Re: SEUL: If you need an help

[Robert Hopcroft <hopcroft@uswest.net>]

Doug Loss wrote:

> Lorenzo De Tomasi wrote:
> >
> > I'm a student of graphic design and design of interfaces at Politecnico
> > di Milano (Italy).
> > If you want I can help you to create graphics  (logo, icons, cursors,
> > poiters, etc) and interaction for a new operating system or program interface
> > based
> > on Linux...
> > I have some ideas for a good and simple interaction...
> >
> I held off answering to see if anyone else would ask for your help.
> Here on SEUL we've talked occasionally about a website redesign, but
> we've never made a determined effort to do such a redesign.  The
> seul-edu section, where I'm most active, has three or four people
> working on a redesign of just its section right now.  Personally, I
> wouldn't like to see seul-edu and the overall SEUL site become very
> different in design.  I know you didn't talk specifically about website
> design, but it might be worthwhile to discuss it.  Should such a
> discussion take place here, or on seul-pub-www?

I would initially leave the discussion here as there is little going on and there
are people here who might get involved. I agree with you that it would be bad to
get seul-edu desynchronized with the rest of the seul site. Actually I've put in a
lot of thought on this subject but have not said much since I have not seen much
overall interest. Anyway,
here is my current thinking. I would view seul as the following three pieces:
school (education), home and office (soho). These things are so intertwined and
there is so much overlap that it would not take significantly more effort to deal
with all of them, and once they are in place there is that much more chance that
they would attract people. Going to the seul homepage, the writing down the left
side is barely readable. My thought is to put the real common things like "about"
across the top like many web sites do. Then create icons for the others spread
across the page. The list of supported projects has gotten big. For seul-edu, I
was thinking of a schoolhouse for an icon. Clicking it would set one in a
classroom where a blackboard would have written on it our news items. Next there
would be the teacher's desk and on the desk there would be a stack of books. Most
of what is on the seul-edu web pages is text which can be thought of as a book.
Thus clicking on a book on the desk brings up that material. This fits in with
things like the cell biology course. When we get too many books for the table, we
can go to the library and continue on. Sorry something came up, I will have to
continue later.

Bob