This video makes me wonder what we will see in future interfaces. My favorite part is pretty much towards the end where she takes out “digital wallet” and selects which card to use. Now that is a neat user experience.
Remember there is a difference in User Experience and User Interface/User Interaction. So who wants to work on that “digital wallet”? 
Well in an interesting turn of events, Dawn.com surprised me this morning. After my last post, I didn’t really have any hopes of change, but I was certainly greeted with a nice surprise.
The ultra-new Dawn.com does not suck (that much) anymore. The layout is clean, neat and better. Check it out!
So what could have prompted this change? I certainly hope that I had caught them off-guard with their previous layout and they were already working on better layout and design. They certainly have made the site look much better and kudos to them for taking the step.
I will do a much detailed review of what I like and what I don’t like of the new layout in coming days.
This is technically a “What’s Wrong With” post but I wanted to emphasis the new Dawn.com redesign. You can check it out here yourself.
Oh my! That is one ugly redesign. It gets even worst when I actually checked out the source-code. It is just pathetic.
Let me tell you why I think the redesign really sucks.
1. What sort of layout is this? The content is all over the place, there is no flow in the user’s reading and why is there a big advertisement banner between the menu on the left? They are still using TABLES? (I almost fainted when I saw that). The width of 780px is just not that fun, especially with wide-screen monitors it just looks ugly.
2. Color choice. Seriously? The color scheme is boring. Again, please do something with the lack of visual appeal
3. Where is my headline? Every newspaper has a headline or a developing story that they need (or want to) push out to the reader. It would have been better if they used some space (which they have a lot of) to showcase the latest developing story.
4. Navigation. Where is the top navigation? The top navigation provides the visitor easy access to different sections of the site. It also makes the top banner more visible to the user as that’s the general area they are looking at. You can even use two-level menu layout to maximize the usage of that space.
5. Tabbed content areas. When you have a lot of information to display on a page, usually a tabbed interface is preferred as it really cleans up the UI and makes it easier to read. This gives more control to the users over what content and links they see, and it saves space in the design.
6. Grid based layout? Coming back to layouts again, why didn’t they go with grid based layout? It is the most effective way to manage and organize large amount of content.
7. Popup windows? And that too for comments? What the heck are they thinking?!? enough said, I don’t think there is a single designer out there who would put commenting functionality in a new small annoying popup window.
I am really disappointed with the new layout and the redesign. It just doesn’t do justice to the content what-so-ever. I hope they work more on the site and scrap this redesign and hire someone who can actually design beautiful layouts.
”Because there is no real website from Pakistan which caters to the content needs of people.” – Dr. Irfan Ahmed
For those of you who haven’t seen it, please do check out the latest videocast by Jehan Ara. What they talked about in the first part of the interview is exactly what Mazaydar is trying to solve. Cater Pakistani market with relevant content.
I believe that Dr. Irfan Ahmed is right on the mark when he says that statement. It is the exact same problem that I came across when I started looking for Pakistani websites catering people in Pakistan.
TwitterSheep is an interesting tool. Check out what kind of people follow me (@obaid) on Twitter.
