Memories of the Creed [Looking for Theme focused Reviews]

[Boy_Wonder]

url: memoriesofthecreed.boards.net
Focus: Theme based only, I know not everything is done but I want comments on the theme so far

[Boy_Wonder]

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[Boy_Wonder]

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[Boy_Wonder]

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[Boy_Wonder]

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[Kami]

Since this is a work in progress I'm just gonna give some stream-of-consciousness feedback (:

My first impression is mainly "wow that's huge", though I'm not entirely certain if that's a good "wow" or a bad "wow". I think my biggest issue is that there's so much going on in the header and in the body of the page that I'm not certain where I'm supposed to look first. As it is right now my eye kinda falls on the major whitespace where the 'recent threads' section is, since it's so blank in comparison to the other areas.

The board list itself is OK so far, but with everything white it's hard to parse where certain sections end and others begin.

Overall though I think it's a unique idea and I'd be interested in giving a more indepth / detailed review once it's done. (:

[Boy_Wonder]

Thanks Kami! May I see a screenshot of what you're seeing? I'm trying to design to make it so that it shows information for various sizes!

I'm also planning on making some subtle colour changes - I like the white look but I want to include some colour

[Kami]

Hey hon! I see you've made a few changes since this morning. I'm really liking that splash of colour. If you're trying to get kind of an animus feel, why not try a textured background? Something here might feel right. (:

Here's what I have:

This is at a minimised window (about 2/3s of my 1920x1024 screen)



And this is full screen

[Boy_Wonder]

Thanks Kami - it allows me to visualise the issue - some of that will be corrected when I get the welcome text typed on the smaller screen size - and I'm hoping the rest of the white space on the full screen is fixed once the list is fully populated with recent threads (right now the population is incomplete).

Do my colour splash on the bottom and top borders help to outline sectioning a bit better?

I'll be honest I'm not 100% sure what feel I'm going for besides assassiny and also clean and easily readable xD

[Boy_Wonder]

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[Boy_Wonder]

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[Boy_Wonder]

Kami - I think I've just about got all the design work finished now, if you could give me a rate now (especially if you can include ease of use etc)

[Kami]

All righty! This will probably be rather lengthy, so bear with me. Please note that any criticisms aren't a reflection on you or anything! Just my 0.02. I know you worked really hard on this and I don't want you to feel like I am belittling that work or anything! (:

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Home Page

• First impressions, aesthetics: My immediate impression is that it's really cluttered. I have no idea where to look, because the grid is uneven and there really isn't a particular emphasis on what information is most important. 

The colour scheme, however, is quite nice, and I noticed you took my suggestion of adding a textured background. I think this complements your design quite nicely, and makes the content of the page pop.

I also rather enjoy the fluid width of your content, but that being said:

- a) the header image / navigation disappears when modifying the width to roughly mobile-view size 

- b) the header image, when adjusting to smaller widths, doesn't fit the header content you have.

• First impressions, ease of access: Touching back on the cluttered appearance, this makes it really difficult for me to navigate the site. I don't understand what's going on with the header -- what are these boxes? What does "a new path has opened" mean? What is the icon + status thing for? I assume "Memories of the Creed" is a clickable banner link, but the cyan-ish colour makes it incredibly hard to read. Again, that cluttered feeling kind of takes a prominent role here; it's not immediately clear what each section in the header is for / what purpose they serve, so it's a little confusing as to what's what. 


• Second look, ease of access: I'm doing this first because I think that while you have a really neat idea for this layout, and I kind of see where you're going with it, it's not a very easy to understand structure as it is.

For example, there are two sections with the 'welcome' heading. Which one of these am I supposed to look at? Based on the design -- it standing out as it has a brighter background colour than the other -- and general expectation when reading from left > right, the left-most 'welcome' section should be what I look to first.

This would make the second welcome section redundant. That said, because of the size of the... for lack of a better word, header area, as well as the size of the asscreed motto box, the first welcome box is pushed off screen, forcing users to scroll.

As a general rule of presenting information via design, your content should make sense when reading from left > right (provided you use a left-right writing system, such as English) and demonstrate a sort of hierarchal organisation from most > least important information.

To illustrate, I would recommend having your motto box smaller; fans of the franchise know what the motto is, and know what the assassin symbol is, and having it smaller wouldn't take away from that. This would enable your Welcome / Plot to be visible without scroll, and due to the length I would recommend a summary followed by 'read more' link to entice people to actually read a more in-depth explanation of the plot. In my experience, people determine whether or not they want to explore a site further within seconds of looking at it, so having shorter, more concise information would help in this regard.

