Wendy Owen's dashboard

Thanks, Stephanie. I will definitely check these out.

Sorry you are feeling that way. Can you be more specific about the problems you are having? If you give us some more info we can probably help you out.

Funny you should mention that. We've revved the design a bit since we posted the comp you are looking at. In our new design we've tied a customizable message about the company's involvement in the community more directly to their customer support links. Hopefully this approach will address your feedback. Thanks for the great ideas. And let us know what you think when the new design is live. – Wendy Owen, on May 13, 2009 20:44

Thanks for your feedback, Ben. We've moved the new page from design and into development and you'll be glad to hear that the input box has a much more prominent place at the top of the page. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of the new design when we release it at the end of the month.

Thanks for the input, Sam. I love the list of words that you suggest and will bring them to rest of the team once we begin that process.

I also wanted to say thanks to Texas Jim for his comments. I love clean designs and agree that Photoshop filters are often overused.

Thanks, Amy, for giving us all a bit of history around the Get Satisfaction logo. Since I wasn't here when it was designed, it's helpful to hear more about what its intention is and what it is trying to communicate. I do think that it does a pretty good job at trying to represent something that looks like an old-fashioned seal of approval. And even though the company is a couple years older than when it was designed, this intention (or communication goal) is still applicable to what our brand is about today.

That said, I can definitely see where Sam is coming from when he talks the fact that the logo would family well with page elements that have more of a retro feel to them. My friend Tim has a photography site which uses a lot of elements that look aged (http://www.gasperak.com/). It's easy for me to imagine our logo succeeding more in an environment that had that kind of overall approach. Of course that's not right in terms of what we are trying to do with our product. But from a purely aesthetic standpoint, it would work well.

Even though I think a logo's main job is to communicate clearly, my big beef with the logo is that it is very hard to work with and doesn't really read so clearly when it is a smaller size. It also looks best when it overlays two separate spaces or colors which is a bit restricting. But that's the day to day designer talking in me. Not me acting as the creative director.

Someday (perhaps as early as the end of this year) we will redesign the logo. So I'm curious to know what you think it should be communicating. I always start a logo exercise by defining the brand elements -- or words that express the feelings and ideas -- that a logo should convey. Then you can measure whether it (and the surrounding page elements) are succeeding in their communication goals. So in your mind, what are the concepts Get Satisfaction embodies or should be designing to?

Thanks so much for this interesting discussion.

Hi Sam,

Thanks so much for your feedback and all of your ideas. We completely agree with you about getting the input box higher on the page and are in the process of adjusting that in our design. We're also working to include the faces of the community in a more meaningful way.

We hope to launch the revised page soon and would love to know what you think once we do.

Best,
Wendy

I love both of these ideas, Ian. I'll run them by the rest of the folks on the product team and see if I can make them happen.

Hi Rene. We're talking about moving the top level home page in a similar direction to the concepts you mention in your post. The top level page does need to feel more alive. Thanks again for all of your great ideas. – Wendy Owen, on April 09, 2009 17:47