Trinity Bellwoods Farmers Market

I like the design for Trinity Bellwoods Farmers Market. Check http://www.tbfm.ca/

10 Great Interaction Designs – in Cut & Folded Paper

Experience designers who work in digital media such as RIAs, video games, and DVD menus are already well conditioned to thinking beyond the page as a metaphor for organizing information structures. But paper itself is not the villain. In fact, paper can be transformed into all sorts of interesting interactive possibilities – including graceful and surprising transitions, progressive disclosure of information, impactful visuals, and above all, a compelling and satisfying simplicity.
Read the post from Solid State UX

Redesign Craigslist (3): What’s Wrong With Craigslist?

The weaknesses of Craigslist, accounting to Smashing magazine:

1. The Design is Bland and Outdated
As mentioned earlier, and as any Craigslist visitor already knows, the design of the website lacks visual appeal.

2. Logging In, Signing Up, and Managing an Account is More Difficult than Necessary
Craigslist has achieved its success due to the huge community of users it has managed to build. According to its fact sheet, each month over 30 million new classifieds are posted to the website, and over 12 billion pages are viewed. With this kind of activity level, it’s clear that making the process of creating an account, logging in and managing the account should be as straightforward as possible. However, the current website could be improved in these areas. Unnecessary clicks are needed to do anything with an account, and options on the account page are very limited.

3. Screen Space Is Not Prioritized
One issue with the current design of the Craigslist home page, as well as sub-pages, is the use of screen space. Valuable screen space could be used more effectively in some areas to improve the usability of the website.

4. Navigation
Craigslist is really a network of smaller websites held on sub-domains of Craigslist.org. Each sub-domain, representing an actual location, has its own board of classifieds. Currently, over 550 cities in 50 different countries are represented. With any website of this size and this amount of content, challenges with the navigation will always exist. Some aspects of navigation are rather effective on Craigslist, but others leave room for improvement.

For starters, there is no navigation menu that appears consistently throughout the website. Some pages use a left sidebar, some don’t. Some pages are easily accessible from most areas of the website, but not all. On many of the secondary pages, huge amounts of screen space are left completely empty with very few navigational options. This forces users to hit the “Back” button in their browser to go to another section of the website, something that could be improved by adding more navigational choices on these pages.

To read the whole article

Redesign Craigslist (2): A solution from DesignEye 2006

In 2006, Members from DesignEye.org redesigned Craigslist site for the city of Austin. The design solution was one of the presentations for SXSW Interactive conference.

Redesign Craigslist (1)

The cover story for the September 2009 issue of Wired takes a look at the current state of Craigslist and the challenges it faces as it continues to evolve. In a sidebar, the magazine’s art director Scott Dadich invited several top web designers to re-imagine and redesign Craigslist itself.

The designers' list include:
Scott Thomas of SimpleScott, who was the former design director at BarackObama.com
Thomas' minimalist take (below) makes a pro-status quo argument, recognizing that the site functions perfectly well in its current form with only minor, mostly aesthetic tweaks.

Matt Wiley of Studio8 Design and Luke Hayman
Studio8 Design came up with a more dramatically different-looking version, prioritizing the all-important photos to make rapid-fire browsing instantly gratifying.

Lisa Strausfeld of Pentagram
While the others go to great lengths to keep the practical side at the forefront, Pentagram seems to all but dispense with the concern, playfully transforming the homepage's text links into an image of the man behind the curtain. The search function, however, moved to the bottom of the page, remains otherwise untouched. Maybe they're onto something.

Khoi Vinh Anh Dang , Paul Lau, design team at NYTimes.com
The solution is here at this link.

adding a couple layers of hierarchy to make it more organized and easier to navigate

To read the article: Extrme MAkeover: Craigslist Edition from Wired Magazine
Also read: Why Craigslist is such a mess

Alison Oliver

Alison Oliver’s work. She’s a designer and illustrator with an enviable portfolio full of projects for clients like Chronicle Books and Aerie. And in addition, she also has an etsy shop where she’s begun to sell her t-shirt designs.

World's Best Design Schools from BusinessWeek Magazine

Teaching Design Thinking

As the world's business landscape evolves, universities are attempting to keep up by fostering teaching that supports an interdisciplinary approach to solving problems. The following programs, offered at both business schools and design colleges (sometimes jointly by both), present a snapshot of the nascent movement to teach design thinking and innovation to a new generation of global corporate leaders. Schools are listed in alphabetical order.