NB: While I’m not a designer by trade, I do feel that I have an eye for product design and usability. So, take this all with a grain of salt. Also, in case there is any confusion, I’m not talking about designers redesigning their own sites. This is purely aimed at people redesigning other people’s stuff.
Lately it seems more and more people have been jumping on the “I redesigned Site X” bandwagon. To me, the redesign posts can be split, more or less, into two categories: aesthetic, and usability-driven. While there certainly is overlap between the two, most done as of late seem to be playing distinctly into one or the other (and unfortunately, mostly the former).
Aesthetic redesigns tend to leave untouched the structure, usability, etc. of the site, but it will likely see the addition of gradients, perhaps a modified color palette, bevels, chunky buttons, Lobster, and so forth. Some common reasons for these redesigns seem to be that the designer was bored, disliked the existing aesthetic, or perhaps wanted to practice.
The other camp, the usability-driven redesign, seems to generally be kicked off by the designer’s dislike of one or more perceived flaws in a site’s usability and/or its structure. A menu’s hierarchy might not feel “right” to the designer. Maybe an onboarding process seems to need polish, or perhaps it’s a more ambitious restructuring of the entire site.
Regardless of which style redesign one is undertaking, one thing is almost always missing: informed design decisions. The designer most likely does not have at their disposal detailed statistics or thorough knowledge of how users are using the site or application in the first place, only of their own usage. It seems that these designers are spending time (time they could be spending with their families or building cool stuff) “redesigning” things for the sake of it, and presenting these to the site authors as things they “must” do, because they’re “better”, when they are (more or less) totally in the dark about why specific design decisions were made in the first place.
I’m not saying these redesigns are completely evil — to the contrary: if folks want to spend some time practicing in Photoshop or Fireworks or Gimp or whatever, that’s great; I’m all for it. But, where I take issue is when redesigns are presented to the community and to the app’s creators as serious efforts worth considering. Without knowing the why behind a specific feature, flow, piece of UI, etc., it’s extremely difficult to make an informed decision about changing it. Layer styles and gloss do not a better experience make. Please, let the madness stop!
Bonus: I highly recommend checking out Cameron Moll’s Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign.
Discuss on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2575744
psql:
Me, Kyle & Keith are making a neat thing. It’s called Blah! .
A little something fun we’re hacking on in our spare time.
I’m in search of a home for two projects I’ve created, Facto and Streak.ly. Neither have received the love and attention they deserve as of late, but maybe you can change that. Both have received a nice amount of exposure and have users in the mid-thousands; both are (were) enjoyable projects to work on and certainly have bigger potential were the right person (or team) to be at the helm. If you’re interested in taking over one (or both), let me know - kyle at kylebragger dot com - and we can discuss the particulars.
This is much more about finding the best home for these projects than it is about the money — to that end, I’m open to working out a (mostly) non-cash deal: some kind of equity & revenue sharing is very much on the table.
Into The Forrst: On the Forrst invite system. -
I’m pleased to announce that we’ve just launched a substantial update to Forrst’s invite system.
We’ve employed an invite-only model since the early days of the site with a nice degree of success; it’s helped keep the community highly-focused, and ensured that only developers and designers are…
I’m thrilled about this one.
I just got a prestigious invite to the CIO Summits!
On behalf of our Board, I wanted to personally invite you into The CIO Summits because of your key role and experience.
The CIO Summits is an invitation-only group comprised of the very best executives and visionaries in the technology field. We meet monthly to exchange what is working, what is not, strategies and ideas. It is a confidential forum with dedicated groups of other successful technology executives whose only agenda is to help each other outperform.
My response:
Thanks for the invite, Jason! Although I have a list of requirements. Here is my rider:
• I require three slips at a premier sailing club within 15 minutes of the hotel. My smallest yacht needs a minimum of three (3) slips.
• A crew of: One (1) skipper with intercontinental sea experience, five (5) gold-seal sailors, one (1) masseuse, one (1) chef, and one (1) portrait painter (renaissance specialist preferred).
• I will need an array of extreme water sports equipment available at all hours. Kite and wind surfing equipment is priority. They should all be set to the goofy foot set.
• I need one room that faces the sunrise, and another that faces sunset. My bed will be on rollers so that my room attendant can silently roll it from the sunset room to the sunrise room, it is extremely important that I am naturally awoken by the sun. The room attendant must be female and “youthful”.
