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Hi Ferdy,
It took me few days before I found time to review your site. The funny thing is since the concept has been posted you improved it (more pictures on the homepage = good).
General remarks
Let me say at first that you have created a cute site which is beautiful from graphical design perspective with perfectly working sweet gizmos giving instant gratification. Wow, really amazing level of craftsmanship.
I must say I like the idea as there are a lot of animal lovers around (myself included). That being said I'm under the impression that somewhere during development you got derailed.
My feeling is you wanted to create a site for nature lovers to view and share beautiful beautiful photos. Unfortunately you created a SOCIAL BEHEMOTH with nature photos in the background.
IMHO with a little redesign you could bring the initial spirit back and make admiring nature and learning about it the primary focus. This is what your target group really wants.
Another element which is not obvious for me would be your business model. It's not visible at this stage but I hope you have something up your sleeve :)
A little about details
Notification bar should not move the whole page down because this is very disturbing for the users. I would make it on an overlay or somewhere inside the page closer to where the action was initiated.
System does not need to display notification to every activity like for example: 'comment added' as user can see this comment appear. There is more notifications like this.
Photo upload is a slow, tedious and not pleasurable experience. I would suggest redesigning this process to something more modern and user friendly otherwise the fuel for the website (photos) will not appear fast enough to keep users interested.
Hope this helps because I can see great future for a cute site about nature if user experience is improved.
Keep up the good work!
Michael
(user experience designer & strategist)
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Ferdy Christant commented:
By the way, in this blog post I announce the change you mentioned (more images on the homepage):
http://ferdychristant.com/blog/archive/DOMM-88CKUY
It ends with "Less non-sense, more photo viewing", right inline with your feedback here :)
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Michael + Webcardinals commented:Ferdy, "putting it back in balance" IMHO is not enough to make it worth using by people. Balance has to be shifted strongly in the direction of enjoying viewing of nature photos.
Michael, thank you for your kind words and for taking the time to review my concept in such detail.
Allow me to pick a few of your feedback items and respond to them:
Regarding the balance of social vs image viewing you make a good point. I very much agree that the photo viewing itself should improve and be more dominant. I'm working on it :)
At the same time, JungleDragon is also an experiment in reputation systems. I am experimenting with ways to make it rewarding and attractive for users to contribute. I even envision JungleDragon to have much more game-like elements than it has now. It is a vision I have and I may fail at it. I find games to be prime examples of engagement and am trying to apply some of those concepts to this web application. I definitely should be concerned with the prime objective of the application and its users, but I am also not afraid to try a few different things. By the way, I would really appreciate the redesign recommendations you have that would bring things back in balance.
I definitely need a business model, but it is too early for now. This is a pet project with a vision that is in an early stage. I am of course already considering business models (ads, reselling photos, prints, paid memberships, donation model, partnering with WWF or National Geographic). I think finding one that fits will be the biggest challenge of JungleDragon as a concept. Personally, I think it is on par with a site like Wikipedia, providing a service for all of mankind to enjoy. The trouble is, who pays for that?
Details
Duly noted. Although I see other sites doing it the same way like I do, I will check how it looks when it becomes an overlay.
Good point. I want to make more user actions Ajax-like, meaning it does not refresh the page and is instant. Voting on a comment is one such example, it does not need a notification each time.
It is already on my todo list to allow for multiple file uploads. Is there anything else you recommend to make it more friendly?
Excellent review, both flattering and educational!