Once again we teamed up with the wonderful folks at IxDA, a network dedicated to the professional practice of Interaction Design, Johnny Holland, an open collective, talking, sharing and finding answers about all aspects of interaction design and for the first time with ChallengePost, a marketplace for challenges. Together we invite the wider community to join us in this challenge, develop concepts and submit them to our sites.
[Update] This Design Challenge is now closed. A total of 17 solutions were submitted in the first phase of the Design Challenge and analyzed by the Weave team. After an long round of discussion and carefully going through all submissions, the Weave team decided to return to the drawing board and better clarify the experiences Weave wants to enable, instead of moving this challenge to the second phase. The submissions significantly helped the team to identify potential interaction models and design directions. You can view all entries with short explanations of the respective concept on the ChallengePost website.
For this Design Challenge, we are looking for innovative solutions to answer the question: "Visualizing your browser data - How can we provide intuitive and useful visual representations of your browser data (such as bookmarks, history, tabs, stored credentials etc.) on a web page?"
As we spend more time on the web, we accumulate more data. We bookmark sites we like, we create accounts on various social networks, we have multiple tabs open as we follow wikipedia loops and so on. We are also browsing the web from multiple devices, on the go.
This presents some unique challenges that end up fragmenting our browsing experience. We aren't able to successfully take our entire browsing experience with us, suspend and resume where we left off as we may with our Tivos.
The Mozilla Weave project helps address some of these issues by allowing you to securely store and synchronize all of that magic - the bookmarks, passwords, tabs etc - seamlessly as you go about your life. It does impose one requirement though - access to Firefox.
As much as we love Firefox and want to see it everywhere, we also recognize there may be valid everyday scenarios where that isn't practical - airport kiosks, libraries, parts of Redmond, WA etc. That doesn't mean *you*, as a Firefox user, should suffer.
We want you to have access to your important data, always, at your fingertips, from anywhere. Since the web is ubiquitous, the simplest way we could imagine making this possible is via a web page.
However, since we are talking about various types of data accumulated across years, across multiple devices, we would love to get some fresh, creative ideas on how to visually present this information.
To give you a better idea on which data Weave currently stores and syncs, we compiled a sample JSON file plus description - use this data to model your concept close to real-world data:
The program starts in the first week of September and runs for 10 weeks. The Design Challenge is divided into two phases - each running for five weeks.
During the first phase we ask you to produce a concept, mockup and an explanation of your thinking behind it. A mockup can be anything from a low-fi sketch on a napkin to a high-fi video presenting your concept. The Mozilla Labs Weave team will provide feedback to participants at two check-in points in week three and four.
At the end of phase one the Weave team will select the most promising concepts, which will move forward into phase two. In this phase you will refine your mockup and turn it into an interactive HTML/CSS/JavaScript prototype (don't worry - we can help you doing this!). During phase two the Weave team will provide regular feedback, weekly check-ins and support via email/irc.
Participants are encouraged to share their ideas, approach and progress on their blogs - we will aggregate this information and provide a forum for open discussion, ideation and exchange.
At the end of phase two the Weave team will again select the most promising concepts and work with their respective creators on integrating them into Weave.
To make the whole process as easy as possible, we partnered with the great team at ChallengePost, who kindly provide their submission system for this Design Challenge.
Please make sure you follow our @mozconcept Twitter account for last-minute updates.
Copyright © 2005-2010 Mozilla. All rights reserved.
