UI design proposal

[iansampaio]

I meant to publish longer ago, but 2 big projects kept me too busy to do so.

First lets introduce myself: I'm a (motion) graphic designer based in Oslo. A couple of months ago after I saw the "call for hackers" at EFF, I wrote to Range offering myself to help the project with design and UI, who introduced me to Michelle Reamy. Michelle has told me about the project, the current situation and explained me how I could help... being the mobile version of the UI the most urgent.

About that time, I manage to throw some sketches but I got caught with daily projects and today I ran onto them and thought I should share with the parts involved. So here it:

Comments and suggestions are more than welcome. As well, I'd be glad to explain my thoughts behind my concept.

Thanks everybody!

[Rangak]

Thanks, Ian. This is interesting. I am very interested in your thinking that lead to this concept, especially contrasting it with the dashboard we have today.

It is great that we have you taking a fresh look at the UI.

[iansampaio]

It is my pleasure to be collaborating to OW :-)

Before I explain the concept let me try to quickly tell my first thoughts when I first read about OW: it is an amazing project, I see myself using (but I maybe won't get as far as buying a special router), but it should be a good looking product, trustworthy, with a killer set tools, beautiful data, easy to use and inspire all sort of people to give it a try, install on their router, learn about Open Wireless, join the movement and be so happy with it to the point of telling the world about it. It should be pleasant and easy to install, and instead of restricting to a few specific routers it should cover as many manufactures and models as possible, and apply the restrictions to the model's available functionalities (can share, can see actual ISP speed and response, scale of security from 1 to 5) giving users awareness of what they are getting before they install, and recommend them other models as they seek to expand their current router's limitation. That in my opinion would be the formula to expand consistently and globally.

Regarding the proposal, I don't mean to analise nor criticize the current website and UI, but I agree with points made by Tor Løvskogen Bollingmo, who has made a great presentation with his suggestions to the service and visual design of OW (not sure if it has been posted or made public).

So, the concept in question is my vision of that tool: easy to use and with the look and feel of a mobile app. The vibrante colors differentiate the 2 network: blue for the private and green for public. The friendly dark background, contrast with the colors to inspire trust and efficiency; It distributes the functionality along pages/screens building the depth that separates the basic Monitoring tasks: controls & information (turn public wifi on/off and show password of private network), from the Configuration tasks, keeping the more advanced controls in deeper levels, for the users looking for them.

My choice of font was Proxima Nova for its good readability and flexibility at small and big font sizes... and yes it is trendy! :-)

I'm looking forward to get feedback, questions, suggestions, as well point issues and challenges it might represent. The idea is that I continue the design of this and other screens of the mobile as well the desktop's version.