In developing the design of our application, we looked closely at other education sites, but more eagerly at successful RIAs like YOUTUBE and FACEBOOK. We felt that COMARKER’s generic appeal would work best if it broke away from currently available education sites and focused more in the zone of SOCIAL NETWORKING.

To capture our design perspective you need to take a look at our application, on which we have spent two years already. Your treatment of the commercial pages should prepare users to encounter the COMARKER application; thus certain design elements should be similar, if not exactly the same. In particular, color-palate choices should harmonize with our core metaphor.

When we describe the application as stripped down, we mean that we have avoided textures and stuck to basic tones. Most of our design critiques of the application resulted in REMOVING elements that were not ‘necessary’ and simplifying processes to make actual work smoother and easier. We aimed for the site to be visually attractive but simple, which of course is the most difficult of all tasks. Your approach to the commercial pages should be similarly ‘practical’ and minimal, and at the same time harmonious with the application.

COMARKER appeals to teachers. Now, I suspect that when most people think of teachers they think of aging (failed) intellectuals upholding dusty traditions, forcing children through dry textbooks toward state-imposed examinations. But COMARKER appeals to teachers, and teachers don’t see themselves as others see them. Instead, try to think of teachers the way they think of themselves.

First of all, most teachers like to think of themselves as YOUNG. They spend most of their time with young people, so just as my cat thinks she’s human, teachers think of themselves as teenagers.

Teachers want to have FUN, and they want their students to have FUN. They want to be CREATIVE and INSPIRING. They want to encourage BOLDNESS and IMAGINATION. They want to feel good about themselves.

COMARKER is for teachers, not for parents. Thus our design must reach out to the teacher self-image: a Mac-user, inspired and fun, bold and imaginative, seeking freedom from stodgy traditions and above all seeking freedom from drudgery. COMARKER should point the way to freedom, freedom from the drudgery of marking essays.

COMARKER is an Internet application available anywhere; its key dynamic is collaboration, which gives rise to the design motif of transparency, documents laid upon documents. Our LOGO says it all really. As you point out though, transparency can easily disturb legibility. This comment is particularly relevant to COMARKER; because our challenge is to return meaningful feedback, feedback that helps students understand how to improve their writing, and meaningful collaborative feedback that makes the essay-marker’s job far easier. The ghost images in the background of our LOGO represent other documents, other comments. COMARKER aims to reduce and simplify the repetitive task of marking essays by making use of all the other work done by other markers — collaboration leads to freedom.

Overall, our design concept applies two metaphorical perspectives, the CLOUD (read ‘Information Cloud’) as viewed from the cloud, and the SEA as viewed from the cloud. Teachers long for liberation from their drudgery, and COMARKER represents that liberation, freedom to soar, freedom to merge in tropical warmth, freedom to bask, afloat in a sea of collaboration facilitated by COMARKER.

Teachers use MACS. In the application design we have aimed to reflect some of the key design motifs of applications like iTunes and devices like the iPHONE. The MAC designers have captured the imaginations of teachers, and we want to associate COMARKER with this brand, which is hip and young.

Above all, please remember that our commercial pages should appeal to teachers, not as others see them, but as they see themselves.