The first thing to any web design project is to think about the audiences for the site. The bySwarm site has three types of audiences to it: a visitor, a small contributor, and a significant contributor. The design needs to address all of these groups. Visitors are pretty easy to identify because they are not going to be logged into the site. They will need to be told what bySwarm is, to be given some examples of good contributions to further interest them, and to be told why they should join and participate. I see small contributors as those that occasionally post in the forums or perhaps submit other content to the site irregularly. They can be treated as a mix of the two groups and have some of the static content removed since they will not need to have it explained. The significant contributors are those people that are contributing content multiple times per week, perhaps even multiple times per day and will need to be presented a site that functions very much as a tool.

For those familiar with online social communities, this follows the 90-9-1 principle in that 90% of the users will quietly lurk, 9% will contribute on occasion, and 1% will frequently and regularly contribute. The point for all of this effort is to draw people deeper into the site while also making it more useful for the regular contributors.

While Christmas is over now, I will be somewhat away from my computer for the next couple days. Hopefully I will be able to get some more solid time on the new design by the end of this week. A new year and a new site.