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Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow

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Re: Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow

#22
post #10

I don't understand how you can design something without even talking to any of the stakeholders. Does the new deck accomplish the goals better than the original? How would you know? I'm not a fan of unsolicited redesigns. Design is easy when you have none of the constraints of a real project.

I would love to discuss with Mary about it. But I'm pretty sure she has better things to do!

And I agree with you that I don't have all the constraints. But it looks that they just used some of the default Powerpoint charts and shapes, so I just thought I could give it a humble try.

You can see the full-size slides here: http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet-trends-2014...

Re: Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow

#23
post #19

I don't normally pick on the design of sites submitted, but people in glass houses... As soon as I scroll down a little the header changes and the entire first paragraph disappears behind it. It's very jarring and it's actually making it difficult to read. I'm sure it seemed like a cool idea, but design has to play second fiddle to functionality: It doesn't matter how fancy the design is if the product cannot perform…

You can take a look at the full-size slides here : http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet-trends-2014...

The screenshots on the article are a bit small to get all the information at once.

Re: Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow

#24
So now we have to amateurish approaches to design.

One with the esthetic sensibility of a visually impaired 3 year old, and one that completely ignores the goals and requirements of both the publisher and their audience.

Both of them are equally unprofessional, but only the latter is unforgivably pointless and arrogant.

Re: Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow

#25
post #11

Yet another poseur "designer" who clearly hasn't read Edward Tufte's books, and has made crucial mistakes such as making the graphs less accurate than they were before and adding additional extraneous clutter (such as those extra icons) on top of the original information. Real design is supposed to make information more legible, not less, and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how slick or "pretty" the e…

Tufte is only one perspective. And he's irritatingly preachy at times. Hell, this is his favorite website: http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=33.769373434837...

Are the folks at NOAA non-poseurs? Is the height of design just to vomit all the information on a single canvas, because Tufte thinks "our eyes can handle it?"

Re: Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow

#26
post #10

I don't understand how you can design something without even talking to any of the stakeholders. Does the new deck accomplish the goals better than the original? How would you know? I'm not a fan of unsolicited redesigns. Design is easy when you have none of the constraints of a real project.

I would love to discuss with Mary about it. But I'm pretty sure she has better things to do! And I agree with you that I don't have all the constraints. But it looks that they just used some of the default Powerpoint charts and shapes, so I just thought I could give it a humble try. You can see the full-size slides here: http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet-trends-2014...

Calling something "ugly" isn't humble.

Putting "humble" in bold is an ironic admission of obliviousness.

Re: Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow

#27
post #11

Yet another poseur "designer" who clearly hasn't read Edward Tufte's books, and has made crucial mistakes such as making the graphs less accurate than they were before and adding additional extraneous clutter (such as those extra icons) on top of the original information. Real design is supposed to make information more legible, not less, and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how slick or "pretty" the e…

Tufte is only one perspective. And he's irritatingly preachy at times. Hell, this is his favorite website: http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=33.769373434837... Are the folks at NOAA non-poseurs? Is the height of design just to vomit all the information on a single canvas, because Tufte thinks "our eyes can handle it?"

Tufte is only one perspective? The point is that information is more important than presentation. Making something pretty should never reduce the accessibility of the information or take away information. Mary's slides are much more informative than the redone slides. If there's a perspective that stresses pretty over getting information that's an incorrect perspective.

Decluttering can increase access to information, but again it's all about getting people to get the information, not admire your ability to draw pretty icons and pick fancy colors.

Re: Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow

#28
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to discuss with Mary about it. But I'm pretty sure she has better things to do! And I agree with you that I don't have all the constraints. But it looks that they just used some of the default Powerpoint charts and shapes, so I just thought I could give it a humble try. You can see the full-size slides here: http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet-trends-2014...

Calling something "ugly" isn't humble. Putting "humble" in bold is an ironic admission of obliviousness.

"Ugly" is in the title of the article, not in my Slideshare presentation. I just posted the title of the article here.

And I think you are over-interpreting things by seeing irony everywhere.

Re: Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow

#29
post #10

I don't understand how you can design something without even talking to any of the stakeholders. Does the new deck accomplish the goals better than the original? How would you know? I'm not a fan of unsolicited redesigns. Design is easy when you have none of the constraints of a real project.

I would love to discuss with Mary about it. But I'm pretty sure she has better things to do! And I agree with you that I don't have all the constraints. But it looks that they just used some of the default Powerpoint charts and shapes, so I just thought I could give it a humble try. You can see the full-size slides here: http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/kpcb-internet-trends-2014...

I don't understand all these negative comments. I love the re-design, and I love the general idea of re-designs.

In high-school we used to have 'focus correction areas' where our teacher would put up one or two sentences (poorly written or not) and we would spend a couple of minutes fixing them. The lessons I learned in those sessions have stayed with me, even as I've forgotten rest of the material.

One of the reasons I love Stephen Few's books and website[1] is that he takes bad graphs and improves them. You can see the before and after on the same page.

The only critique I have is replacing bar charts with bubble charts. Comparing the radius or area of two circles is far more difficult than comparing heights of bars.

[1] http://www.perceptualedge.com/examples.php

Re: Redesigning Mary Meeker's Internet Slideshow

#30
post #19

I don't normally pick on the design of sites submitted, but people in glass houses... As soon as I scroll down a little the header changes and the entire first paragraph disappears behind it. It's very jarring and it's actually making it difficult to read. I'm sure it seemed like a cool idea, but design has to play second fiddle to functionality: It doesn't matter how fancy the design is if the product cannot perform…

The scrolling bothered me too, but it's not technically their fault. I paused ad blocking, and sure enough there's supposed to be a banner before the headline. With ads displayed it works more or less seamlessly (though it still is a bit distracting).
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