Following this sort of information hierarchy, "events" should take precedence over forum statistics -- ultimately, stats and recent threads are low priority when viewing the main page of a forum, so I'd switch the order of the 'events' column and the 'statistics' column. I'd remove the third column entirely, or place information there that would be less important than the stats column; I was going to suggest the tag board, but then I noticed that was in the footer section globally and obviously if you want it global the home page isn't going to help that. ;x

Continuing onto the header:

The thing I'm struggling the most with here is the seemingly arbitrary positioning of information that I'm not really sure what purpose they serve. If I switch to the forum itself I can see that the rebuilding of the homestead / etc is just a recap of the events listed on the home page (which I can surmise serves as a reminder when you're viewing the forum proper) but it seems redundant on the home page. I'd recommend using your layout templates to make sure that the events box appears only on the home page, so that you don't have redundant displays of information.

Organisation also seems to be an issue here, particularly with regards to the forum name/title, and the menu icons. My recommendation would be to put "Memories of the Creed" in the top left (adjusting the link colour as well), with the menu icons immediately below, followed by "Welcome Guest..." etc, instead of having... whatever that status update + icon box is immediately after the menu. (I hope that makes sense)

I have no idea what the status update is even for, or what purpose it serves / will serve, honestly, so if it were me if it's not immediately understandable to a guest I'd either get rid of it, or have it show only to members (assuming that they'll know what it's about).

I assume "Welcome guest..." will turn into your messages panel once you're logged in, but I don't really think that necessarily needs to be separated from the menu, but your mileage may vary and I think that's an aesthetic choice rather than an organisational / ease of use one.

I don't understand what "A New Path Has Opened" is in regards to -- there's nothing to explain it, either; it's not a link, there's no synopsis, and it's separated from the events box so it doesn't strike me as an event.

One last ease of access on the header is the background image. I like what you've done with the opacity on the boxes, but I recommend lowering the opacity or fading out the header image because it's a little difficult to read the text against a much more saturated image; the eye kind of tries to bring the background image into focus, I'm finding.

• Second look, aesthetics: Quite honestly aesthetically you're fine in terms of design. The few nitpick issues I have that aren't immediately tied into accessibility and ease of use would be that I'm probably an old fuddy-duddy and I don't understand the purpose of the tag board or why it needs to be so huge / why it can't go in the sidebar. Also probably falling into the 'fuddy-duddy' category is that I don't understand the need for statuses to be in the sidebar, since in my experience these statuses are generally silly or frivolous and I don't understand what it would add to the roleplaying environment. Then again, I also quite heavily dislike chatboxes, so your mileage may vary. I dunno what kids these days are into (jk jk).

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The Forum


• First impressions, aesthetics: Quite honestly the only problems I have with the forum proper are: the lack of padding between the bottom of the board text & the top of the next category; the lack of padding between the RP area image & the RP area description text; and the styling of the info centre.

In regards to the info centre, I think my dislike for the styling has less to do with the style itself, and more to do with the fact that I kind of hate how bulky info centres are and personally strive to make them as minimal as possible (example) so feel free to disregard my opinion on this, haha.

• First impressions, ease of access: Since I've already covered ease of access issues in the header, I'm just gonna skip over that. ;x Don't need to hear it again.

The biggest issue for ease of access to me is the far-right on the boards. I'm genuinely at a loss for suggestions because I can't pinpoint what it is that's so confusing. Perhaps the spacing between the information in each area? It kind of seems to run together. It's less confusing in the RP area, where the board descriptions are larger so the spacing seems better, but on the down side it seems a little out of place to just have the moderators text floating there.

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Overall: 7/10
Whew. Sorry for the big ol' wall of text. I'd give you a 7/10 because I genuinely love the idea you've come up with, and while I know this is a huge amount of information to dump on you in one post, it's not because I disliked what you've done.

The missing three points are as follows: two and a half points for ease of access issues on the home page, because that was just kind of a confusing area in terms of conveying information; and half a point for the issue I was having with the far right of the boards / moderator info.

I think, though, that you've come up with a pretty unique idea and with tweaking it can be a really great and original theme that would definitely set you apart from not just other assassins creed RPs, but other sites overall.

I hope this helps, and wasn't disheartening!