Yesterday, I woke up to a nice surprise. Cricinfo had launched a redesign of their website. I had a mixed reaction to the change. Cricinfo is the largest cricket website on the web. Below is a quick overview of the traffic statistics for Cricinfo.com

So what is good or bad about the new design?

The Good:

1. Improved navigation bar. The top navigation bar is a bit of a relief to find your way around cricinfo. Previously, these options were buried under a pile of other useless stuff, making it hard to use the website to the fullest.

2. News and video highlights. The core of the site is the instant news about the cricketing world, and they have done an excellent job in highlighting that part of the website. Making it easy to gaze over the latest news and consume it.

3. Scores. A bit mroe detailed score right on the right-hand panel. Makes my life much much easier.

4. Scorecard. Beter colors and layout. The ugly toolbar on the left is gone (woho!) and it gives the actual scorecard a bit more breathing room.

The Bad:

1. Hard to focus on certain portions of the website. I think the background gradient distracts the reader.  A boxed container to overlay the gradient would have helped a lot.

2. Scorecard. The tabbed navigation is just over used. Everything is crammed on a single page and tabs are used to organize them. Tabs within a tab ain’t good for usability. Another nifty idea, gone wrong is the commentary along with the batsmen dismissal. I think this is a neat feature but gone wrong. So far, for me, in a live game this info is always wrong.

Overall:

I think this is a positive step towards a nice redesign. I am sure they will work on some of the quirks in coming weeks and fix it up.

via 90 Percent Of Everything.

I love cool technology. Maybe it is the nerd in me that gets excited after seeing something awesome but I sure do love cool technology.

One such great technology is powered by PakTranslations.com – To see how awesome the technology is you can see the urdu version of Mazaydar.com!

So what’s this blog post all about? While I love their technology, one thing that bothered me was their UI. I think they can make the site and technology a great hit if can make users life easier. They already have a great way to do it but its sorta hidden.

So I spent about an hour or so last night, while I couldn’t sleep and came up with this small mock layout.

Some thoughts behind the layout:

1. My goal was to keep the focus on the cool technology. I certainly didn’t spend too much time on the logo, which can certainly use some work

2. The “Instant Translation” is a nifty feature. Users need to know that they can place http://www.paktranslations.com/? infront of any url to get it translated.

3. Bookmarklets are also awesome, I have been using them and they are just simply great to translate anything instantly.

I think the whole website is an amazing idea, a much needed innovation coming out of Pakistan. I am sure as they progress the technology will just keep getting better and better. But I also strongly believe that a good technology which isnt’ accessible is not worth much. People need to be able to use the technology easily to be able to provide feedback that is needed.

Note: The design is totally opensource for PakTranslations team to adapt.

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.

I have been following (or at least trying to follow) lootmaar.com since I read about it on Jehan Ara’s blog. I have always wondering about the future of online auction in Pakistan. Ebay, as we all know, is big in North America and other countries. But they don’t provide the same service to those living in Pakistan. Lootmaar, wants to fill this gap and provide an online auction platform.

So today, I will be looking at the lootmaar.com site and give my two cents on the good and the bad about their UI. 

Brief Overview:

The layout of the main page is a fixed width. I wonder why didn’t they use flexible width layout to provide better viewing experience. The user is presented with large tabs for “Buy”, “Sell” and “Sign in”. These three actions are important and the base principle for the site. Actually just the first two are the important ones.

They have various categories that users can post auctions under. A large “How lootmaar works” banner and quick link banners are also presented on the initial view. Scrolling down on the main page, gives us the “hot items” view. 

The auction page is simple which three columns that provide picture, bid details and the seller details. Underneath it is the item description which is provided by the seller.

An interesting layout. Lots of white space and large font size. 

So what about it?

Color scheme is nice and easy on eyes. Its mostly white so that’s not really an issue. The small FAQ type banner is very interesting and I think gets the point across. The auction page has the information in nice and easy distinctive fonts and colors which is easy to read.

The thing that bothers me the most though is the fact that the designer didn’t really design it for an auction site. Don’t get me wrong, the layout does not maximize the purpose of the site. Which at the end of the day should be the sole purpose of lootmaar.com

Let’s start by looking at the main page. The header is just a complete waste of space. There the tab for sign-in is just simply not needed there. I would have made the search box more prominent since that is what I would like to do almost 90% of the time. 

The whole strip bar underneath the tabs are also not well placed. The search box repeats itself right away! And the two other blocks information are totally irrelevant for the user, I would rather offer them a link to a quick tour of what Lootmaar is. 

Categories list on the left side needs to loose the circles and the width for this column needs adjustments. I would put the “One Rupee Auctions” and “Auctions Ending Soon” banners right above the categories list. 

The list for hot auctions should be moved up a bit so that they are right there for the user to click and buy. There is a lot of wasted whitespace on the page. The three column layout for hot items section should be fixed to make space for at least one more column. The images are a bit too big for previews. There should also be a button for making bid right away on the item, currently this isn’t the case. I am sure this will drive their auctions up rather quickly. 

The auction page for an item has an interesting layout as well. I think they could really really use a re-design on this page. The page fails to attract a user to quickly make the bid or instantly buy the product. The icon should be placed underneath the initial item description. The message for the user to login (to be able to place a bid) needs to move out from there. Rather this shouldn’t be on this page at all. The user should not be forced to register at all. See Lazy Registration Design Pattern for more details.

There is another odd panel that I saw on this page. When you scroll all the way to the bottom, you will see a “Bid on this Item” section. Where there is a login form, right there! In the middle of nowhere! 

Overall, while lootmaar is trying to bring a great service to people in Pakistan, it should also work on the UI development of their site. I strongly believe that just like any other e-commerce site, the layout for lootmaar.com can drive their user registration up considerably. What is rather more important than user registrations is user bidding. If they can get a user excited about a listing, by letting him find the product that he is looking for quickly, then their auctions will be more successful. 

In the end I believe that lootmaar’s success is very much directly related to a successful auction. I wish them all the best for future and I hope they really do become the eBay of Pakistan!