha Allah.

As requested, I am creating a list of projects -- all of which could fall under the rubrik of improving a user's website experience.

Each project will be submitted as a separate thread -- just see the subject lines to differentiate.  I did not see any projects in your portfolio that draw on or manage large and dynamic databases -- if that is something you want to work on, please let me know!

Project #1 -- Icon design

So far we have used three icons on the website.  But a professionally designed set of icons would improve the experience for users tremendously, in sha Allah, as well as raise the site's standards:

(1) Masjid and Musalla icons.  At "very low zoom" -- when the map shows whole continents and countries -- a small but easily seen icon is needed, one that will not obscure too much of the map.  Look at New Zealand on the map at low zoom, and you can hardly see any land at all.  At "high zoom" -- city and street level maps -- larger icons are needed that clearly and accurately mark jamat locations.  If you typed in the location, "Auckland, New Zealand," you would still see the markers easily.  But as you zoom in closer, it is easy to lose track of the current icon.

Alhamdolillah, Google is releasing advancements to Google Maps that will allow us to use different icons at different zoom levels.

Ideally icons would have an Islamic theme and be easily seen against all three types of maps -- "Map," "Satellite," and "Hybrid."

So far, three kinds of images have been used or suggested -- Google's default red marker (which you can still see whenever you enter an address on the map), a mehrab shaped gold and white "lamp" icon with the word "Allah" on it in Arabic, and the present bright green "Allah" marker.

All of these can be improved on.  One site visitor has suggested that we use as icons the flags used by the Muslims historically, the liwaa and riyaa.

Finally, it may be good to have different icons to easily distinguish musallas from masajid, even though we have many more masajid presently.

(2) Prayer "icons" or graphics -- Right now the infowindows that pop up use English transcriptions of "Fajr," "Dhuhr," etc.  Small but easy to read Arabic text would be more visually pleasing.

(3) Icons depicting other services -- One way to make the site more valuable to users and to jamat is if we advertise the non-prayer services at each masjid.  One way to do that in an easy fashion in the infowindows would be to display universally recognizable icons for various services, e.g., for schools, for marriage services, for counseling, for funerals, youth groups, hifz, and for any other services that masjids commonly provide.

Look for project #2 in the next e-mail, in sha Allah.

Jazak Allah khair for offering your expertise!

alaykum wa Rahmat Allah wa Barakatuhu,

Tariq Ahmed
prayinj...@gmail.com

On Nov 17, 2006, at 7:11 PM, Basim Mousilli wrote:

Salam,

 

GREAT project. Where do you need the most help? I saw your 30 minute help blurb.
 

I'm strongest at CSS/Photoshop, also I do JavaScript, PHP, mySQL, some CMSs, and some Flash. See all my works on http://www.astrapod.com/works.

 

I don't have a lot of time and I am a big complainer, otherwise known as a Consultant. The way I work best is if you tell me a list of what you need done.

 

Thank you for letting me be a part of this successful beginning.

 

Regards,

Basim