Group members: Ying Luo, Andrew Wang, Christine Wang
##INTENT
With our redesign of Craigslist, we wanted to deliver a more consistent and beautiful user experience while keeping the utility that has made Craigslist successful throughout the past 20 years. To this end, we carefully selected page layouts, visual design elements, and animations that we believed embodied the company's community-centered philosophy.
##VISUAL DESIGN
###Colors We wanted to create a more aesthetically appealing version of Craigslist while still staying true to the brand identity, so we chose a purple color palette with accents of gray and gold. Actions related to content creation and curation, such as posting and saving listings, are colored gold as a call to action. Other important functionality, like search, is highlighted with darker purple to and differentiate it from content creation/curation actions.
###Typography The current version of Craigslist has only two fonts: Times New Roman and Arial. We wanted to make the Craigslist logo a serif font as a nod to the original logo in the upper left corner of the page. For the rest of the content, we chose Lato for its versatility, legibility, and friendly feel as a sans serif.
##GENERAL
###Navigation bar Craigslist is mainly used to create and search local listings. We wanted these actions to be the most important parts of the site, so we placed them in the nav bar where they are always visible and easily accessible. We also placed user account info in the upper right corner of the nav bar for easy access to a user's account information. Ideally, clicking on the user's name would reveal a dropdown list with options to edit account info, change Craigslist location, see saved searches, and stay updated on the listings that the user has created or is following.
###Footer We consolidated and moved links that we thought were important to have on the website but didn't add to the functionality of Craigslist to the gray footer. For example, having a FAQ or About page is important information only for a select few; most people are more interested in buying houses, forging relationships, or finding jobs. These pages don't necessarily help facilitate the Craigslist process, so we moved them to the bottom of the page.
##VIEWS
###Main View When studying the main view of Craigslist, we realized that Craigslist's current homepage doesn't explicitly say what the website is for. Instead, the user is confronted with dozens of links which show far too much detail about the website. This may be useful for an experienced user of the site, but it's intimidating for new and less experienced users of the site. We took the opportunity to introduce Craigslist's philosophy on the main page and turn the page into a hub of exploration and discovery, for people who don't already know what they want. We also abstracted out the sub-sections of Craigslist (for example, "strictly platonic" under Personals and "apts/housing" under Housing"). Experienced users who already know what they want can immediately start searching or seeing their account information from the readily accessible nav bar.
This version of Craigslist has been localized to San Francisco because that's where Craigslist started. Details such as the background image on the splash page may change depending on the region.
###List View For the list page, we decided to minimize the clutter of the original website, which only served to distract the user from the most important part of the page - finding a house (or other item) that they liked. We decided to forgo the standard list view that only had text in favor of a tile view that gave you quick access to a picture and important details. In the description of the tile, we included a user defined title to keep the flavor of the original craigslist, but we also had a special section to emphasize price as well as small tags that would give the user quick information. These tags are also clickable so that the user can find other things with the same attributes. To emphasize the tiles, we kept the background white so that the tiles would stand out. A sidebar was also included to give the user quick access to different search criteria. Overall, this gives more information to the user and improves the overall aesthetic appeal of the page while being more efficient.
###Item View Just as with the rest of our proposal, we wanted to build off of Craigslist's current layout as opposed to a complete redesign. We kept the photos the main focus of the page and the tags on the right side of the photo. The carousel is still the same as well, but we added slight gradients and CSS to make it more aesthetically pleasing. We also expanded the contact information in the current "Reply" button and fixed to the page, making it easier for consumers to make purchases. Lastly, we added links to additional related items that we think consumers would also be interested in, further encouraging sales.