3 ms·

Those are all terrible, they are all making the ridiculously incorrect assumption that it is confusing. It's possibly the only site that my Luddite family can

Those are all terrible, they are all making the ridiculously incorrect assumption that it is confusing. It's possibly the only site that my Luddite family can make full use of, without ever having asked me for help. The designs that change the layout make it less usable by preventing you from seeing everything it has to offer on one spectacularly ugly, usable page. The design that kept mostly everything the same but modernized the colors, fonts and spacing is still worse that the current site: the current site has an effect of the design dissappearing behind the content, and the redesign has the colors and highlights push past the links and draw my attention away.

timr 17y ago
I disagree. A few were bad, but in my opinion the one by the New York Times designer was a usability improvement, while still keeping things simple. The layout was practically identical. I think the problem you're experiencing is that craigslist is practically defined by its crappy design. Paradoxically, making craigslist better looking makes it less like craigslist. Every popular website experiences this kind of backlash when it is redesigned, because people get used to it the way it is, and don't want to re-learn what they already know.
- edmccaffrey 17y ago
  I'm not experiencing any problem. The NY Times design is a disaster. It banishes the useful events feature to the most obscure part of the page, while giving tons of space to a feature that would only be used by the tiniest fraction of the users. Most users don't have an account and will not take advantage of that feature. I'm not married to the bad design, and I don't think that a better design would inherently decrease usability; but these specific ones do, and the current design is usable. Uglyness doesn't necessarily mean poor usability.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
    - byrneseyeview 17y ago
      I see nothing on the current NYT page that winks or blinks. I do, however, see a site that draws the eye to the following elements, in order: * Top stories. * Sections. * More top stories, but less breaking news. * A list of stories, arranged by section. That's sane. Google News just spits them out according to an algorithm designed to handle multiple news sources. * Stories arranged by section.
      - kevbin 17y ago
        That's interesting, I have a totally different experience with the site. The animated ad for the Sunday magazine totally dominates my glance at the page. My eye is drawn along the horizontal and vertical rules to ads in blue, yellow, red. I don't immediately see "Top Stories" or "Sections"; I see the flash ad, then "IN SUNDAY'S TIMES", then a tab-headered table labeled "MEN'S 3RD ROUND|WOMEN'S 4TH ROUND". The site, to me, is a good example of the tension between old-school print standards and web-based media. If you take a given story I prefer to read the "PRINT"-ed version, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?hp http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?hp vs. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?pagewanted=print http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?pagew... The former is busy, moves, has lots of conflicting colors. The "printed" version is widely-spaced, simple. The sfgate.com website strikes a different balance that's seems further from its respective printed paper. It's similarly strewn with ads and blinkies, but they don't seem as jarring to me, it feels like a website while the nytimes feels like "the website of the newpaper".
  - timr 17y ago
    "The NY Times design is a disaster. It banishes the useful events feature to the most obscure part of the page, while giving tons of space to a feature that would only be used by the tiniest fraction of the users." I think you're exaggerating. The NYT designer's redesign is extremely similar to the existing layout, with perhaps a bit more spacing and better colors. You may not like it, but it's a stretch to call it a "disaster". When I said you have a problem, I wasn't trying to imply that you're irrational or confused. I just think you have an opinion that's rooted intensely in the way that you use the site (totally understandable), and you're trying to generalize that opinion to everyone. For example, I've never used the events feature that you find so important, and before I saw the NYT design I had no idea that you could create an account. If I didn't know it, maybe there are millions of other people who don't know about it either -- a good reason why the feature might be under-utilized.
    - edmccaffrey 17y ago
      > For example, I've never used the events feature that you find so important, and before I saw the NYT design I had no idea that you could create an account. If I didn't know it, maybe there are millions of other people who don't know about it either -- a good reason why the feature might be under-utilized. And that proves my point. The NY Times redesign dedicates lots of space to a new feature that relies on a feature that no one uses. Craigslist is designed specifically to be anonymous to the point where you don't require an account. Putting something that personalizes an account goes against one of the things that made them popular in the first place. This reply shows that you are posting on the redesign without doing any research. I don't use the events feature, but if you bothered to do any research before commenting then you would see that it is quite popular. The most cursory research on what the posts are will tell you that most people use the site to get/get rid of something (e.g., jobs, items, sex), or for the community features. A design that requires marginalizes one of these things to the least visible location is a disaster.
      - timr 17y ago
        "This reply shows that you are posting on the redesign without doing any research. I don't use the events feature, but if you bothered to do any research before commenting then you would see that it is quite popular." Why do you have to take such a hostile tone? I'm not attacking you. This isn't an argument that can be won or lost. That said, I still think you're exaggerating your case -- the redesign puts the event calendar on every page on the site, as opposed to the current design, where it only appears on a few pages. It may not be as prominent as you think it should be, but that's fairly subjective. Calling the design a "disaster" is a stretch. The bottom line is that neither one of us knows the practical implications of the redesign, nor could we, without doing usability testing. It's a matter of opinion.
- pssdbt 17y ago
  Wait, people actually use that events calendar on Craigslist? I've only seen people mistake it for personals and use it for advertising crap. I agree that the New York Times designer's version is a big improvement. A few things that really bug me about the current version that are fixed with this design include the left aligned headers / fixed page flow, more obvious search box, and fixed colors. In my opinion if you're going to use default browser link colors you should be using the default browser background color. Maybe that just bothers me though, who knows, I'm weird. Also, why do we need to see a list of countries / states / anything besides local cities? How is that not just more useless clutter?
mattcottingham 17y ago
It's almost like complaining that Drudge Report is ugly. It is, but that's missing the point.

