scottofletcher
commented
5 years ago Not a fan of B or C - there's too much text to take in. Ideally, the 'tag line' should be front-and-centre and needs to be updated to "A collaborative effort to document public participation and democratic innovation around the world". Maybe the version on the map doesn't need the "around the world" part though? The map kind of makes that obvious.
I'm also not a huge fan of having "Public participation occurs when citizens collaborate to influence civic life" for a couple reasons: 1 - 'citizenship' is more of a Western/Global North concept. Public participation also occurs in non-governmental settings (including organizations) where citizenship may be out of reach for many/most or it may not exist in the same way we conceive of it (ie. as a 'license' - often but not always received at birth) to participate and benefit from the actions of other community members as an equal) 2 - influencing civic life is not a requisite of public participation. This is more of a poli-sci definition (ie. "policy/measurable political change or it didn't happen"). we have cases of informal participation that had their direct influence(s) on personal/private life (ie. outside of the public/civic sphere). 3 - formatting to look like a pin on the map which makes me question the utility of the other pins (ie. are they just for show? are they cases?)
As well, I would avoid defining or narrowing the definition of public participation. even though Democratic Innovation, Participatory Democracy, Civic Engagement, and Participatory Governance are all appreciably broad, we've learned that our readers take things literally - as in the case of the heading "Deliberation, Decisions, and Public Interaction" (which was similarly meant as a 'catch all' for ever conceivable type of participation but which clearly failed).
I would be in favour of A with some changes:
- replace "Public participation occurs..." with "A collaborative effort to document public participation and democratic innovation" (either with or without the prefix "Participedia is" or the ending "around the world")
- add a comma after 'edit' in the sentence "Use Participedia to publish, edit and share..."
- change "Click to activate map" to "Click anywhere to activate map" (which is what I assume you meant and not "click the little map pin to the right of this message" or "click the red pin in the centre" but I'm not sure)
- change the background colour to the one used in B & C
Random suggestion: maybe the Login button at the top right should be red like "Join Now"?
jesicarson
plscully
A few options for the homepage.
There are some considerations to work out, ie:
As a beginning for visuals to consider, I was thinking that after activating the map, a small red info icon in the bottom right corner of the map could bring the overlay back up if people wanted to see it again. And, when re-sizing screens, in option A the content would move towards the centre of the screen, and options B and C the large text would disappear and the popup and anyone can join text would move to centre.
Feedback welcome!
Info icon on map:
Option A:
Option B:
Option C: