OSS Sketches from early 2026
by Alberto (@amartinezgaraulet-062a)
This page overviews the sketches done near the start of the design and development of OSS 2.0, including design concepts for the Zakros Homepage, the Forum, Cohorts, and the authoring experience of a post.
Many ideas here still hold up to the latest version of OSS, but some may have already been revised or thought about differently.
All images below can be found on the drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vruW1e9QnBZnSv1nEQqGZpmMUXU9dZEJ?usp=share_link
You can view all of these directly on the Zakros Prototypes Figma File ->
You can also view earlier wireframes and design concepts on the OSS Phase 01 Ideation Figjam file ->
COHORT
This first Cohort prototype explores all they key features and pages within a Cohort. These include the FEED, ROOM, CALENDAR, RESOURCES and MEMBERS. This presentation uses the work from a Digital Fabrication class I had at MICA, since it was one of the only classes I had where we did document some of the process on a class website.
FEED: Displays user posts and can be filtered and sorted
ROOM: This is the discussion area, with multiple threads that can be opened and a live meeting room for discussion.
CALENDAR: Create and keep track of events happening in the Cohort.
RESOURCES: A storage area to add important documents. This is the only area where uploading media is not considered a Post.
FEED VIEW 01
The FEED view is the landing point for any cohort, where posts are aggregated and you can see what everyone is working on. At the top, we have the Cohort Navigation, followed by a secondary breadcrumb navigation, and right under is the Cohort Title, short description, and some metadata (here displaying the amount of members, and how many of them are currently active).
Here, I decided to add a small notice counter on the top right, currently highlighting that there is a live session in progress. The current placement is not final, and we could it imagine it functioning for various kinds of notices. Then, below this top section is an upcoming events marker. Depending on a cohort’s needs, this section could be changed by a cohort admin to display other kinds of information (Instead of events, it could be an important document, for example)
FEED VIEW 02
Scrolling a little down the page, we are now completely immersed in the cohort’s feed. Here, all of the member’s posts are aggregated into a unified feed. This feed is be navigated by scrolling and can be filtered and sorted with different parameters. Filtering parameters could include member toggles, date ranges, projects, etc.. Sorting could be done in ascending or descending order, or by surfacing posts you have not opened up to the top.
Meta data in the feed is kept simple. We are currently displaying a preview image, the post title, the author and the project it has been posted to. We might also want to add a posting date, but besides that we probably want it to be minimal to allow the content to breathe.
FEED VIEW 03
As we scroll, more posts within the cohort appear. In this test cohort, there a five members each working on a variety of projects, creating a diverse mosaic of art and process. A key thing to note here is that users will often add images to their post that will not work well within the post preview frame. As in, some posts might only have vertical images, so if they are made to fit to the horizontal post preview window, most content will be cut off. To resolve this, we can give users some simple image preview editing controls, such as fitting image to frame, scale to fit, or even some light layout options. On the top row we can see these three preview modes.
From left to right: 1. The top left post has its preview window in a simple layout showing three vertical images. 2. The top middle post has it’s image as scale to fit (Covering the entire preview window) 3. The top right post has it’s image fitting within the preview window.
ROOM
In this prototype, I am proposing that every Cohort come with a ROOM (See more about Rooms in FORUM page). Essentially, a room is where discussions happen, both in a threaded format and potentially in live calls as well. Allowing for chat conversations and live conversations to happen in the same place centers our philosophy of active collaboration and discussion, and separates it from typical forum structures. Within a room, many topics can be opened, where individual threaded discussions take place. You join live meetings of the cohort directly in the room.
In a sense, the feed represents the studio with a bunch of open sketchbooks and pieces in progress laid out on tables, whereas the room represents a roundtable where artists gather and share ideas.
CALENDAR
The Calendar is where cohorts can create and organize events, meetings, sessions, workshops, etc.. I called this section Calendar so that it can be “event-type agnostic”. As in, it doesn’t make sense to cal this section “events” if the cohort is a classroom that only makes critique or discussion meetings. But it also doesn’t make sense to call it “Meetings” or “Sessions”, because there might actually be Cohorts on working on Events and Workshops. Cohort admins can control wether the event is open access or cohort member only, which would also determine wether the event goes to be displayed an “event discovery” page or something like that.
MEMBERS
The Calendar is where cohorts can create and organize events, meetings, sessions, workshops, etc.. I called this section Calendar so that it can be The Members page is a simple directory that links to all members of the Cohort. I am not sure that this page will need any more features beyond this.
USER POST 01
Clicking on a post on the feed takes us to a full screen view of the post, immersing the viewer in the artist’s work and ideas. For the post above, I am showing how a user could tailor the visuals and layout of their post to their personal work and identity.
USER POST 01 + SIDEBAR
Clicking and/or dragging the right hand bar expands the post’s description and data, showing more info about the post. This is also where can open the post’s comments or share it internally or externally. I haven’t worked on this yet, but I think it would be interesting to have a flexible comment panel. You could leave comments on the comment thread, or like in a google doc, highlight certain areas or text on the page to have located comments, also appearing on the comment thread.
USER POST 02
Here, there is another post by the same artist (you can see they have a certain aesthetic to their posting style). More importantly, this post is part of the same project as the previous post. I realized we want a seamless way to navigate between posts of the same project without having to leave the page and going to the main project page, only to go back into a post. To solve this, I am proposing a little navigation bar that you can use to click through posts of the same project ( you can see this bar above the post contents and below the cohort navigation).
This is a rough implementation of the idea, and there are quite a few things I can see to improve this navigation, but the main idea is that you can remain immersed within a project and browse through the process without having to leave elsewhere.
USER POST 03
Here we are looking at a different post, by a different artist within the cohort. This is to simply show how different artists will create vastly different styles for their posts.
USER POST 03 + SIDEBAR
Here we are looking at a different post, by a different artist within the cohort. This is to simply show how different artists will create vastly different styles for their posts. Now showing the post’s description.
FEED LIGHT VIEW
A quick pass at OSS in light mode.
POSTING JOURNEY
This journey follows an OSS contributor making a test post.
This journey follows an OSS contributor making a test post.
- Starting from the Zakros homepage, the user is inspired by something they see and decides to go make a post.
- They can quickly open their dashboard through the top navigation, seamlessly transitioning from the homepage to OSS. (They are already logged in)
- From here, they are able to start a post immediately, only a click away. In fact, we might want to make sure that a user can start a post in just one click no matter where they are in the dashboard
- The Posting panel opens, which allows the user to write their ideas seamlessly, add media, and even lightly format and stylize the page.
- The user then can title the post, add tags, add a description, and assign the post to a project (or multiple!). The project determines in which communities and areas the post will display in, ensuring the right people get to see it.
- They hit post, and done!
This flexible posting framework allows for the creation of quick and messy posts, but also would have the capability for the user to really edit and customize the experience.
FORUM | ROOMS & TOPICS
Ideation for Forum Layout and Linking Forum Discussions with OSS Posts.
- In this concept, the Forum is comprised of rooms to allow for curation and moderation.
- Subscribe to a room to get notified of new topics and updates
- Keeps track of contributors and contributions
- Topics, and replies in the thread, can be bookmarked, saving them to a personal collection
- On a Topic page, right hand bar displays amount of posts and helps you navigate the conversation
- On any response, you can link OSS posts directly into your text. This feature allows to extend conversations about posts into all parts of the dashboard experience.