Need Help Moving Forward - First Item: Design

[Todd Sharp]

Hey All:

Sorry for the lack of posts and code updates lately. I've been
getting up to speed at my new job and getting ready for RIACon next
week. I'm hoping to talk to some folks directly at RIACon but in the
meanwhile I was hoping that some of the folks who were willing to help
with a new design would be able to start moving forward with some
prototypes. We officially now own SlideNinja.com so I'm hoping to get
a really cool design based on the ninja theme. Is anyone able to mock
something up or start on this? I would think this could happen (at
least initially) independently of the actual SlideSix application
development. A simple HTML template/theme with a few logos should be
good enough to get started. I'll be happy to integrate it into the
existing code. Let's not worry about the Flex skins for now - just
the HTML side.

Anyone able to help?

Todd

[Rachel Lehman]

I'm sorry I've been out of touch lately, I really do want to help with this! I also want to get out here and make a couple suggestions for how we can get this done. 

In my past experience in contributing to "open" design projects like this, it can go one of two ways. One, you get one person to help, they do all the work, and they are awesome. This situation is hard to come by because not many people have that kind of time on their hands. 

Two, you get several people offering to help, but it ends up more as a competition or battle than productivity because everyone has a different take, some better than others, and no one really works together because it's not coordinated. Or, everyone wants to help but no one has time to do the bulk of the work to get it started, so it falters before it gets off the ground. Designers end up wasting time producing work that may not get used if a different design or direction is chosen, which leads to being annoyed/fed up with the project and then they end up not helping going forward. This is the situation I usually see.

Here's my suggestion for preventing these issues. The design project needs clear direction and leadership. Someone to be the primary decision maker for how the design proceeds. Someone to organize any design volunteers and parcel out tasks according to strengths and availability. Of course, we can all work collaboratively together, but there is a need for a basic design director/project manager to keep things going and keep everyone coordinated. Someone to work with Todd to ensure things are going the direction he, as the project lead, wants them to. Also, if someone is organizing the project, we can make more specific requests for design help such as "we need a logo", "we need a site map and wireframes", "we need someone to do front end dev" etc which are more likely to get volunteers than just a general "help us with design" request.

Do we have a volunteer for this job? I'll humbly submit myself if there isn't anyone else who feels strongly. I don't mean to become the self appointed boss, but I'm not going to call for this if I'm not willing to do it myself :) if someone else wants to do it, I'll volunteer to work on whatever they need me to help with.

Thoughts?

-Rachel

[Todd Sharp]

I think that's a great idea Rachel! I wanted to wait a bit before
responding to see if anyone else was willing to volunteer, but it
looks like you're the lucky one! :)

I'll go back through my old tweets, emails and this group to see who
else was willing to help on the design side and I'll try to put
together the short list and email you offline to see if they're still
interested.

Thanks so much for your ideas and willingness to step up.

Todd