Thoughts on the IFTTT Redesign

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NOTE: This is some user feedback I recently sent to IFTTT‘s CEO per his request on Product Hunt. I love their service, I just wanted to point out some places that this redesign might have missed the mark. Despite these niggles, their redesign was much needed and I believe quite successful, these are just some suggestions of how it could be even MORE successful. If you’ve never used their service, I highly recommend it.

Redesign

The redesign looks nice, but seems like mobile-first has translated into mobile only. What I mean by this is that some designers labor under the false impression that “simple is better” and that a design that works on mobile will be suitable for desktop. The problem is that the condensed and simple nature of a mobile design doesn’t translate well to desktop, and can often decrease usability of the desktop site [3]. In fact, Nielsen Norman Group estimates that less than 40% of desktop screen size is utilized (and that was in 2013!) in modern website design [1]. They talk extensively about the content-to-chrome ratio, or the ratio between website content and UI options (chrome), in this article which is a fantastic read even for non-designers. Stupid statistics aside, some of the “largeness” of the home page and other pages, including header and navigation, screams “not optimized for desktop” to me. Also the usage of “Tap for [action]” instead of “Click” just reinforces the idea.

Home Page

After logging in or signing up, the first thing a user is presented with is the applet discover page. For new or returning users, you are making the assumption that they read the home page and understand what applets are, or that they are familiar with your service already. This might be a fine assumption to make for new users depending on your signup funnel, but after a UX redesign not explaining the changes or what the terminology means to existing users is a misstep. Even new users might sign up assuming there will be onboarding or other startup documentation, and be left a bit in the lurch when landing on this page. I recommend providing some sort of onboarding with some definitions of terminology or even provide a default applet (perhaps notifying users of new blog posts on IFTT?) for users to play with.

Our anti-social cat decided she wanted attention. I guess I didn’t need to study.