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.
This is why we launched Mazaydar. Check out the growth rate of internet users in Pakistan. 12,969% growth! Simply amazing!
And this is just going to get better in future. With all these new users coming to internet, Mazaydar will be their online stop for finding tasty treats all across Pakistan.
So be part of this great system, join Mazaydar.com and start sharing your favorite restaurants!
Today we are pleased (and excited!!) to announce that Tazanaan.com has been acquired by Mazaydar.com. This acquisition will provide our members with an improved listing service in cities like Islamabad. We are also pleased to announce that with this acquisition, we are now able to provide listings for Rawalpindi as well.
The acquisition will result in greater efficiencies and significantly increase our market share. We also welcome the founder of Tazanaan.com, Danyal Agheem, to our team as our Regional Director for Islamabad. Danyal’s experience in running successful community based website will increase Mazaydar.com’s overall growth. We welcome Danyal to our team.
Mazaydar.com also welcomes all current users of Tazanaan.com, we hope to provide them with the same excellent quality listings in Islamabad that Tazanaan has been providing.
That’s not all! We also wanted to take this opportunity to announce another great news. We have two new team members at Mazaydar! Mahmood Mirza and Bilal Ahmad is joining us as a Community Director for Karachi and Peshawar respectively. Both have great entrepreneurial skills and are passionate about taking Mazaydar to the next level. We welcome both to our team!
All this and much more, its all live on Mazaydar.com!
We are excited about this growth, we have received a tremendous amount of feedback from our users and we plan to implement and improve upon it. If you have any suggestions, questions or concerns please feel free to contact us.