Evaluation: Cloudworks

Thoughts/feedback on the new look and feel for cloudworks please!!

Gráinne Conole
1:34pm 8 July 2009

Hello!  Now I 'get it' I love Cloudworks.  I didn't see the old design so I can't compare, but this is beautiful and clean.

Everyone wants more of things they love, so I've got some feature requests:

1. there needs to be a quick way of getting back to clouds I am interested in - adding 'my clouds' and 'clouds I'm following' to the expanding menu under my username would be ideal, IMHO

2. I want to follow clouds I create by default.  I don't think that happens at the moment, but it seems like it would be reasonable default

3. I think people would find cloudworks more useful for learning resources if there were some ranking mechanisms.  A vote-based star system for clouds would be the obvious one, but viewing statistics would be a good additional measure

4. this one is a bit vague, but it feels to me that the 'content' of clouds does not have enough status on the page, especially when it it just a few lines, like in this one!  Despite its near-top-left position it sometimes seems like the least important element on the page. 

5. it isn't completely clear (to me) how 'links' 'extra content' and 'discussion' are meant to divide up - what is supposed to go where?  what is each area intended for?  could we have some more guidance on these please? I think links is an interesting tools that might be worth developing

Thanks!  I'm only asking because I like it:)

Amyas

Amyas Phillips
9:41am 29 January 2010

I've got another one!

6. for extra socialbility: a 'following this cloud'list.  The problem with this one is that you'll probably have to also introduce a preferences setting about whether or not to allow others to see what clouds you're following

Amyas Phillips
9:45am 29 January 2010

I only now noticed there is a view counter at the top of the page already!  It would be great if this could be used to help people find popular or high-ranked resources

Amyas Phillips
9:48am 29 January 2010

7. prob okay for now, but at some point there will need to be support for long discussion threads.  Maybe an age-out mechanism, modified by reader votes and/or being made'sticky' by the cloud owner? Maybe 'reply to this discussion post'.  It's a tricky one - you don't necessarily want to replicate a forum's functionality

8. multi-owner clouds.  Not urgent.

Amyas Phillips
9:55am 29 January 2010

Hi Amyas,

Glad you like the site and thanks all the ideas - really really useful. I've added the all to our list of feature requests.

Just to let you know, we've been thinking of adding some sort of voting for a while and I'm going to be working on it a week or two.

Juliette

Juliette Culver
1:56pm 29 January 2010