From eBay – Some Design

I’ve just sent this to eBay in response to their request for feedback on their new item page design:

“You are definitely on the right track with this.

For years eBay’s page layouts have been painfully bad. Not just run-of-the-mill poor like Amazon or Buy.com, but wilfully, painfully, awful. While most sites merely ignore user experience, eBay positively buries it.

With the new item page design, you have at last discovered the use of typography and colour to aid the presentation, and tabs to remove much of the initial distraction. You seem to have actually produced a design based on some kind of imagination of how your customers use your site. That is something I am deeply grateful for.

So for this I congratulate you with all my heart, and hope that future design changes show a similar awakening to improvements that in many cases are about a decade overdue.

Jonathan”

Here, in case they change them, are the screen shots for the record:

• Old layout – a usecrime in progress
• New layout – not at all bad in comparison
• Message window – the worst piece of information design normal people are ever likely to encounter on the web. Just stunningly bad.