Thesixtyone Unveils a Gorgeous Redesign, Users Predictably Revolt

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/23/thesixtyone-redesign-users-revolt/

by jasonlbaptiste • 17 years ago

34 29 17 years ago

techcrunch.com

Dilpil• 17 years ago

The new design is gorgeous, yes. No one is calling it ugly. But ugh, it is quite unusable.

jfarmer2• 17 years ago

I think it's usable. It's like a radio station that plays awesome music.

Of course, I never used the site before the redesign, so what do I know?

bugs• 17 years ago

Before it was a place to interact with music lovers and music artists that you may have never met before (that is pretty much gone now).

Before it was a game, you start off with hearts and get more as you level up and listen to music, that is still there but because interaction is gone supporting artists with the game seems nonexistent and competing is nonexistent. (Not everyone played the game.)

Now (as you said) you have pretty pictures and a radio instead of basically an iphone/ipod with a bunch of contacts and connections to artists.

mattdennewitz• 17 years ago

mark me down as saying its ugly: the colors are inharmonious and impact is a terrible typeface choice.

while technically usable, its not necessarily something i want to use.

cellis• 17 years ago

I can't say it's gorgeous. It's a little hard-edged for my taste. But i use it nonetheless. Isn't that all that matters?

gkoberger• 17 years ago

This is one of the most radical changes I've ever seen in a website- it seems like it would have made more sense to add it as a an option, and slowly make it the default. At the very least, they should have had a ton of tooltips all over the site. "Remember X feature? You can now do it here." GrooveShark did a great job of having little helpful popup boxes when they redesigned.

I can't think of a single site I currently use that could pull off such a massive redesign. It would be like Digg replacing the whole site with something from http://labs.digg.com/. Pretty? Sure. Usable? Not so much. Users don't necessarily dislike the new site, they're just confused.

And nobody likes to be confused.

wmeredith• 17 years ago

Giving their existing users some direction would have been nice, but what a differentiation they've pulled off in a crowded market music streamers. I used the site a bit last year and wandered away. I use it most of the day Friday while at work, it was the first time I'd been back in months.

Basically, I think they may lose some of their current hardcore users, but they'll pick up a whole slew of new ones.

elblanco2• 17 years ago

Just did with me.

shpxnvz• 17 years ago

It may be different, but it seems like the last people you want to confront with differentiation are your existing users. I wonder if the best way to release such a radical redesign would be to only default new users to the new interface. Let existing users opt-in to a radically different experience, in their own time.

SamAtt• 17 years ago

This sort of things makes me wonder about the difference between business code and UI code and the effect of splitting them. Right now the argument is that it's too expensive to maintain two separate user interfaces. But as more and more pages start moving all their business code behind web services that might change (since the cost to maintain a UI would go way down)

You could even get situations where third party companies agree to maintain an older interface while paying the company a small cut.

nicpottier2• 17 years ago

Never used the site before, but I kind of like it. Perhaps they pulled off a coup by getting all this press?

I like the idea of it just being a Pandora for indy music, the simple interface really appeals to me there. But ya, I never saw the previous version so who knows.

nicpottier2• 17 years ago

Ok I take it back.. (a bit)

How the hell do you buy songs? I mean this is supposed to be the point right? So I found an artist I like, shouldn't there be a really obvious way to buy the album/track? (or telling me it isn't available for purchase yet?)

That kind of makes my head explode.. I want to support the artist but it isn't letting me.. arr!

cschneid• 17 years ago

I'm new to the site (never heard of it before), and I just did exactly that. Ran across a song that's sorta cool... and... no clue how to purchase. ohh well.

wildwood• 17 years ago

I enjoyed doing the quests when I first started using thesixtyone, which got me used to the features and the layout pretty easily.

I'm a bit surprised that they haven't done 'redesign intro' quests to acclimate people to the new design.

Vindexus• 17 years ago

I'd be interested to know if they did any usability tests and what the results were. Even just the basic cheap usability tests like describe in Don't Make Me Think.

If anyone has any information on their testing process, please share!

moe• 17 years ago

You don't make leaps like that with "usability testing".

Despite a few obligatory niggles the design is a masterpiece, obviously coming straight out of the heads and hands of a few (or even a single) gifted individuals.

amackera• 17 years ago

This "controversy" will inevitably drive more new users to the site.

nedwin2• 17 years ago

A music-making friend of mine pointed me to the site about 6 months ago. I checked it out but not really being into his music didn't really see how this site was any better or more interesting than Myspace.

But when the redesign came out I stood up and paid attention, it just looks so great. For an artist who doesn't have the expertise or money to create a great looking website this is awesome, attractive and functional for sharing their music.

I sent it to a bunch of people I know who work at varying levels of the music industry and they felt the same, a few are creating pages now.

I'd say the redesign / relaunch has been successful in terms of user growth though more consultation with their existing community might have spared some of this backlash.

est• 17 years ago

what's wrong with just stick with old.thesixtyone.com ?

blasdel• 17 years ago

I don't know why the hell they didn't launch it as a second site under new branding -- there would have been no pushback at all.

Some people want a better MySpace, some want a better Pandora. There's no reason the two demographics can't have their own sites based on the same data.

burke• 17 years ago

This. It's different enough that it could have been successful as an entirely separate venture.

nedwin2• 17 years ago

Running one site is hard enough, you would lose a lot of focus running two.

Asmodeus• 17 years ago

If by 'better Pandora' you mean 'available where I am' then yes, I'd like a better Pandora.

nir• 17 years ago

I really like thesixtyone, but talk about TechCrunch astroturfing - are there really that many users to the61 that some of them being upset is a TC-worthy story?

vsync2• 17 years ago

I'm going to guess before even looking at that tab, and having never seen thesixtyone before and not knowing what it is:

Bright white background

Sans serif text forced everywhere

Font size forced large

Large colorful buttons

Text boxes with few labels so you're forced to guess if your input will or won't work

Doesn't work in elinks

Doesn't work on my Centro

vsync2• 17 years ago

Ah, that was the /old/ site (and I forgot "Facebook connect button"). The new one is even more incomprehensible.

That said, it's kind of fun, visually attractive (although incomprehensible), and I like the ANGLERFISH HAILEY WOJCIK song that plays on first load. (That's a verbatim cut and paste, and I guess I should say it's to their credit that cut and paste works at all. It's so old media, after all.) If I can budget some time for doing nothing but listening to music, I'll play with it some more. I don't think it's useful for people that don't have that time though.

elblanco2• 17 years ago

Dammit, all I wanted to see was the site, and now I'm hooked on a new band.

Thesixtyone Unveils a Gorgeous Redesign, Users Predictably Revolt

Related Stories