Solve 50 problems in 50 days
50problems50days.com
50problems50days.com
I found the site to be unintuitive, cluttered and lacked the full narrative. He should redesign because he seems talented and I'm still curious about the 50 problems.
Thanks for all your constructive thoughts and comments so far. I am 23 and this was a university project that has generated a lot of interest. Apologies it's so slow right now - apparently that the HN effect.
Thanks for your thoughts on the site design. The site has won Site of the Day at Design Taxi and Awwwards. This was really unexpected as I agree there is still more to be done in terms of making the site as intuitive as possible.
However, the most important thing isn't the site design. It's the premise. What can design do - if anything?
I took a risk and set out into the unknown to answer that question. Some days I failed, some days I succeeded. The most important thing is that I dared to try (and when I failed - got up and tried again). It was an incredible experience so I hope you continue to enjoy it.
Pete
Please make a splash page which explains exactly what is clickable, and how to use the website, and what the workflow is.
That should be your first UX job. Have fun.
The basic premise of your site - 50 problems in 50 days, is interesting. But the navigation is not suitable. When I first load the site on my screen (1366 x 768) it shows the map with problems 29 and 30 centered. The first 20 or so problems are completely cut off. So it starts off confusing.
Make the grid view the default instead of the map view. Its more user-friendly.
The Narrative button is mislabeled. Call it quotes?
Your site's heading is "Solve 50 problems in 50 days". Reading that I expected to find 50 problems and 50 solutions. As I explored, it became clear that you offer some solutions, but in other cases you share insights about problems (using sweater to hold hot bowls). Which is fine. Its valid to examine the way we look at problems and solutions. But its not the same as you designing a bowl that can be held with bare hands when hot. So maybe get rid of the "solve" part?
Day 20: This padlock was too small for my locker. I'll wrap a metal cable around it and lock the cable.
Day 24: Wet socks. I stuck a towel under the door. It failed.
Is this really representative of what "designers" do? Just looks like jury-rigging to me. Slap some duct-tape on it and get on with your life.
- Day 1: Communicating with someone by voice is hard if you lack a shared languages. The proposed solution is "Integrating voice translation into Skype". This isn't a solution so much as it is a problem, with Voice Recognition and Machine Translation as sub-problems. But it is already done reasonably well by the Google Translate iOS app.
- Day 45: People forget PINs. There's been a lot of work on graphical/gestural passwords (see http://www.acsac.org/2005/papers/89.pdf), on the memorability and security of passwords in general (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-500.pdf) and customer chosen PINs in particular (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jcb82/doc/BPA12-FC-banking_pin_sec...), and on a physical device to replace all passwords/PINs (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fms27/papers/2011-Stajano-pico.pdf).
Others seem slightly odd:
- Day 39: Personalize post-card by covering up a large portion of the image with a scratch off map. Since the front of a post-card is exposed in transit, wouldn't more be scratched off? And is the recipient is expected to be able to interpret a small section of map for an area they may have never visited themselves? An alternative solution is to mount an integrated camera and printer at a scenic location, so users can easily print a postcard that includes them (Post-Me: http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/stories/2010/design_show/)
How cool to spend 50 days digging into people's problems, travelling, and putting it all out there. I'd bet anything that his 50 days of travel have led to more advancement, opportunity and insight than almost any other use of 50 days.
Be happy and supportive for someone who is breaking convention and being prolific!
Cool. On the other hand I am on an adventure to explore the limits of my brain's ability to solve problems, mostly small. Even solving one medium-sized problem very well would set me financially for my whole life. I am working on this not for 50 days but my whole life... :)
Very inspiring.
People seem to be criticising it on UI terms (it's confusing/hard to use) but I think it works because the site isn't trying to market a product (like most HN sites) but tell a story, so it is not unreasonable to expect/encourage the user to explore.
Basically, I think it is more interesting even if it is harder to use.