Do we know when we will complete graduation?

Question

The site graduated from beta status last September:
Congratulations, Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair is graduated!
The staged process of transition as described in that post then commenced.

The fifth bullet point hasn't yet happened:

For the second phase, the site will at a later date receive a full design from one of our designers, which will be packaged with an increase in the amount of reputation needed to access each privilege. This will be preceded by the designer pitching their ideas and soliciting feedback from the community.

I know that graduation is a phased process which takes as long as it takes and I am not complaining about the timing. But, is there an idea of when the design will come?

4-6 weeks?

(Related posts: Can we change the grey banner on the main site? and Let's think about key site design ideas)

Answer 1

Update:

I talked with people who are in the know on SE. They stated one of the designers left for a new venue (completely different company). From the looks of it, there may be nobody doing site designs right now, so we shouldn't expect anything soon. Originally I was told there were three sites ahead of us ... on second look, there's at least four: Law; Philosophy; Anime; Code Puzzles (whatever they're called - These are not in sequence order). Looks like it's going to be a while, so don't hold your collective breaths.

Answer 2

I asked Jon Ericson the question earlier ... here is his response:

@Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 Good question. It looks like Anime, Law and Philosophy are in line before y'all. These don't always go in order, but that's the goal.

That looks like three different sites before us, but shouldn't be long now. They do have more than one designer who is working these things.

I'll let you all know when I find anything else out.

Answer 3

Since we've been told Anime, Law and Philosophy are queued up ahead of us, I did some digging around on those sites' Meta.

From what's I've found, Anime graduated a full year ahead of us and they still have the generic template. The users of that site did however come up with a script that allows each user to have it's own theme, independently of the official theme, or lack thereof. Here's a link to that discussion on their Meta.

This could be a useful tool for us to try different designs each on our own and then post screenshots here for others to see.

Law and Philosophy both graduated 2 months before us, so their timelines would be more representative for our case. They still have the generic theme. The Anime SE, because of that tool of theirs, may have not given the designers enough or timely feedback for the official site design.

Answer 4

Found some more info on the SE Meta. It lists SE's with graduation dates and design dates. Some SE's got their designs the same day they graduated, most get it around the 6 month mark, a few waited almost 1 year, one SE (Anime & Manga) will have graduated 2 years ago later this month and are still waiting for a design.

Can we poke the bear to get an update?

Answer 5

Did some more digging on this. On the Philosophy Meta, somebody posted that design and graduation have become independent events, and state that custom designs are prioritised by site traffic.

Based on this,

• Board & Card Games (still in Beta)
• Homebrewing (still in Beta)
• Writers (still in Beta)
• Video Production (still in Beta)
• Programming Puzzles & Code Golf
• Quantitative Finance
• Project Management (still in Beta)
• Physical Fitness (still in Beta)

All have higher traffic/reach than us and don't have a custom design yet. If they do wait for a SE to at least be out of Beta, then Code Golf and Quantitative Finance are ahead of us.

Similar question and answer on Anime Meta and on Code Golf. The Code Golf answer suggests that SE is developing new features and are holding off on new site designs so that they can benefit from them.