Sites I want to redesign...
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The problem with knowing a thing or two (but nothing more) about design is that I come across a site that has great content, but a crappy design and I think to myself "hell, I would redesign that site for free." Okay, maybe not for free, but there are some sites that I would definitely enjoy redesigning over others.
Asymco
I like reading tech news and especially Apple news and there is none better than Asymco. Problem is the site runs on a modified version of Khoi Vinh's Basic Maths theme and it seems to be stretching it to its limits.
Hacker News
One of the few sites that I visit religiously. I've already done a quick readable version before as a design exercise, but I would love to sit down and really push the design in a new direction. On the other hand messing with large community sites never turns out well initially and only after some time do people acknowledge that the transition was for the best.
Any airlines site
Self-explanatory.
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With the sites above the only stipulation would be that I could use all the HTML5/CSS3 I wanted without worrying about old browsers. A pipe dream, but the fun in designing is pushing new technology forward, not tweaking to make sure the past still works.
What sites do you want a crack at? -
I second the airlines sites, lol. I like Southwest's website, but it takes so long to load it just plain doesn't at my house, and I have cable internet.
My others would be:
Drudge Report
Pretty self explanatory. I like the content, but looking at it for too long makes me dizzy.
Any military website, such as Fort Benning's . They ALL suck. I especially would love to take a crack at AKO (Army Knowledge Online) which is basically the go-to for soldiers to get information and access their personnel records. If you've ever used it, you know what I mean.
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I think it's effective, in that it contains only what it needs to and nothing else (which, isn't that part of what defines a good design?), but it could be better. Past the leading headline, my eye doesn't know where to go. I would like to see categories, such as Politics, Foreign Affairs, Science & Nature, etc. But, I'm not sure. Would that defeat the purpose? I'm not saying I want it to look like a news site where some articles are "front page" and some get stuck down near the bottom, but it could be much easier to skim the list. I haven't really thought about what I would do to redesign it, just that it could use it. Might be a good exercise when things slow down around here...
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A friend of mines actually designed Southwest Airline's site haha. Looking at it though it does start to drive me crazy.
I think the first site to pop up in my head, which I visit recently, and RECENTLY had a redesign is Gawker. That's Jalopnik, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker for me. I am STILL highly annoyed by their new design and have resorted to avoiding the site altogether.
It was a redesign that wasn't needed, and eventually broke functionality, and .. it was just horrible.
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Most, if not ALL sites for architects, fashion designers, artists etc.
Seriously, you won't believe how many I come across, and almost every single one either has Flash to begin with and is generally un-navigable.
These people depend on images and galleries and always, always it's a nightmare to find your way.
Example: Erpicum. Klick 'Enter' here (yeah, Enter site) then 'Projects' and try digging deeper and share an image. Horror. -
@nilsgeylen: I think fashion designers and others get caught up in having a cool website to show their peers instead of a website that makes sense for their clients. Definitely some education needs to be done on that end.
@abban: If you redesigned Myspace, who would be around to see it? -
Speaking of Airlines. A few quarters ago I had my design students redesign Ryan Air. We had some great concepts come out of it. Check this one out: http://www.matheusmeneghel.com/#850108/Ryanair-Website-Redesign
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This might make me look like a bit of a nutter, and I suppose I am! I love things to be neatly organised, and I love Really Useful Boxes. I don't think that their website really communicates just how useful their boxes are. They are sturdy, well reviewed boxes that don't break easily - the homepage doesn't say this. It has a wall of text and boring warehouse pictures. There's no emotional buy in there (I know I know, they're boxes!) Almost everyone likes the idea of being organised and tidy, use that.
