redesign - 2/2 - TheWayoftheWeb

A redesign and new look for Twitter?

July 17, 2008 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Twitter users were a bit shocked to suddenly find their pages looking rather different at 11pm on Thursday, July 17, 2008.

Sadly user error meant I didn’t capture a screen grab, but I can say it was more of a lick of paint than a rebuild, with a ‘rougher’ look, and less clean lines…

Considering the second round of VC funding, the purchase of Summize to become Twitter search (which I’ve been meaning to comment on until life interfered), and the hint of a redesign, I think there’s enough evidence of major movement in Twitterville. Could this be the start of a rapid move to money and repaying the investors?

Edit: Techcrunch managed to get a screencap. Probably why they get a slightly bigger audience than 140char!

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Filed Under: twitter Tagged With: moment, money, purchase, redesign, summize, twitter, vc funding

If you want a busy homepage, let your users organise it

May 24, 2008 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

My interest in web design is generally based on usability and accessibility, due to the fact I’m not the most artistic person in the world. I can appreciate attractive designs, but there are far better people than me in the world at creating them.

But something has struck me that I think could be a good rule for web architecture and design, based on my own experience of website redesigns, and trying to cram an awful lot of information onto a homepage in the fear that if it doesn’t appear, no-one will ever see it or find it. So here it is:

If you’re forcing homepage contents on your users keep it simple. If you want it to be cluttered, let your users pick how they organise it – or what it on it.

This is backed up by a few examples. For instance, Google is the oft-quoted archetypal example of a very simple homepage. And one that could make more money for the company if it was covered in banner ads – but that would wreck the essence of it’s success.

Meanwhile users can be overwhelmed by busy homepages – but when was the last time you saw an empty Facebook or Myspace profile, or an empty Netvibes page? Users are happy to have a cluttered page, as long as they’ve been able to create and organise the clutter – just the same as people are happy to work at a cluttered desk if they’ve worked out the clutter themselves.

The recent BBC homepage redesign is a good example of moving in this direction -without hopefully overwhelming too many users. Personally I was disappointed it’s still a walled silo of BBC content only – but it’s a start. The Google homepage - keeping it simple

An example Netvibes page created by a user

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: accessibility, busy, cluttered, design, google, homepage, netvibes, redesign, rule, simple, usability, web, web design

Building and keeping a community

March 13, 2007 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Not a day goes by without the launch of a new social site, or the relaunch of a brand with social networking as the new focus.

This isn’t a bad thing, but there seems to be some pretty big problems in between what website creators think is needed, and what website users actually want.

Personally, I see it as the chance to set up everything for the website users to build their own village. You can make the land flat, put a river nearby, or even plumb in gas and electricity supplies. But you can’t force the community to come and live there, unless they want to. (Spot the echo of Second Life in that analogy)

Myspace is often derided for being clunky to use, but it was the first place that community settlers found and made their own. Once it become a sprawling city, the early adopters started moving to the Bebo, Faceparty and Facebook suburbs. The business crowd decided to start commuting to LinkedIn.

If you think about these people moving around the web, you can easily see ways to create better sites. Look at urban regeneration for driving people back to cities (redevelopment/realignment of websites). Look at how cosmetic changes such as trees and flowers can improve an area (Small design changes). Think about consistent navigation (Ever been lost in a big city…the London A-Z is a site map)

With the Web 3.0 hoopla including ideas of a virtual ‘Second Life‘-style web you can walk around, it’s easy to get caught up in the primitive geek fantasy of virtual reality. But people already behave in a way that echoes human traits in real life since man first evolved

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