no. 1| 04.27.2014 |
Critastic rundown of three sites I dig.
As part of the first week of DevBootcamp, we’ve all been asked to pick a set of favorite websites, and create a blog post reviewing them from a useability and design perspective. Where I come from, that’s called a “crit” — short for critique. It’s pretty fun to throw opinions around. (More so, of course, when it’s not your own work up for review.) So here you go: what I think about 3 of my favorite sites.
ArsTechnica
Here’s one for the content. Ars is like Wired, but more technical, with less clickbait. What started out as essentially a blog has transformed into a more grownup, more mainstream online technology journal. (Condé Nast owns it now.)
They’re not trying to reinvent the wheel by any means. The site structure and UI are fairly standard issue for this type of site — lead article big at the top, columns of stubs, list of top stories, etc.. Aesthetically, it hits the mark with a technical-but-not-stuffy feel that I think fits the audience. Lots of white, but butched-up with strong hits of black and orange. Their homepage is pretty dense, and there’s plenty of advertising throughout the site, but they’ve made good use of typography and layout to clarify hierarchy and keep things readable.
What I will give them great credit for is a long history of good content, which for a site like this is probably the most important “design” consideration. If Wikipedia has it right, “Many of the website’s regular writers have postgraduate degrees, and many work for academic or private research institutions.” Great UI can never make up for irrelevant or stupid articles. So while Ars doesn’t blow me away with fancy web 2.0 magic or really stylish visuals, it doesn’t need to. They’ve won me over by putting “Understanding CPU caching and performance” under the same domain as “Digging up meaning from the rubble of an excavated Atari landfill.” Awesome.
The Five:
Technical, Satisfying, Eggheaded, Dependable, Likable
Simple
Simple is an online bank with web and mobile apps that have become favorites of mine. I use them nearly every day. They’re well engineered and well designed. Like a lot of other players in the personal finance space (think Mint, or your bank’s online account stuff), Simple offers account holders free tools to track and manage spending, and encourage saving — but they win at ease of use. I (like a lot of people) won’t hang in with budgeting for very long if it’s even a little bit hard. I’ve been using Simple consistently for about a year — so that speaks to what a good job they’ve done distilling their UX and UI into a system that is, actually, really simple.
The apps are very well thought out in both form and function. They’re good looking, uncluttered, and put focus on the task at hand. It’s generally very clear what the point of each page is, controls are intuitive, they make good use of inline feedback, and help is easy to find. (They offer an online “knowledge base” but also encourage users to reach out to customer service reps through their chat interface. Response times are pretty good, and conversations started through the website can continue via the mobile app, which is really convenient.)
You can tell that the Simple team identified two main issues for their target customers: “They don’t pay enough attention to their balance and forget about upcoming payments, and then overspend” and “They have a hard time saving, because they spend what they have.”
Their solutions are pretty clever.
The first is something they call “Safe-to-Spend”. It’s basically your account balance, minus pending transactions, upcoming payments and automatic deposits toward your savings goals. It helps mitigate the “I’m rich” feeling you get the day your paycheck posts, and keeps you from forgetting that the rent money you sent yesterday hasn’t cleared yet. You don’t have to do much setup. Mostly, it works automagically. When you look at the web or mobile app, Simple shows you what’s “safe to spend” right up top. (They show your full balance too, but in deliberately small type.)
Their savings goal system is sneaky. In a good way. You can tell Simple “I need $500 for a vacation 2 months from now” and the goal tool will sneak a little bit out of your Safe-to-Spend pool everyday so that you have the right amount by the date you specified. They’ve essentially taken the “Crap! I didn’t notice how much I was really spending on iTunes songs and Frappucinos over the month” phenomenon and turned it in your favor.
I have mostly great feelings toward Simple’s apps. They’ve actually helped me beef up my savings, and after using them I feel more on top of my day-to-day finances without really trying. As a company, Simple has done a good job of considering the “whole problem” — meaning the site, phone support, the product offering, etc., are all in alignment with the company’s philosophy and customer goals. I think that’s actually really hard to do, and they’ve done it well. When I close a browser window after using Simple, I usually feel pretty good.
The Five:
Simple, Modern, Distilled, Friendly, Smart
Ffffound
This is an image “bookmarking” site that lets users “post and share their favorite images found on the web.” I like this site for the content — lots of art, architecture, interiors, design, and a wee bit of porn thrown in for good measure. It has a super stripped down, no frills UI, which I think is just fine. It does a good job of staying out of the way. It’s invite-only to post (I have no idea how you get an invite) but anyone can browse.
Ffffound relies on nothing but text and imagery. No interactivity, no Disqus plugin, no trying to get me to connect a Twitter account or any of that baloney. You can just dive in and look at pretty stuff. The interface is basically “Scroll down the page. Get to the bottom. Click next.” They handle “if you like this you might like this” in a purely visual way: each image in the main post stream has a few thumbnails of related imagery next to it. Clicking an image gets you a “details” page showing the image, more “related” thumbs below, and then few rows of images posted by Ffffound members who’ve also bookmarked the original image.
That structure makes it really easy to wander around in a landscape of related stuff, and to find users with tastes and interests similar to yours. (Or, really different, if you start clicking on stuff you don’t like.) The experience is a nice balance between curation and randomness. It’s really enjoyable. I’m often delighted by stuff I find posted there, be it funny, beautiful or profane. Sometimes browsing Ffffound is even kind of meditative.
I've probably seen this about 100 times. It still makes me laugh. Thanks Ffffound!
Occasionally, Ffffound is frustrating because of how thoroughly it strips images from their context. “Man! That photo is amazing! Too bad I’ll never know the story behind it, or who shot it ‘cause there’s no credit info, and the link goes back to a Tumblr page of dead-end.” There’s also no search. So if you see it, and it moves you, better bookmark it in your own browser or you’ll probably never find it again.
The Five:
Bare-bones, Inspiring, Selfish, Fun, Impractical