I also wish there were a way to actually search the site by dimensions, I have a small flat with limited space, sometimes I make some space and want to put those things in that space in a box, but I have to sort of guess on the site which one might fit and keep clicking through. I'm sure I'm not the only one with that requirement.
http://www.reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/uk/
I'll stop ranting about boxes. The other site I would love to do would be Pet Planet. They offer a really great service and a great range of pet stuff and yet the site is... bright yellow and cluttered. Initially I was worried about using them, that they might not be legit, but they are.
http://www.petplanet.co.uk/ -
We could definitely make it look better, but could we get better results from redoing it? I like to think we can. - Scrivs, couple'posts back
A lot of websites are extremely effective even though there design is lacking. In our eyes at least. One great example is http://www.marktplaats.nl. It's a Dutch online marketplace, bit like eBay (has been bought by eBay couple of years back). It used to look horrendous, and even though it's still not anywhere near 'beautiful' the website does work good, and has evolved over the years. It's just that it's aimed at 'everybody'. As this site is the largest and oldest of such marketplaces here a lot of people use it and are used to it. Every little change has to be thought through: will it actually help people use the website and sell their stuff?
Redesigning a site like that, in which the established user base is a large concern (/challenge) would be interesting to say the least :) same goes for the airline-websites, but that seems to be a gripe mostly of US-based designers. Guess we don't get to fly that often here on the mainland! -
Weather Underground had been at the top of my list, but they've put together a pretty good update (see: http://goo.gl/xyyoj vs http://goo.gl/iGn8p).
Beer Advocate is now at the top of my list: http://beeradvocate.com/ -
Subway,
http://www.subway.com/subwayroot/index.aspx
Amazon,
http://www.amazon.com
Facebook, Not so much a redesign but improve. See → http://yozuck.tumblr.com
http://www.facebook.com
Jakob Nielsen's Website, Which I have already redesigned → http://blog.sefsar.com/post/2158340200/redesigning-jakob-nielsens-website
useit.com -
Youssef, totally agree about the subway redesign. I live in Holland and we have a different website: http://subway.nl/nederlands/layouts/homepage/. I think it's curious that a company of that size, and one that as far as I know tries and succeeds in appealing a generally young crowd (here at least), has such a bad-working website. Trying to get the opening and closing times of one individual franchise works horrible.
Really like your Nielsen redesign by the way. I know style should be less important than content but I feel the content is of less value being presented in such a bad-looking way. -
Public Policy Polling:
There is so much good stuff here crying out for the Edward Tufte treatment. Actually, all pollsters could do with better websites.
Koha ILS
The website is fine, it's workable, however, I would really love to take a stab at the library system itself. A while back I installed a local version to try to get my own library catalogued and stopped when I couldn't make sense of the backend cataloguing system. I had started working on a small web-library system for a client before they ran out of money before and really want to try to tackle a big one.
Dwell
I wouldn’t do a full redesign of Dwell, I think it is—for the most part—still fine. However certain things really need to be refreshed and brought into an overall theme. For example, the photo galleries have a completely different layout from the rest of the site, and are still based on rather annoying auto page refreshes. -
@Youssef - Just curious, what would you do differently with Amazon? And to anyone else who hates Amazon, what would YOU do? I don't hate it, I think it's fine for what it is. They just sell. so. much. I've never had any problem finding what I'm looking for, it doesn't make my eyes hurt, and quite frankly on a mega-shopping website like that, that's all I need.
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A new one has hit my radar: Forbes. I want to redesign this for the sole reason that when someone links to an article on there from my Twitter feed I don't have to try to read an article on a shitty design. I get tricked every time and I have yet to finish an article because I find it so hard to read.
And I'm not sure how I forgot Wired. My favorite magazine with the crappiest design. Okay, not the crappiest, but how web division can't match their print counterpart is beyond me. -
Any flash-based site drives me mad, particularly American restaurants. Very very few do flash well aaand useful, US restaurants do it worse than anything I have ever seen.
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Some of the greatest books about design ever written are by Edward Tufte. His site is stuck in the early 2000s though.
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Google Reader though I'm sure Google is already working on that as it's been redesigning most of their services lately.
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Introducing our very own primary newspaper website here in Vegas, The Las Vegas Review Journal and it's atrocious website. This new redesign is in desperate need of another redesign.
I would also like to take a crack at Fresh & Easy's website.
