Add more illustration to Alaveteli / WhatDoTheyKnow

[garethrees]

At the 2021 retreat I had a conversation with Catherine where she mentioned (paraphrasing) "Trust = Competence + Warmth".

This made me think about this with respect to WDTK. We're high on competence, but less so on warmth. Adding illustration elements could re-address that balance. What do I mean by this?

At the most basic level, here's a little notice that @zarino (I think!) doodled while on breakfast duty. It's so much more human with the little drawing.

We've got a bit of this, but it's largely around the Pro marketing pages.

I also came across a holiday cottage site with context-specific landing pages ("by the beach", "near a pub", "with a hot tub", "with a log fire"):

I could imagine something similar for our help pages and other topic-based landing pages (https://github.com/mysociety/whatdotheyknow-theme/issues/442).

I think we could also use small illustrations on the home page, during the request flow, and to pull more case studies into the site (https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli-project/issues/143).

[zarino]

Yes, the sticky note was mine! ;-) My thought process was: "People will be looking for a stack of plates, I should show them a picture of a stack of plates, because they’ll spot the picture way before they spot the word PLATES."

Illustrations do add character to a design, and I think they work really well on the WDTK Pro pages.

The downsides, of course, are that they take time and effort to create, and maintaining a consistent style between illustrations (especially produced at different times, by different illustrators) can be a challenge.

[RichardTaylor]

There is the related proposal to add public body logos #6172

Also there is the idea of bringing in maps showing the area covered by a public body brings in more imagery https://github.com/mysociety/whatdotheyknow-theme/issues/818

We could encourage the use of organisational accounts (with organisational logos as profile images) https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli/issues/3056

What about header images for users and public bodies? Social media pages generally let you have both a profile image/avatar and a header image.

There are lots of images released via WhatDoTheyKnow - how can we do more to highlight those? https://www.google.com/search?q=site:whatdotheyknow.com&source=lnms&tbm=isch (It might be nice to separate photos, maps, images of text). Interestingly Google pulls often pulls out the front cover of a released PDF, we too could show an icon based on the first page of a linked PDF (aimed at showing the cover page of a report), eg.

instead of

[RichardTaylor]

WhatDoTheyKnow user feedback on the look of the site:

In the days I last used it you had a nicely composed witty photo of a shocked respectable-looking couple. I am sorry to see you have ditched it in favour of Microsoft-style blocked text. Not a good look. Despite Mr Blair's recantation of his sole positive achievement in office, the photo subtly reinforced the message that FoI is not some sort of extremist programme undermining good governance (the civil service line of attack) but is at the heart of true democracy and available for all of us, and may be needed even by the well-heeled as well as the downtrodden. That message is still needed, as I suspect FoI doesn't always have particularly strong friends in the current governing party.

I hope the abandonment was not due to whingeing from the ultra-woke brigade, whose many and varied objections to life as we know it now extend to people clapping at concerts.

Image in question from the old WhatDoTheyKnow header:

On being told the redesign was not a result of outside pressure, but just modernisation:

Ah yes, the cult of modernity. Bless.

But the 'Microsoft look' unintentionally sends out non-verbal signals, of the "We know best, and you'll do things our way" variety. It's chalk and cheese. You are the goodies. You don't dictate to your users in a micromanaging way. (I did get the gentlest of warnings hinting that my FoI request was getting a bit long - a nice touch there). Whereas Microsoft is an aloof corporate that infantilises its users (remember "Clippy", or read the snarky support pages). We really don't need a 10 point or 8 point gap between every line we type even though MS says we do, or illiterate grammar suggestions or idiotic auto-reformatting. I have never forgiven MS for arrogantly setting itself as the user's default page without please-may-I. It hates its own customers so much that that it once portrayed them as dinosaurs in a lengthy advertising campaign.

Royal Blue masthead and blocks of monologue text? Uncomfortable associations. How about a golden colour scheme, seeing as you're letting the sunshine in, and a font that doesn't look like MS or TfL? Georgia and Verdana are not bad; lots of other possibilities. Something to ponder at the next house style meeting perhaps.

[RichardTaylor]

Showing response emails in HTML format (#4003) would bring lots more styling and illustration to the sites. Many public bodies include header and footer images - perhaps to try and make responses look as if they're on headed paper.

[RichardTaylor]

Is adding a photo to a body page worth doing?

eg.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/house_of_commons

[RichardTaylor]

Banner style images appear to look better eg.

[mdeuk]

For what it’s worth, I think both examples look fine - logos themselves will probably look better in the box on the right.

We do, of course, need to be mindful of performance and usability before introducing too many elements here; but the experiment is certainly worth doing.

We’ve done a/b testing on elements in request pages before, I wonder if there is some value in doing something similar here?

[garethrees]

+1, they look great and nice to experiment, but share same concerns around performance/usability and pushing our unique content of value (archive of requests + make new request CTA) further down the page.

Can do some pretty fancy CSS these days so might be able to make these more of a background banner.

[FOIMonkey]

I think the banner style pages look amazing and the images enhance the pages, rather than detracting from anything. The pages without them now look quite dull in comparison.

[garethrees]

Discussion about images on body notes extracted to https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli/issues/7160.

[garethrees]

Research for Action's recent Democratising Local Governance report has some great vibes. Nice and simple, but adds a bit of feeling.

[garethrees]

Really effective example from FDS' about page.

I don't even need to translate this to instantly get the vibe of:

• Something to do with computers and documents
• Shouting about them / campaigning / people power
• Asking questions and piecing together the puzzle through the documents
• Money and justice