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Codecademy - how not to do a redesign

michalbures.com

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Re: Codecademy - how not to do a redesign

#31

Post by zds »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #30
zds wrote: post #9

I'm the cofounder of Codecademy. Unfortunately, there aren't comments allowed on the author's blog so I'll comment here (I'm emailing him as well so hopefully my comment gets posted to his blog). We've received a lot of feedback on our initial courses page redesign since a soft launch on Saturday. We're working on making it easier for our users to find what's important to them and to discover interesting courses amon…

Since you asked: When using the product, I see: "That's correct! Next Exercise" often. "Next Exercise" should probably look more like a button. It is not obvious that it is clickable, especially to the 6% of males who are color blind.

Thanks for this. Added it as an issue in GitHub and we'll start working on it soon!

Re: Codecademy - how not to do a redesign

#33

Post by thomasdavis »

calydon wrote: post #18

Taking a stand on something publicly takes courage so I don't want to be too dismissive, but respectfully, Michal, I disagree. I'm taking the Javascript courses and I barely noticed the page had been redesigned. (That's good design!) I had no trouble finding and walking right into what I wanted. The layout is clear, logical and looks good. The 'start here' tag is probably superfluous because it isn't needed. It's obv…

Mis-alignment of elements is not trivial.

Try look again with a designers perspective

Re: Codecademy - how not to do a redesign

#34

Post by dashN9ne »

Karunamon wrote: post #3

FTA> "You could say it isn't such a big deal. But if they don't care about this what else they don't care about? Quality of the courses? User experience?" This entire line of thinking really bugs the ever-loving crap out of me. Slamming the entire service based on a few misaligned elements? Pedantic much? Edit* I'd almost argue that the alignment was by design. Having the "start here" lined up with the middle bar imp…

I also find the tone of that post aggressive and a majority of the criticism unfounded.

I agree with the criticism about lack of visual hierarchy. Feel as if the whole page doesn't really take the user's goals into account as much as it should. I'll try to send a detailed e-mail about my thoughts as soon as I get a free minute.

Re: Codecademy - how not to do a redesign

#35

Post by zds »

dashN9ne wrote: post #34
Karunamon wrote: post #3

FTA> "You could say it isn't such a big deal. But if they don't care about this what else they don't care about? Quality of the courses? User experience?" This entire line of thinking really bugs the ever-loving crap out of me. Slamming the entire service based on a few misaligned elements? Pedantic much? Edit* I'd almost argue that the alignment was by design. Having the "start here" lined up with the middle bar imp…

I also find the tone of that post aggressive and a majority of the criticism unfounded. I agree with the criticism about lack of visual hierarchy. Feel as if the whole page doesn't really take the user's goals into account as much as it should. I'll try to send a detailed e-mail about my thoughts as soon as I get a free minute.

Really appreciate that, dashN9ne. Looking forward to reading it as we fix things up.

Re: Codecademy - how not to do a redesign

#36

Post by tagawa »

I think there's a lot of truth in the criticisms but is the harsh tone really needed? Seems to me as though they're trying out small design changes, listening to feedback (as evidenced in this page) and improving things as they go along. Sounds like a good recipe to me.

Re: Codecademy - how not to do a redesign

#37

Post by zds »

tagawa wrote: post #36

I think there's a lot of truth in the criticisms but is the harsh tone really needed? Seems to me as though they're trying out small design changes, listening to feedback (as evidenced in this page) and improving things as they go along. Sounds like a good recipe to me.

Thanks, tagawa. We're taking all the feedback here and making changes (some now, in fact!).

Re: Codecademy - how not to do a redesign

#39

Post by ooobo »

ramatgan wrote: post #8

I absolutely agree, new design is absolutely terrible. Hard to use and understand where the last lesson I left off at.

I'll add that I gave up on Codeacademy a few weeks back because every time I visited the site from my email, it had a new design/format on the courses page. I got bored of figuring it out again each time, and the fact my Facebook Connect login never seemed to keep my progress from last time.

It's a hard situation, because they clearly are improving the site and adding features to the courses (tracks etc.) that are welcome - perhaps CodeAcademy need to work on communicating what has changed to the users. For example, when I signed up it was really just one exercise after another, now it has tracks/courses/games/lessons. Maybe it is just a wording problem?

Re: Codecademy - how not to do a redesign

#40

Post by zds »

ooobo wrote: post #39
ramatgan wrote: post #8

I absolutely agree, new design is absolutely terrible. Hard to use and understand where the last lesson I left off at.

I'll add that I gave up on Codeacademy a few weeks back because every time I visited the site from my email, it had a new design/format on the courses page. I got bored of figuring it out again each time, and the fact my Facebook Connect login never seemed to keep my progress from last time. It's a hard situation, because they clearly are improving the site and adding features to the courses (tracks etc.) that are we…

Would love to hear your feedback - this is the first major redesign we've done of the Courses page and not much has changed before now. We'd love to take your thoughts into consideration as we redesign it.

We'll also do a better job of fixing wording and explaining what's going on. Thanks again.

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