Redesigning Macroinvertebrates.org - Macro Level Homepage Sketches

By Ahmed Ansari

We are exploring redesign ideas by looking at different navigation strategies.  The homepage of the website is particularly important since it frames the way people approach the site and make sense of how it works. In this sense, questions like "Does the homepage reflect the structure of a key or a field guide? Does it gradually guide users step-wise through content by navigating a tree-like structure or does it give immediate visual choices and a less structured, pre-determined way to access to all the content? Whether the insects in the collection are being presented visually in the form of a list, a grid, or some other synoptic view become very important to structuring the following interactions with the site content.

We have started this ideation process by sketching out several possible iterations of what a synoptic view homepage could look like. Sketching enables us a fungible way to quickly explore decisions like whether to use lists or grids views, have the insects appear uniformly  to scale, where in the interaction sequence to include family and genera level information, and in what stages of the ID process do different kinds of filtered and comparative views become important. 

These sketches are starting to explore different design variables:
a) grid vs list views
b) levels (order, family, genus)  displayed;
c) reckoning with scale considerations
d) search/ filter options at the home page level
e) comparative views selections

​This explorations are important to enable the project team to develop a shared vocabulary and set of inscriptions to discuss and debate the merits of different design solutions. 

Over the next few months our sketches will be translated into wireframes and mockups to get a better idea of how they might look as they get integrated into an interactive digital platforms.