Major UI/UX revamp

[cszach]

As the title goes, https://geoscents.net needs a serious, major UI/UX revamp.

I must say this is a very great project, or even a potential successor to the defunct Geosense site. Yes, it has a lot of potential, however currently lacks proper UI/UX design, SEO, and marketing. If you take a good look at it, it feels like an old 2000s website still running on Java, which is the nicest thing I think we can compare the design to. Honestly, I am pretty damn surprised that no one has ever opened an issue or pull request regarding this. We need to remove the spinning globe. We need to change the font. We need to lowercase many text. We need to get rid of many buttons. We need to establish a concrete color palette. We need to redesign the whole layout of every page. We need a revamp.

When clients complain about an interface as anything but intuitive, I think we should fix the problem not by adding arrows and UX instructions (which only makes matters worse), but by taking a serious look at our own design. If you are doing this project as anything but a "project for fun" (though even in that case, think about Linux), I think it's time everyone bring a major update to the website. Here are my proposals:

1. :busts_in_silhouette: Recruit a (small) team of UI/UX designers (I'd be happy to volunteer). We do not have to find the good people right away, but we will gradually spread the word (e.g. on Reddit or Medium). Along the way, there will be more people from various professions (e.g. coders, writers, marketers) who might be interested in joining the team. Seriously, you've been working alone, writing millions of lines of code for this project. That's quite a dedication. But you need some people to help you out.
2. :speech_balloon: Start a Discord development server, or just a Discord server (meaning it opens to fans), so we can have a decent space for discussions and remote working. Just...anything but mailing lists, goddamn it.
3. :memo: Layout a concrete track for the next stage of development for this project. We need to code, to design, to spread the word (wow, you don't even add GitHub tags so people can find this project easier?), to do a lot of advertising and collecting money.

I shall state again that this could thrive as the new geography game, but more efforts and more people are needed. Essentially, we need to establish a community. You've been working alone too hard. You need to take another route, as we shall do the same with the approach to the website's UX.

Thank you for your serious consideration. If it was not serious, take a Seinfeld-free 30-minute break and kindly read it again. :thumbsup:

[mattfel1]

Hi. I completely agree with everything you point out. This is just a prototype and hobby project. I personally consider a success because my goal was to make the gameplay feel like original geosense so that I could take a 5 min break from the work day to challenge a friend to a few games for nostalgia-sake. I never really cared too much for UI/UX as long as the game itself works and could support a handful of people without crashing or slowing significantly. This is my first, and probably only, time working on a web project, which is why it resembles a site from the early 2000s. Partially due to lack of experience, and partially due to the nostalgia of what the web looked and felt like during my formative years :smile: . I would describe the site as ugly but, more importantly, not frustrating to play.

I am very open to having others with more experience develop on top of it. I personally consider my development "finished" at this point, but I agree there is a lot lacking. The problem is that I just don't know enough about web development or have enough time right now to learn to make it more professional.

1. I have no idea how to recruit people for this. I assumed that the fans of the game typically aren't UI/UX designers, and people who are UI/UX designers typically wouldn't stumble upon the game or have time to help out. I appreciate that you were interested enough in this to come to the github repo and post though. I am personally really excited any time someone writes feedback or comes to the GH page. Even popping on to the game and seeing people there is a great feeling.
2. That would be awesome to have a Discord. I personally have never used Discord and I never expected more than a handful of people to ever stumble on the site. So I never saw the value of having a Discord server.
3. Sure, there are a handful of things that would be nice to have that I've been thinking about from the beginning, but I never had the expertise or time to get them done. I host the code on github so that I could see my own revision history. I never bothered to tag anything because the whole process I use for hosting is a major hack and would probably give proper web designers a heart attack. It never really felt like there were "versions" of this game, just a long history of minor, rolling updates that I apply manually to the server. Advertising always felt out of reach because I didn't think there would ever be enough people visiting to appeal to any advertisers.

If you think there is any value and potential in taking this project to the next level, I am 100% on board. It sounds like you have a lot of the valuable expertise that I don't. Feel free to do whatever you want with the code here. It is my first and only javascript and web project, so hopefully that explains why the code looks like it does. (I used Scala and Chisel in grad school, and I use C++ and Verilog for real job). I am happy to talk more about development and figure out what the next steps are though. Unfortunately, my budget for this is the $12/yr to renew geoscents.net, and whatever it costs to keep the server running now that my trial credits have expired :disappointed:. This budget comes from the juggling balls that I sell on ebay and etsy. I can't hire anyone to help out, but if you think there is a viable path for generating revenue, that changes things.

[cszach]

Hello.

I realize your intent of giving the website some nostalgic vibes as much as you consider this a hobby project. However, a website is nostalgic when it resembles the technological progress of a certain time in the past, not when it is poorly designed (this also applies to other forms of media). The Geosense website, while is (to be honest) very ugly compared to modern day HTML5/CSS3, did indeed fit in other websites from the 2000s.

I do have a lot of ideas for the new UI for GeoScents. We will see if I have any free time left in my senior year to create and send you some UI prototypes. I will be attending university soon, in which I hope I will have a lot of free time to further improve my web development skills and see if I can be of any help, so I hope you will be able to cling on your budget from eBay just a little bit longer.

[buzz6522]

As per the 2nd point of the original message, I have created a discord for the server - accessible with discord.me/geo or https://discord.gg/CZzDFKqPdB. Have no expectations for it, but hopefully it could be useful. If you join ill be sure to mod you.