[Actionchix] Simpler designs

[Mary Gardiner]

On Thu, Jun 29, 2006, Julie Bovee Hill wrote:
> I may be totally wrong about this, but my feeling is that they have a
> "get down to business", masculine and uninviting feeling about them,
> reminding me of the very male surroundings at my workplace.

I think this is a valid concern[1], but I'm also wary of acting on this
without more data. Once we have a short list of designs, which probably
won't be until after the move to Plone, I will most likely ask people to
survey various women they know and get feedback on which designs they
prefer. Ideally feedback will be of two kinds:
 - which appeals to you; and
 - how quickly can you figure out how to do the following tasks?

-Mary

[1] Be wary of the distortion introduced by not using a fixed font size.
Sites *so* commonly use a fixed font size of 6-10 pixels that the sites
that don't have a tendency to look "clunky" and "building block" to
people with 20/20 vision (to people without 20/20 vision of course --
and by "people with 20/20 vision" I'm including people who have vision
correction that works perfectly -- they look more "hey, wow, something I
can *read*). It can be fairer to do the comparison by manually shrinking
the font size to something more like the rest of the web.