My user-interface design in the wild
IANAD… I am not a designer. But I do think I am capable as a user-interface designer. The former involves making pretty pictures and communicating a message and creating an emotional user experience (definition corrected, thanks to Adam, see comments below). The latter involves making usable interfaces and creating an enjoyable user experiences. Subtle differences that mean a whole lot.
Now some of you who have been reading this blog for a while probably heard that I spent this past summer in Silicon Valley working on a fresh startup with a group of Cornell students. I never shared much information about this project because it wasn't done yet and over the course of the summer, there were a lot of changes and fresh ideas that took it from a very simple prototype back in May to a very thought-out web site (and application) that recently went live. I served the role of lead UI developer and CSS-guru and it was a lot of fun. The project that came out of this startup is The College Freeway and here is a screenshot if you are too lazy to visit that link:
A lot of things here are my work; the logo (believe it or not), the layout, the colors, etc. It wasn't all my ideas though; I spend the whole summer taking input from the rest of the team and occasionally discovering different parts of the interface so the design was a team effort. I am not involved with the project anymore, though; my job is my current focus so there's someone else filling my old position at TheCollegeFreeway now. I'm just happy to see my work up there on a website this complex. And if anyone is wondering what this website actually does, it's for college students to share notes with each other. It uses Facebook for accounts so any college students reading this can easily get in there and try it out. Even if you are not a college student or you don't want to log in, you can still browse the collection of notes available.
Moving on to more recent things, I have been working on a Facebook application with the developer of Locations 2.0 and I'm happy to announce that our application is complete. It's called "Social Tags" and I have a screenshot right here:
Now I just have two things to say about this here app:
- I think this app is really good-looking compared to most applications on Facebook (that is, those made with FBML) and I have to admire Yaowei's forward-thinking for asking me to take charge on the CSS side of things. There's a lot in this design that came from his ideas but the actual CSS that made it possible is from me.
- I think this app is a lot of fun and it's already one of my favorites. This has nothing to do with the fact that I made it, it's just a fun little idea. I think my fiancée put it best though…
the tagline on this app should be, "Because you can never put enough labels on yourself or your friends"
Anyway, I could say more about the whole process of putting this application together but it was very difficult and painful at times and I don't really want to talk about it. You should just go check it out. You'll like it.
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I really love the UI design of both the website and the app. They both have a design that smoothly interlaces with the look of Facebook itself. I think you have made something really worthwhile and helpful here for Facebook's original market…college students. This will definitely help further the use and social connectivity of Facebook.
Keep up the good work.
"[Design] involves making pretty pictures and creating an emotional user experience. "
Perhaps the fact that this is your definition of design is why YANAD.
"There’s a lot in this design that came from his ideas but the actual CSS that made it possible is from me."
And saying that the CSS is more important than the concept might have something to do with it, too.
I'd also like to add that I generally enjoy reading your blog. These two comments just got me a little too riled up for a Sunday morning…
Adam: Sorry if I riled you up but that definition of design is not my own. I have always heard designers talk about "evoking emotion" with their work. Anyway, it has absolutely nothing to do with my definition. It has to do with the fact that I lack artistic talent. But I do think there is a big separation between artistic design and user-interface design, and I also think that there is a lot to be said about emotion vs. usability, as the former is very effective for marketing while the latter is very effective for advertising revenue & conversions. But all that is a post for another day.
As for the second comment, I'm sorry if I misled you. I was trying to make sure that due credit went to Yaowei for the part that he had in suggesting layouts and graphics for the application. This is not to say that I didn't do any of the design. I sure did! I was just making the point that I was in charge of all the CSS work and it was the tool that I used to make the design happen. If you must know, the CSS that went into this app was extremely complicated. I could write a post about it sometime if you would like to hear more. I'm just slightly proud of what I managed to do since it involved creating some new CSS techniques (or at least, new in the sense that I have never seen before).
Thanks for clarifying, Christian. I don't think you'll find any designer anywhere that would define his profession using the phrase "involves making pretty pictures." It comes across as somewhat derogatory, and will make the hair on the back of any designer's neck stand up. It would be similar to defining User Interface Design as "Making pretty clickable things that take you somewhere." Here's a great interview with Rick Poyner and Michael Bierut on Design Observer that starts with Rick quoting a definition of design by an art director (John Comander) from 1960:
And glad I misunderstood you on the second point. I definitely see what you were trying to say now. Anyway, thanks again for responding and for the discussion.
Adam: I see now that what I said was disrespectful to a lot of designers. I should be more careful about what I say when I'm writing late at night :X
I took a look at The College Freeway and I'm not impressed. I hate to be so negative, but it seems like a less-useful Scribd ripoff designed expressly to either (a) help college students cheat on work or (b) violate the copyrights of people running the course. Scribd, like Google docs, is a generic document sharing and collaboration site, whereas TCF seems to encourage abuse.
Since there are already a few thousand documents, I can't give numbers, but stuff in CS100 is ripped off of Charles F. Van Loan's textbook, and the CS211 resource is stolen from a TA's online course notes. Neither of these is public domain, or under a copyleft license.
Elliott: I totally understand your concerns. First of all, Scribd is a great site, but when the idea for TCF first started back in Fall of 2006, no one on the original team (of which I was not a part) had ever heard of it. Even when I started working on the project in June, I hadn't heard of it, and it was in that first week that my coworkers showed it to me. Now, TCF offers the feature that documents are specific to classes and can be organized by type. There is nothing in TCF that "rips off" Scribd any more than my blog "rips off" yours. They might use the same technology (Flashpaper) just like we use the same technology (Wordpress), and they might have the same features (document sharing) just like we have the same features (syndicated posts), but that's where the similarities end.
As for copyrighted content, TCF has a very long legal disclaimer making it clear that any content uploaded is the responsibility of the uploader and forbidding copyright infringement. So yes, it's the YouTube problem and I don't know how the TCF team will be dealing with it because I am not involved anymore but they know about the problem and they wouldn't be so stupid as to put together a project like this and put so much money and time into it and not prepare for copyright infringement. I'm sure they will run into problems down the road if the site becomes popular but obviously any professor or TA can report copyrighted content and I'm sure the TCF team will have the user accounts banned.
The purpose of TheCollegeFreeway is to aggregate and organized individuals' work so as to create a very valuable library of academic documents. Just like many any other user-generated content sites, there exists good, bad, legal and illegal material on the site (e.g. Wikipedia, Youtube, etc.). But overall, the good, legal content greatly outways the bad in my opinion (and in many other people's opinons). Furthermore, there is a legal, standard way to remove illicit content: under the terms of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), there is a standard process for copyright holders to request TheCollegeFreeway to remove content infringing on their copyright.
Thanks Andrew, I think you explained it much better than I could have!