Website Design
Website Development
About Monero
The Monero coin is a cryptocurrency that focuses strictly on privacy and fungibility which enable it to do one thing and do it well: be a currency. Utilizing state-of-the-art privacy technology in its blockchain, Monero is one of the most exciting open-source projects currently in development. It is stewarded by the Monero Project, and has no corporate backing. Instead, it is developed by an idealistic, dedicated community that wants to change the world, and add to the global privacy conversation.
Goals
01
Create a modern and fresh look while staying away from the latest web design trends in order to show the philosophy of an open source community-based project that is different from profit-oriented websites.
Create a design system that would ensure design consistency on all pages, especially on the new ones that are generally created by any member of the community, with or without web building knowledge.
02
03
Reorganize available information in a more user-friendly way with the help of an information architect in the community.
Maintain responsive website functionality without using Javascript
04
05
Ensure that the website looks great not only in the most popular browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox or Chrome, but as well in the Tor browser, taking into account the slow speeds of mixnet technologies.
Challenges & Solutions
#crowdpleasing
Working in a large, decentralized community has been a challenge since no single person can speak for the community, and every member has their own ideas and preferences. We have taken into consideration all expressed suggestions and made several design concepts with a number of revisions in order to create a website that would meet the community needs, and received a positive feedback upon completion. We navigated the great challenge of weighing community opinion (made up almost entirely of non-designers), and being firm on critical user experience decisions that ran the risk of being ‘designed-by-inexperienced-committee’.
#nojavascript
Even though Javascript is widely used in modern front-end website building, we have found unconventional solutions to implement interactive features in the Monero website using CSS3 technology.
#opensourcevibes
The majority of the cryptocurrency space was very ‘hype’ focused, in order to raise the price of their coins. By contrast, Monero’s community tries to avoid hype, with the belief that the technology will speak for itself. With this mentality, there was many opinions of small embellishments being ‘too flashy’. Finding a balance between a grassroots, ‘self-made’ feel, and professional and clean design made all the difference.
#easyedit
The content of the website is ever changing, and anyone can contribute to it (just as the Monero Project as a whole). This means that the structure needed to be simple, but flexible, as future contributors (who may or may not have any experience with web design) would want to contribute tutorials, user-guides, events, and more. The solution was documenting every major thing a future contributor might want to do, going so far as a thorough step-by-step guide on how to accomplish even small tasks.