• A week before my arrival a B52 will transport my cars, we team will need a closed runway away from public view, a 18 wheeler capable of transporting a minimum of 5 cars, and a maintenance crew.
• I lost my left arm in a kite surfing incident in 2006, since then I have a hired an arm double to sit directly behind me during meals and fill in for my lost arm. For the illusion to work I need to always be seated against a false wall which my double (Aaron) can discretely slide his arm through the hole and my sweater. I will need full discretion from your team and the hotel.
• Cellphones will need to be banned on the hotel and conference premises, my psychic says the radio waves are limiting my arm’s regrowth.
Let me know when we should start getting my cars packed for transport.
Yours,William HHJD Wilkinson
Oh, Will.
I’m working on a full-length essay about building communities online and everything I’ve learned so far making Forrst, but here’s an outline to give a sense of what I’m thinking about.
Updated 5/8/11 to tweak the wording on a few items
Shaun Chapman: Announcing a new project -
Hey everyone, just wanted to post a quick update on what I’ve been up to lately as well as a few things I’m excited about.
First up, I’m announcing a new project that I’ve been working on with Adam Kopec, a brilliant designer and fellow VaynerMedia employee. It’s called Discovery. You can…
(Source: shaunchapman)
At the end of the month Jess and I will be moving to San Francisco — Where I will be joining Facebook’s ever so talented product design team. We’re really looking forward to experiencing a new city together but also sad to leave behind our friends and family. We’re hoping everyone comes and visits us at our new place. That’s all for now.
Congrats dude.
I thought it would be fun to do a quick post in honor of Forrst recently having its first birthday. Coincidentally, our birthday falls in January, which means I can be exceptionally lazy and combine “happy birthday to us” and “year in review” posts into one.
Now, without further ado, here it is.
Some interesting numbers since going online in January 2010, one year ago:
- 1,795,891 unique visitors came to Forrst
- 10,440,376 pages have been viewed
- users have spent the equivalent of 22.881 years on the site
- we grew to 21,024 registered users
- of those users, in a given month around 7,500 create content (that’s almost 36%!)
- there are 51,889 posts, with 411,651 likes and 182,090 comments
- at any given time, roughly 10,000 people are waiting for an invitation (we need to help get them in a bit faster; some have been waiting for months)
- any given day, users generate around 7,000 unique pieces of activity data
- there are between 250 and 400 users using Forrst at any given time
What a year it’s been! I had no idea that what started out as a tiny side project would evolve into a vibrant community. Other notables for 2010, and some of what’s in store for 2011:
- Gary Vaynerchuk invested a seed round in March and Forrst officially became a full-time project for me
- we decided to raise a small angel round, and Dave McClure joined as an investor in late December (NB: the round isn’t fully subscribed yet)
- Forrst gained its first two employees, Zack and Mike (both Forrst users)
- we launched The Cabin, a weekly deal feature
- we went through three major iterations of our UI and site architecture
- we were written about or mentioned multiple times in Observer, Smashing Magazine, Think Vitamin, Mashable, Techcrunch, SEOmoz, and many other blogs
- we launched Promoted Posts and on-site credits, Acorns
- finally, we worked with the excellent Pasquale and Adam
Coming in 2011:
- We launched Forrst.me into beta
- We have been invited to work out of Dogpatch Labs NYC (Thanks Peter, Matt, and crew!)
- The Cabin relaunched in partnership with AppSumo
- We’re rolling out a job board powered by Behance’s job network
- We announced Supporter accounts, and started accepting pre-registrations — over 500 members signed up in less than 24 hours
There’s a bunch more we’ve got in store for the product this year, including welcoming a designer to the team, helping members more easily collaborate, building a better notifications system, more partnerships, and so much more. There are also plans to really start exploring the ways Forrst can become a powerful business, through the job and recruitment avenues, our Supporter accounts, and so forth.
I realize that this post doesn’t fully do Forrst justice since so many incredible things came to pass last year that are difficult to properly convey, but I hope it provides a glimpse into the amazing journey I and the community have had. Thanks so much.
Very excited for this year.
I had the incredible pleasure of joining Mr. Dan Benjamin on The Pipeline this morning.