timr 17y ago

I disagree. A few were bad, but in my opinion the one by the New York Times designer was a usability improvement, while still keeping things simple. The layout was practically identical. I think the problem you're experiencing is that craigslist is practically defined by its crappy design. Paradoxically, making craigslist better looking makes it less like craigslist. Every popular website experiences this kind of backlash when it is redesigned, because people get used to it the way it is, and don't want to re-learn what they already know.

edmccaffrey 17y ago
I'm not experiencing any problem. The NY Times design is a disaster. It banishes the useful events feature to the most obscure part of the page, while giving tons of space to a feature that would only be used by the tiniest fraction of the users. Most users don't have an account and will not take advantage of that feature. I'm not married to the bad design, and I don't think that a better design would inherently decrease usability; but these specific ones do, and the current design is usable. Uglyness doesn't necessarily mean poor usability.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
  - byrneseyeview 17y ago
    I see nothing on the current NYT page that winks or blinks. I do, however, see a site that draws the eye to the following elements, in order: * Top stories. * Sections. * More top stories, but less breaking news. * A list of stories, arranged by section. That's sane. Google News just spits them out according to an algorithm designed to handle multiple news sources. * Stories arranged by section.
    - kevbin 17y ago
      That's interesting, I have a totally different experience with the site. The animated ad for the Sunday magazine totally dominates my glance at the page. My eye is drawn along the horizontal and vertical rules to ads in blue, yellow, red. I don't immediately see "Top Stories" or "Sections"; I see the flash ad, then "IN SUNDAY'S TIMES", then a tab-headered table labeled "MEN'S 3RD ROUND|WOMEN'S 4TH ROUND". The site, to me, is a good example of the tension between old-school print standards and web-based media. If you take a given story I prefer to read the "PRINT"-ed version, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?hp http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?hp vs. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?pagewanted=print http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?pagew... The former is busy, moves, has lots of conflicting colors. The "printed" version is widely-spaced, simple. The sfgate.com website strikes a different balance that's seems further from its respective printed paper. It's similarly strewn with ads and blinkies, but they don't seem as jarring to me, it feels like a website while the nytimes feels like "the website of the newpaper".
- timr 17y ago
  "The NY Times design is a disaster. It banishes the useful events feature to the most obscure part of the page, while giving tons of space to a feature that would only be used by the tiniest fraction of the users." I think you're exaggerating. The NYT designer's redesign is extremely similar to the existing layout, with perhaps a bit more spacing and better colors. You may not like it, but it's a stretch to call it a "disaster". When I said you have a problem, I wasn't trying to imply that you're irrational or confused. I just think you have an opinion that's rooted intensely in the way that you use the site (totally understandable), and you're trying to generalize that opinion to everyone. For example, I've never used the events feature that you find so important, and before I saw the NYT design I had no idea that you could create an account. If I didn't know it, maybe there are millions of other people who don't know about it either -- a good reason why the feature might be under-utilized.
  - edmccaffrey 17y ago
    > For example, I've never used the events feature that you find so important, and before I saw the NYT design I had no idea that you could create an account. If I didn't know it, maybe there are millions of other people who don't know about it either -- a good reason why the feature might be under-utilized. And that proves my point. The NY Times redesign dedicates lots of space to a new feature that relies on a feature that no one uses. Craigslist is designed specifically to be anonymous to the point where you don't require an account. Putting something that personalizes an account goes against one of the things that made them popular in the first place. This reply shows that you are posting on the redesign without doing any research. I don't use the events feature, but if you bothered to do any research before commenting then you would see that it is quite popular. The most cursory research on what the posts are will tell you that most people use the site to get/get rid of something (e.g., jobs, items, sex), or for the community features. A design that requires marginalizes one of these things to the least visible location is a disaster.
    - timr 17y ago
      "This reply shows that you are posting on the redesign without doing any research. I don't use the events feature, but if you bothered to do any research before commenting then you would see that it is quite popular." Why do you have to take such a hostile tone? I'm not attacking you. This isn't an argument that can be won or lost. That said, I still think you're exaggerating your case -- the redesign puts the event calendar on every page on the site, as opposed to the current design, where it only appears on a few pages. It may not be as prominent as you think it should be, but that's fairly subjective. Calling the design a "disaster" is a stretch. The bottom line is that neither one of us knows the practical implications of the redesign, nor could we, without doing usability testing. It's a matter of opinion.
pssdbt 17y ago
Wait, people actually use that events calendar on Craigslist? I've only seen people mistake it for personals and use it for advertising crap. I agree that the New York Times designer's version is a big improvement. A few things that really bug me about the current version that are fixed with this design include the left aligned headers / fixed page flow, more obvious search box, and fixed colors. In my opinion if you're going to use default browser link colors you should be using the default browser background color. Maybe that just bothers me though, who knows, I'm weird. Also, why do we need to see a list of countries / states / anything besides local cities? How is that not just more useless clutter?

mattcottingham 17y ago

It's almost like complaining that Drudge Report is ugly. It is, but that's missing the point.