Hello! My name is Rainer Gibbert, and I’ve been the User Experience Manager here at XING since this March. If you’re not familiar with the title, that means that I’m the one responsible for the user interface, ergonomics and the like. My job is to make the platform smoother and more intuitive for you, the user.
Before starting at XING, I worked as a usability and user experience consultant in Hamburg, where I cut my teeth. Since I’ve been here, I’ve already worked on a few projects. I was involved in the new XING navigation bar and the redesign of the side bar, which my coworkers in the UX (that’s a fancy initialism for User Experience) had started on before I arrived.
Before: Too cluttered, too many clicks
If you’re reading this, you may be asking yourself: why the change? Why modify a functioning header? The answer, in short, is this: to make the header more user-friendly.
The old header was old.
Roundabout three years might not seem like a long time, but it’s forever in Internet years. Since the relaunch/redesign back in 2006, a lot of new features and sub-menu items have been added, and the result was clutter.
The old header was an eyesore.
This one doesn’t need much explaining. The second horizontal navigation bar was hard to see, and was a strain on the eyes.
The old header was a pain (in the mouse finger).
With the old header, navigating from Messages to the Powersearch took two mouse clicks. That also means more time waiting for the server and slower responses. With the new header, you can move from any sub-menu area to another with a single click.
The old header wasn’t displayed well on netbooks.
If you happen to view XING on an EEE PC, for example, you might have noticed that the header took up too much space. Netbook screens are often very wide but not tall, with a screen resolution of 1024×600. In other words: every pixel counts.
After: Lean and swift
The new header with drop-down functionality. Click on the image to enlarge.
Our new header corrects all the problems, and then some. First, the obvious: the clutter is gone. The new header is cleaner, clearer, and aesthetically more appealing than the old one. It also takes up less space, allowing netbook users to see more content without scrolling down. The scrollover effect means that you can navigate from any sub-menu item to another with a single click.
We worked with our Research Panel for several months to arrive at the present design, and we’re very pleased to present it to you. The dropdown menus have already garnered rave reviews from our testers, but as always, we’d love to hear your feedback. Please feel free to comment on the new design, here in the blog and in the XING Group.
XING´s official twitter account
Link to this article:
http://blog.xing.com/2009/05/xing-navigates-anew/trackback/
[...] Another fellow blogger put an intriguing blog post on XING navigates anewHere’s a quick excerptThis one doesn’t need much explaining. The second horizontal navigation bar was hard to see … After: Lean and swift [...]
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Recorded on 07.05.2009 at 02:41h CET
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Seriously guys: I’ve always loved openBC / XING since the very first day I used it. And now you worked for “several months” with the Research Panel to come up with something that looks like “look Ma, my first Web 2.0 design”:
The contrast between the color of active items and the background is way too low.
This Web 2.0-ish bevel / split color thing is annoying.
The corners don’t look properly anti-aliased.
Last but worst: The header itself has a drop-shadow, but the containing drop-down menus are flat which immediately destroys any 3d illusion and is discomforting to the eye.
I know you can do better than this!