Craigslist: Edward Tufte’s Dream
*Note: If you don’t know who Edward Tufte is I highly suggest you read up on him and buy all of his books.
Craiglist, like MySpace, is a site many people use because that’s where everyone else is at. The community makes it worth the hype it receives, but besides the community and some viral marketing how did the design play a role in making Craiglist a huge success? With MySpace it was hard to find anything about the design that lead it to fame, but with Craigslist I think we can see that the design played a significant role in making it an online leader for classified ads.
Last week when we looked at Sploid I made the point that although it is a cool design, it’s one that makes you think too much. Looking at Craigslist we see in the same type of clutter, but only with words. I know I shouldn’t use the word “clutter” to describe the design of the site because it’s more organized than cluttered.
From an aesthetics perspective Craigslist is missing the boat. A weird color scheme with different fonts and fontsizes all over the place should spell a recipe for disaster.
The question that we need to ask here is not if they did the design intentionally, because Craig isn’t a designer so we shouldn’t expect anything grandiose from him (same goes for the original designers of eBay, but why haven’t they changed it? There is no need to because the design does two things really well:
- Causes the reader to explore the page
- Does nothing fancy to get in the way
Finding a good deal
Craiglist is an online classifieds system and with any classified ads section you want to find the best bargain. The UI gives you that feeling that you can dig into and maybe after some time you will find a great bargain that nobody else could. You might be looking for just a couch, but since you continue to explore the site you end up with a goldfish and boat.
I think this is what is so key about the design. It leads you to stay on it and explore endlessly. It’s flea market / yard sale design at its best. There are a lot of links, but since it all text with link colors splashed in it is easy to scan.
Two clicks is all I need
Assuming you are on the right city page two clicks is all you need to get to where you need to go. And what’s even better is that those two clicks are so intuitive because they require no thinking on the user’s part. Blue link, click. Blue link, click. Don’t like it, click the Back button. Disgustingly simple.
What can you changes can you make to the design to make it better? I’m not sure there is anything you can do without disupting the community and I am uncertain as to whether that’s a sign of great design or a strong commmunity.
I leave you with these words from Jason Fried in last year’s article at Under the Iron and think about how they relate to Craigslist:
It’s the little things that really make or break the UI. The alignment, the type size, the perfect words, etc. I don’t feel like there was a moment when I “got it” — I’ve always felt this way. And, that’s not to say that I’m right, it’s just my opinion.
To me, UI design is common sense. It’s about respect. It’s the right word, the right color, the right shape, the right control at the right time. It’s about respecting the person who is going to use the UI.
UI design is both an art and a science. And when I say art, I don’t mean pretty happy art project art I mean it’s flexible. It’s ever changing. There’s no always.
Related reading:
> I’m not sure there is anything you can do without disupting the community [...]
A way to not dispute the community could be a skin-system where the regular visitors have to select between the old design they know and a new one. But I think that *much* work to build something like this for such a site…
By Jan Piotrowski on September 12, 2005 11:06 am
I don’t think it has to be limited to being attributed to a “great design” or “strong community” only. It’s just the experience, and what the community of Craigslist have come to be familiar and comfortable with.
We tend to assign feelings of comfort with everything. Be it that familiar smell of grandma’s house, our hometown, our first car, a non-tabbed Google interface, or a Craigslist full page of standard blue hyperlinks.
Redesign is one of those things a lot of folks overlook as one of those “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” kind of deals.
You’ve got to always consider how a redesign (even for the better) will affect the overall experience.
By Mark on September 12, 2005 11:06 am
This was a problem that one of our members was having recently. He wanted to redesign his site because 1) he was bored and 2) he felt adjustments needed to be made. I told him to hold back a little bit because everyone is still growing use to the site and has become well-known for it’s design.
One day I would like to solidify on a design here for a couple of years. That will be a nice day.
By Scrivs on September 12, 2005 11:21 am
I actually like the design of Craigslist. I think the design reflects the content of the site: classifieds. The site feels like a flea market/garage sale/neighborhood cook-out.
They’re not trying to impress anyone which boils down to honest design.
Take a look at New Times knock-off Backpage,
better or worse? And another CL wanna-be: Greensheet.
By Chopper on September 12, 2005 2:15 pm
Yeah, those sites just don’t inspire the CL “feel”.
By Scrivs on September 12, 2005 2:26 pm
It’s funny you mention this. When talking with the Design Eye guys about our SXSW 2006 panel, we’ve thought about Craigslist and MySpace as potential projects to work with.
When it comes to Craigslist there are probably many ways to improve the design, IA, etc. without going overboard and mucking things up for those who use it now, and use it well. I think it can be argued that there is a bit too much to initially sort out, for example. I know when I go there my eyes and brain hurt with all the info coming in.
On thing I’ve always liked that they’ve done is break the underline convention. Underlines would make their pages WAY to heavy and the way they’re done now you know their links.
If there were changes made, they’d have to be small, well chosen and simply implemented. A major change would certainly throw things out of wack. Subtle changes, though, could really help.
By Keith on September 12, 2005 4:05 pm
There are a few things I would change:
1. Stop defaulting it to San Francisco. Use a city selection on the homepage instead!
2. Remember what city you last clicked on so that when you just type http://www.craigslist.com it takes you to your last choice!
3. On city pages themselves, clean up the cities and put them in a dropdown menu!
Of course I’d love to see it redesigned to actually look nice and organized, but those three points are things I’d rather see by far!
By Joe Clay on September 13, 2005 12:00 am
To be honest, I really disagree with the fact that design is the reason for craigslist.org’s glory. I would think that it is the fact that it is free and terribly simple to use would be the true reason for it’s popularity. Between that and the lemming philosophy, there’s no surprise that it’s popular. I agree that it’s design is almost perfect for it’s function but that alone cannot be the reason.
By Raj on September 14, 2005 2:52 pm
I like Tufte but his genius as applied to web design is overrated — it’s more analytical than UI. Instead everyone should be reading and using as gold standard is Richard Saul Wurman.
By Greg on September 16, 2005 8:25 am
Craig’s List will be acquired before end of 2006.
If I told you my source, the SEC would nail me.
By Catablast! Media Group LLC on September 24, 2005 1:29 am
Actually this success is not reasonably explainable, the layout is bad, the overview is bad. (Success is probably rather because of the fact that it is free except for few exceptions, e.g. real estates.)
By Mark Dinar on November 4, 2005 7:05 pm
Nothing personals but isn’t craiglist owned by ebay thats what i thought i heard.
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