As practice for our responsive individual practice we were asked to get in groups of 4-5 people and do an old YCN brief to remodel the Yahoo homepage to cater to 13-18 year olds. See below for the full brief.
http://www.ycn.org/awards/ycn-student-awards/2012-2013/briefs/yahoo
After having a read through of the brief we decided that it was best to look at the yahoo homepage in its current format. Though we thought it was effective at showing a lot of information in one space, it was almost too much. We knew that our target audience wouldn't want that much information in one small space as they (and us too) have quite a short attention span. We immediately wanted to make the homepage more image based rather than being text based.
Before going on to outline our aims for the brief and what needed to be added, or in this case removed, we decided to take a look at different search engines.
We had a look at bing, who had previously failed at taking position of most popular search engine after multiple tv advertisements and a strong presence in the media. We all liked the layout and the addition of a background image from which you can find lots of information. However It still felt a bit cluttered with text, both on the header and footer of the webpage.
When you look at both bing and google together like this you can see how starkly different they are - Google has lots of white space and it's not scared of showing it. It suggests that google is a very confident company - confident in their design choices and their company strategies. Where as bing has to fill every inch of space on their homepage with imagery or text, it makes them seem slightly less sure and less confident than Google. I personally really like how all the information and sub-sites of google are tucked away into the top right hand corner under a grid like menu, it shows that confidence that I was talking about before.
So, after looking at both popular search engines we made a mind map of things that we would aim for in our new design of the Yahoo homepage. Our initial thought was to make it less busy - to strip back the page to leave negative space and let the design elements breath like in Google's homepage. We also picked up that some elements of the homepage seemed a bit too mature for their new target market such as the "finance" section. This is when we decided that we could make the homepage fully customisable depending on the user. They could add the relevant subjects that they needed or wanted. It was also a unanimous decision that we wanted to change the colour scheme of the site and the logo. We felt that the dark purple connoted all the wrong messages for the target audience of 13-18 year olds - it connotes sophistication, intelligence, royalty and luxury. Not something that appeals to a younger audience. Also we found in the brief that they used words such as "fun" and "creative" and we thought that the current website shows none of this as it is very dry.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/26785787/Google-Rebranding
We found this rebrand of google on behance when looking for different search engine designs. The use of the search bar included in the logotype makes it feel inclusive, showing that their whole ethos is designed around the user. Also the use of the navy blue is very similar to the blue used within Facebook suggesting that the designer was trying to make google seem more communicative and friendly, perhaps trying to appeal to the target audience of Facebook. Additionally the fact that the logo is in all lowercase shows that it is a friendly approachable company. The use of uppercase would be too bold and dominant and shows authority, where as all lowercase is welcoming and not scary to approach.
After looking at the logo as a group we decided that the colour purple needed to go and be replaced with something more inviting. We chose a bright neon green to gradient into a sky blue. We wanted to use two colours because it shows the company is transitioning and that it is multidimensional and fun - not one flat colour but a mixture of two.
Initial Website Ideas
We decided initially to all create a new website home page layout so that we could pool all of our ideas together afterwards. Everyone seemed to have very similar ideas but we preferred the last design because of its simplicity and ease of use.
Unfortunately due to the time scale of the brief we didn't get much time to develop the website any further. We just made some small changes with the sign in button and added a date to the site so that the user can keep up to date.
We thought that the thing that was lacking most with the website as it was, was that it wasn't personal enough to the user - it was cluttered with everything under the sun so we wanted to narrow it down. So on the home feed you can choose "widgets" to place, here we have used the news, Facebook, the weather forecast and instagram. We thought that this would appeal to the target market of 13-18 year olds as social media is very popular and being able to see their favourite feeds in one place would definitely sell Yahoo! to them and to make it as their homepage.
App Design
Once we had finalised the website all the other concepts that we came up with became a lot easier to design. With the app we wanted to focus on minimalism - a place to access mail, weather and search the web. We did think of doing the social media feeds again on the app but I thought that there would be no point because they could easily use the apps for the sites themselves instead of slowing down the Yahoo! app. Below we mocked up the icon and a simple search on the phone.
Yahoo! Search Points & Cafes
We wanted to take the Yahoo! Experience outside of the internet and into the real world, so we came up with the idea of having a digital cafe and search points within town centres. We thought that a search point would be really helpful for people if they were lost or had no access to wifi on the go. If a point was in the middle of the street (like the example below) a user could find any shop they wanted, see directions or even compare shop prices. This would boost the publicity of Yahoo! and make people want to use it as their browser because they have seen it somewhere else than their own computer screen.
Also I had the idea of creating a digital cafe or cyber cafe for people to socialise in. These days all anyone does in cafes and coffee shops is use their phones. I thought that Yahoo! could embrace this fact and create a meet point for young people and adults a like to use the internet in a more social setting, taking them away from the isolation of being on a computer in their room.
