I met briefly with Dan Shiffman to review the current state of dreamNodes.com and here are his thoughts:
- New interface is better & easier to read
- The text cloud works as a good & suitable visualization for dreams
- Dream Themes is currently limited to our list of words (lifted from an online source). Is kind of weak, content-wise. Immediately, it’s visible that certain words should be themes, especially since they’re interesting words/topics.
- Dream Themes – Consider allowing users more flexibility in growing this part of the database. Rather than allowing them to tag, or generate entirely new words, maybe limit them to selecting words from within their own entries. Would require AJAX to make any word selectable and add to their list of themes.
- Dream Themes page – try a different color for text instead of the theme word being larger (breaks readability of paragraph)
- Also on Dream Themes page – where it lists “more themes:” consider making a mini tag cloud so you can immediately get a sense of presence/weight of those other themes contained within this particular dream
- Impilicitly state that this is a public dream journal whose purpose it is to look for connections across users through their dreams. Anonymity could be setup in their accounts by allowing users to create any username for public display.
- In regards to adding a dictionary, could also be contributed to in the same way users could add to the dream themes listing (via ajax interface).
- Also, on intro/home page, don’t forget to explain what the dreamCloud is, especially to introduce new visitors to the site.
