“Magazine” view for front page

During the gnome-software design sprint, held by Canonical in June, one issue we explored was how to make the initial view — the “front page” — more interesting.

The current front page is geared towards four kinds of discovery:

• A particular app you know the name of: search by name
• A task you want to perform, though you may not know the specific app: categories, or search for a generic term
• Apps that complement those you have already: “Recommended”
• Global recommendations: “Featured Application” and “Editor’s Picks”

Other modes of discovery aren’t currently represented on the front page, including:

• apps that are new or unusually popular this week/month
• apps that have a new tutorial or a new interview with a developer, in some form of news feed
• apps in a featured or temporary category.

The more interesting we can make the front page, the more likely people are to return, and to encounter software that is useful to them.

Here are the relevant sketches from the sprint. Most involve a new layout for the whole of the front page:

While one is confined to a news-like section on a front page that is mainly about the other discovery modes:

A next step in exploring this idea could be to produce higher-fidelity wireframes, to clarify the choice and order of components on the front page.