9rules: Quality loves…clutter?
In catching up with some old haunts yesterday, I found 9rules has realigned again. Every time I look at 9rules there’s something different going on, I have to say it’s a bit disorienting but maybe that’s because my visits have become more and more sporadic. Don’t get me wrong, I have a soft spot for 9rules. I think Mike Rundle’s a talented designer and admire these guys for being able to take their hobby and turn it into a living.
That said, this site has become a clusterfuck. Now I’ll take with a grain of salt that they’re constantly evolving, and this version of the site is probably part of a larger vision, but I’ve got a few beefs with the UI and it’s huge conflict with their stated values.
9rules is a very different community now, and I dare say perhaps they’ve grown too big? I used to visit 9rules looking for some design inspiration, and with the first few rounds of submissions, some great looking sites were added. Pretty much every site I considered a daily read I’d found through 9rules. But that quality has gone down in a big way. A lot of my favorite sites in the community have since quietly left. Maybe it’s intentional, 9rules always stated their focus was content, and you can’t begrudge a site full of great content a terrible design. But even some of the design sites seem to be a bit off focus now, and maybe some, for lack of a better word, professionalism, is gone from them. There’s still good sites in the network, and there’s probably a few great sites in there I haven’t even found yet, I just don’t feel compelled to dig through this mess.
From the homepage I can’t even discern what 9rules is about, other than a giant linkroll and a shiny leaf. When I go into the design community, I expect that clicking on the site name will take me there. Wrong, instead I’m taken to the user’s 9rules stats page. When I click on a post title, I expect to be taken there. Wrong again, I’m taken to the site’s feed. On the community pages the awkward green headers compete for dominance with 15 entries, and about a gazillion links. My eyes can’t settle long enough to read anything. It’s not clear what choosing one of the live or notes tabs will do, and even once I’m there I’m still a little confused. The various options between fresh posts and 30 days are too many.
I think 9rules needs to learn less is more. Remember your adage, “content is king?” Focus on the quality of your content, not the quantity. If people are engaged by what they find on the home page, they’ll navigate down into the bowels and find more sites. I look forward to seeing how they choose to resolve these issues in the future.
Every post title link goes directly to the blog entry itself, there is no medium page. Many of our members use Feedburner for their RSS feeds so because of that, the links to their blog entries have a Feedburner URL prepended so that they can be tracked by the member. I just visited the majority of the members in our Design community and clicked on post titles for testing, and they all successfully went to the person’s site.
The design currently up has been live for over 4 months, and in that time we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback — the majority of which has been positive. The constructive feedback we’ve received has been taken into account and we’re already working on changes that focus more on the content. I’m sorry that your experience at 9rules wasn’t more positive, but the UI for our site has always been difficult because of the amount of information we have — 200+ members, dozens of communities, 70,000+ member entries, 30,000+ Notes, thousands of users, etc. — and it’s a challenge to both provide access to everything while at the same time not overwhelm the user.
Mike, thanks for taking the time to chime in. I’m aware that it’s been a while since last I saw the site. Perhaps I was unclear, the problem was when I’m in a community page and to the right there’s the area with the link roll and favicons, when I click one of those names I think I’ll be exiting 9rules and going to the user sites, but instead I don’t, that’s a bit confusing.
I’m sure you’ve had some positive feedback, and I appreciate that it’s difficult to manage such a large sum of content as you have, and design is an ever evolving process. I know UI grows with the content, but I guess what I’d like to see is something scaled back a bit, I feel bombarded. But maybe that’s exclusive to how I’m browsing, as someone looking specifically for design sites. Maybe it’s friendlier for someone just looking for an interesting site of any kind? No apologies needed, as I said I’m just looking forward to your next iteration
And for the record I realize in this statement 9rules always stated their focus was content, and you can’t begrudge a site full of great content a terrible design. I was a bit unclear. I mean the design sites being linked to by 9rules, and not 9rules itself.