I was challenged to redesign a digital product of my choice, for any platform, within a 72 hour period, spending only “a few hours”. Well, I accept the challenge and will be posting my progress here over the next 72 hours. Expect to see ideation, iteration, problems, solutions, users, images, and maybe even a chart or diagram if we are lucky.<\/p>\n
Well, it has been a couple of hours since I wrote the paragraph above and I did the following:<\/p>\n
Some may say “Johnny, you’ve spent several hours after starting this project, which has a quick turnaround time, with your family and on some recreational activities, and you could have been researching online.”
\nTrue. I could have jumped right in and started surfing, searching, and browsing, but I needed time to think, and take care of my family, and think, and take care of myself, and think some more.<\/p>\n
First, I thought about the parameters with which I had to work:
\n-digital product: I took to mean website, app, software
\n-any platform: laptop, desktop, phone, tablet, phablet, xbox
\n-72 hours: I made that up because it sounds and looks cool. The challengers actually used the words “3-4 days”. So, taking the time spent thinking about the challenge into account after I actually read the challenge email, I have approximately 72 hours.
\n-a few hours: Actual words used in request. A bit vague but I’ll take that to mean 2-4 hours.<\/p>\n
Secondly, or thirdly, I thought about what specifically to redesign. Should it be in my wheelhouse where I’m comfortable, like an industry I’m familiar with or something I’ve given some thought to before? No, that seems like cheating a little.
\nShould it align with a hobby or passion? That might make it more interesting for me.
\nShould it be a really famous product that people love to hate, like and unlike, be-friend and un-friend, post and view timelines on? Nah, that would be boring.
\nShould it be a redesign for a non-profit or charity who might benefit from some pro-bono work? Sounds pretty noble.<\/p>\n
At this point I’m probably rocking out to some electronica, hip-hop and drilling holes in my birdhouse project (here’s a sneak peak at this project and the cause) and getting inspired to write about and redesign something. But I really need to budget out my hours:<\/p>\n
Now, some may say “Johnny, there is no fucking way you are going to redesign a well known digital product in 4 hours over three days!” To sum up Day One: thought a lot about what to redesign while doing other activities, prioritized and clarified requirements, created a time and task list, and snuck in a little research a head of schedule (see galleries below).<\/p>\n Below are galleries for two sites I’ve been considering redesigning, Craigslist.org and Wikipedia.org. Both are very text heavy sites that could use some help with visual cues to help users explore more content, page hierarchy to help guide the user to useful content, and cringe-worthy backend tools.<\/p>\n Portland.craigslist.org screens shots looking at the purchasing workflows, account signup, event pages, discussion forums, and the search feature:<\/p>\n\n\t\t
\nWell, I say it wouldn’t be called the 72 hour design challenge<\/strong> if you had 6 months to redesign something, now would it? It would be called the 6 month design challenge<\/strong>, and where’s the fun in that?<\/p>\n
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Day Two: The two contenders square off<\/h3>\n