Over the years I’ve worked with some great clients, some great companies and managed to develop some great work as a result. However, there are times as a freelance designer when you wonder where your next project is coming from. Finding myself in that situation, I thought it quite fortuitous when Mr. Moll launched the ‘Authentic Jobs‘ website.
Not being too sure how the process would unfold I took the blanket approach. I narrowed down the specific jobs I was interested in and sent emails to the companies – five in all. After a few quick conversations, a phone interview or two, and some reference calls I had landed 4 out of the 5 jobs. Though all of the projects I worked on were fun, one of the highlights was working on the StyleFeeder re-design.
A socially driven approach to shopping, StyleFeeder allows users to profile their great finds and leverage a network of other users with similar tastes to find new items. Sounds cool… Unfortunately, although I wouldn’t characterize their old site design as bad, it definitely didn’t communicate the exciting new social shopping mecca that was being created.
Breaking things down
Whenever I approach a new project I do my best to boil things down to their essence – in this case, I guess the ‘essence’ could be characterized by three words I wanted the new design to communicate: lucid, vibrant, and fun. I thought my efforts would be most effective by concentrating on four areas of the homepage:
- The header: Here I wanted to accomplish two things: visual impact, and utility. With the StyleFeeder brand being re-worked, I chose a bright, vibrant pink to accent the brand and brighten up the page. This pretty much took care of the visual impact. I also moved the navigation into the center of the header and displayed the search in the top right corner, this helped cover the utility end of things.
- The call out area: Since this area monopolized the largest percentage of screen real-estate, I thought it was important for it to ‘pop’. I felt the StyleFeeder message needed to be related clearly and concisely, but also needed to be delivered in a fun and inviting manner. We chose to commission some fun, sexy, and unique illustrations to help get our message across. The end result is something more eye-catching that really sets StyleFeeder apart. (Thanks Tanya!)
- Tag Cloud: Now although I find tag clouds a handy alternative to traditional browsing, many users don’t understand them. This confusion combined with the sheer size of the existing tag cloud had me searching for other options. Since I liked the fact that tag clouds give users a glimpse of popular tags, I thought it might be slicker to just show the most popular. While pondering popularity, I thought: Why not show the highest rated? Why not help users hook up with groups? It was after these thoughts the ‘StyleFeeder’ Top Ten was born. The ‘Top Ten’ area allowed me to highlight three distinct features in the site, while giving the users the snapshot information they’re looking for.
- Recent Items: This area contained the heart and soul of the StyleFeeder site – the ‘item widget’. Wherever you travel in the StyleFeeder site, this area provides you at-a-glance details about items and allows you to quickly perform a number of tasks. My main concern with the old item widget was how small the image was – in most cases the image is the touchstone for the user so enlarging the thumbnail was job number one. Once that was complete I discovered the StyleFeeder crew was actually looking to cram even more goodies into this area. I needed to make room for both user ratings, user notes, and user avatars. In the end, though there’s even more information than before, the item widget feels lighter, provides the essentials at-a-glance, and gives the user a lot more information.
Keepin’ the ball rollin’
Although at the time of writing, we (me and the StyleFeeder gang) are still propagating the design through the various pages of the site and tweaking the design of many other pages, I thought I would give you a little insight as to how “the magic” happened. You can have a gander at the full ‘before / after‘ shots, or you can just visit the site.
November 16th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
And this is just the beginning
Nice work all around Ken.
December 8th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Fantastic redesign! Very lively. The logo itself is worthy of being placed on Brand New. Keep it up.
December 18th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
I never really gave it much thought, what a designer chained to his/her cmpt goes through day after day. I guess the home office, has its drawbacks as well as its compensations. If you sleep in a bit, you can just slip on you bunny slippers and shuffle across your house to your office still blurry eyed and dozy. That’s a good thing. But, the not having people around to interact with would be strange. I mean. ironically, most of the time at the office you’re fighting the urge to be distracted by the goings on around you so you can get your work done. When the office is busy this is especially hard. But, when you need that break, you can pop into the halls, or over to the coffee machine and you’re bound to run into someone looking for a break as well. Where do you turn if you’re alone in your house with no co-workers around? IM chat, email etc… I suppose.
I think most people dream of working from home. Myself, never having had a home office I can’t really say which I’d prefer, though, I can see the benefits to both. I guess, if I had a real home office, with a space to feel like I was at work and found that I could stay productive at home, I’d have to choose that. If my cmpt was crampt into a corner in a main room somehere where I can see the TV, hear the home phone etc… I’d have a hard time.
Environment is key to getting into that “work” mode for me. At home or not, I would have to think, the space would need to feel like an office to me if I had any hope of resisting the draw of day time TV, and the lure of the couch
December 22nd, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Nice review of your process. I think you’ve really improved their look and more importantly, their experience.
I’d be interested in hearing how your interaction with the client went and various interactions there. Did you have to convince them about anything in particular? Did they change your mind about anything?
Keep up the great work.
December 23rd, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Hey Michael, it’s interesting your bring that up, since on the ‘client interaction’ front the StyleFeeder crew was a delight to work with. They were receptive to not only specific design suggestions I had (like the illustrations), but also global functional changes and additional features (like the tag cloud evolving into the ‘Top Ten’ area).
Overall, it was a great experience - since rather that a traditional client relationship (where I may have to spend additional time explaining my rationales for certain decisions), it was as if I had been ‘adopted’ into the team. I’m sure this is directly related to the fact that pretty much all the key stakeholders that I dealt with were also directly involved in the development of the site.
During the initial phases of the project a lot of time was spent on the phone, or IM-ing ideas back and forth. I guess rather than me convincing them, or them changing my mind we spent a lot of time brainstorming, building consensus and then moving forward – it was a really nice way to work. They understood and respected my skillset and appreciated that on the design front I had a lot to offer, but also realized that I could contribute on a grander scale as well, and actually allowed me to do so.
The nice by-product of the constant communication was that as a contractor, my knowledge of the site and what specific messages the StyleFeeder crew were wanting to convey grew with every conversation I had. As I became more and more familiar with things, I was able to offer ideas that more closely aligned to what they were looking right off the bat, which helped reduced development time.
Though it may sound cheesy, at the end of things I really felt like I was ‘a part of things’ rather than I was just completing another contract.
(In light of my gushing guess a little thanks are in order for Phil and Eric who worked on the project with me from the StyleFeeder end of things - Thanks boys!)
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Great redesign (or was it a re-align?) Ken. I am interested in knowing what system powers the StyleFeeder website…home-grown CMS app? Tricked out blog/cms app (Wordpress, Expression Engine, Moveable Type, etc).
I find myself passing up on clients who have ideas for small-time web applications because I am not so much a developer as I am a designer. I really would like to get more into development but get migraines when I think about where to start. Any suggestions?
Great work, thanks for the post-project wrap up.