The September, 2009 Issue of Wired

For several years now, I’ve been showing a screen capture of the craigslist.org home page to audiences at various presentations on usability.   I ask a simple question.   Is this website usable?   The audience members, who are generally students, programmers and business people and not members of the design community, invariably return a resounding yes in response to my question.  It’s taken for granted.  Craigslist, in all it’s glorious straightforwardness, defines usable.  Then I proceed to show them how the design breaks a lot of rules – at least by the conventional wisdom of modern web UI designers.   For instance, the craigslist home page is crammed full and almost completely lacks any sense of visual heirarchy or prioritization.   It provides little to no opportunity for serendipitous discovery of content, only myriad starting options for those who already know what they are looking for.   It’s chock-full of cryptic abbreviations.  It’s un-visual.  It squanders precious screen real-estate on seldom used features.  For instance, a full third of the screen is devoted to displaying all the cities where the various Craigslists are located – something which the average user rarely, if ever,  has the need to change.  Let’s face it, this site  is a usability train wreck, right?

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