Thanks, Craig
I have to give massive props to Frankfurt craigslist. More importantly, massive props to craigslist in general.
See, I tried a lot of websites that offered postings for sublets, apartments, hostels, and hotels in Frankfurt. A lot of websites. Almost all were a total pain to use… hideous websites with poor navigation, difficult searches and hardly ever enough information in the listings. Some of these websites didn't provide the contact information since they wanted you to pay for it. Others just didn't have any good listings. At one point I started thinking that I wouldn't find a place to live… every place was occupied because of the World Cup.
Then my mom chanced upon Frankfurt's craigslist. I didn't even know that there were craigslist sites for cities outside the U.S. Craigslist is great; who can argue with free classifieds? After a few minutes of looking I found a place to stay. (A place that was actually looking for interns, which explains why it hadn't been occupied for the World Cup.) Problem solved!
Plus, the place I found has wireless broadband. Choosy geeks choose Wifi.™
So let's talk about design
The design of craigslist is poor. Much of the text is too small and the content on the frontpage is crammed a little too much.
The Big Noob posted a potential redesign of craigslist a while back and this was generally regarded as a Good Thing™. It is a very nice redesign, but after using the craigslist frontpage and taking another look at the redesign, I have to admit that there are some things I don't think are improved.
So I decided to work on it and change a few things. The result: my craigslist redesign.
Reasons why I think my version is a little better:
- The title doesn't take so much space. The header on the Big Noob version is really heavy, which doesn't seem necessary for a site like craigslist. I think craigslist has a reputation that speaks for itself and doesn't need to blast users with a big title. I do like the Big Noob's map image though.
- The search box has a label. Putting label text as a value in an input is not an accessible substitute for a real label, and rather annoying if you have to delete the text when you actually want to make a search. It's better to have a hidden label than no label at all.
- The help link isn't microscopic. Help links should never be tiny. If your users need help, don't make it hard for them to find it.
- The vertical links are more visually divided. I think vertical links lists with plain text and no borders or spacing are poor for visual users. I think the lists on the original craigslist design are actually more visually usable than the ones on the Big Noob design. I used a few simple styling techniques to make them a little more like the original design.
There are still problems with the redesign, such as tiny text in various parts and some minor css issues. I also didn't touch the cities section at the bottom since I didn't want to waste too much time.
Tell me what you think
What do you think about my changes? Do they make it better? What else would you change about the craigslist frontpage to make it more attractive or usable?
Wow, that is so much better. I liked how you kept the familiar organization in the layout but added value through design. The colors and typography are nice. Good work!
I like the idea of ad-hoc redesigns for popular apps. We've been thinking about doing one of those at GANB for awhile now. Excellent post
Yep, this was my first ad-hoc redesign and it was fun… though I cheated a little by building off an already good one. The one I really want to do, and hope to do soon, is Reddit. That site definitely needs it.
It's a bit broken in Safari. The left column appears by itself with the other columns under it.
That massive props photo is hilarious
Welcome to 9rules!
Scott: Eh, water under the bridge. I assume that's a fault in the CSS produced by the guys at The Big Noob, which I didn't bother to fix.
Alvin: Thanks!
I should mention it also looks terrible in IE 6… but anyway, I did this quickly and only tested in Firefox
Good idea and very successful end result depsite browsers ickyness - lol there is a lot of stuff that is in the US and other countries - shall I make a joke about the US not being the centre of the universe
(joke btw). We have some good things in Europe too and about 5 years ago stopped hitting each other over head with rocks 
I am not a craigslist user personally, but I took a look at the site, redesign and your redesign out of interest and I have to say that I favour yours because of the visual separation between the vertical lists. I find long vertical lists of links with no dividing lines to be quite intimidating, and I generally ignore them - your changes get past that.
Now all you've got to do is persuade whoever runs craigslist to implement it.
Hats off to C. Montoya. Wish you loads of success (and happiness) in 2009!
Cris in Frankfurt