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Design consistency and interaction guidelines can do good when used appropriately. Strict compliance kills opportunities for innovation.

My favorite two quotes:

“consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
- Oscar Wilde

The ThinkQuest identity module is located at the top of user’s pages and identifies the owner of the content. We updated the module to include reward icons. These star icons are given to users with exceptional projects or winning websites. Our goal was to create a reward system for top users and highlight model curricula for new users.

Old Design:

To Post

New Design:

Other design improvements include:

• The old identity module was located on the left. Moving the module to the center freed space on the left and simplified access to pages, projects and messages. The move visually balanced the page.
• We took the opportunity to increase the font size of the member name and create a stronger sense of place. It is clear to visitors who’s work they have landed on.
• Since the identity of the user is clearly established on landing, we designed a smaller version of the identity module that is displayed when a visitor drills down into other pages. This gives the content more space on the screen.
• Hovering on the badge displays the detail of the award.

Post On does two things. It tells the user where a content is being saved (user feedback) and lets the user change the destination in edit mode.

Content destination is automatically set to the spot the user initiated the create click. If the user decided to create content from a page that does not store content (My Works) then the content would default to the first personal user page.

Post On needs an explicit click to activate a change so the user can continue to focus on creating content quickly and not worry about confirming or changing the destination.

Post On was released in Dec 2009 on ThinkQuest.org.

This was a recent design enhancement to a component of ThinkQuest. The old model required page-by-page trip to the server as the user navigates to find an account. It was painfully slow. In the new model, we load the entire student body into one window and make it really simply for the user to narrow down the selection and find the appropriate user.

Old Design:

New Design:

Other improvements include:

• Scan of account names is much easier in one column list instead of three. We now allocate extra width to the name column and solve the problem of displaying long names.
• Adding a login column made it really simple for the teacher to identify both active and expiring accounts in one view. That new column provides sufficient feedback to eliminate several application screens that dealt with identifying deactivated accounts.
• Ability to scan and select a user by multiple criteria: alpha, level & activity
• The old design had two navigation paradigms running – a pull-down to select by grade level and then click to select by alpha letter. Standardizing on one simplifies the experience. All narrow down options are on one row.
• A search bar was included to further enhance the module.

I love a simple design that solves multiple problems. This was fun to discover and solve.

ThinkQuest and Think.com merged into one application. The design goal was to create a new simple navigation scheme that would provide access to all functionality.

Old Navigation for Think.com and ThinkQuest.org

Old Navigation Components

1. Application switch – Think.com, ThinkQuest, Library, Email
2. User identifier  – Name, My Account, Sign Out
3. Secondary applications – School Admin, Support, Help
4. Main tabs – Think.com: My Class, People, Projects & ThinkQuest: Competition, Library
5. Sub tab row under tabs, various functions

New Navigation

New Navigation Components

1. User identifier  – Name, My Account, Sign Out – moved to the right to balance the page
2. Main Tabs – Messages, My Home, School, World, Competition, Library, Help
3. Sub navigation – incorporated into the left column

Improvements include:

• Old design had 5 distinct regions for navigation and the new design has 3. Eliminating 2 regions  and organizing functionality around the 3 made it much easier to find all necessary tasks
• Users had a difficult time recognizing the row of sub-tabs under the main tabs. The new approach eliminates the problem by consolidating all sub-navigation to the left
• Organize the tabs around the user – My Home, My School, World – created a more natural introduction into the application
• Move the school admin tools to a more logical place – My School
• Collapse support into help and raise the profile of Help by including it as a primary tab
• Bring messages into the main tab interface – the icon animates with new messages

Projects is a web-based application within Think.com that encourages students and teachers to work together in teams and create content. Imagine a blog with multiple authors. We took it a step beyond the blog and designed tools that better facilitate collaboration, including a vote, brainstorm and askme. Challenges in designing this module included: membership, teacher involvement, publishing, what’s new, authorship tracking, and teacher content review.