Reason #417 every decent User Experience Designer steals shamelessly from Flickr

I figure that I could make a decent living selling "W.W.F.D" bracelets out the back of a Volkswagen Jetta at design conferences, and it is purely for reasons like this: Flickr's About page.

Here is why this page is so special: When is the last time you were moved by a company's About page? Never? Me neither. Normally they are boring, corporate boilerplate with C-level executive photos and bios if the company felt like going all out. They are afterthoughts at best, and more often than not an executive change or two out of date. It is rare for an About page to really capture the spirit of the company values as well as Flickr does. In fact, the company I work for recently rebranded itself and every time I go to the restroom I stare at a pretty sign telling me what our new corporate mission and values are. But for the life of me I could not tell you what those values are right now. Part of that is because Flickr's goals are very well written (you'd almost think their PR lackies were actually real humans or something) but a larger part of why they are so remarkable is because as you use their product the company's goals are evident. Of course they want to help me make my photos available to people that matter to me. Of course they want me to find better ways to organize my photos. That's what they do. That's what makes them Flickr.

If your vision statement or goals or whatever it is that officially drive decisions in your organization are not immediately clear to your users, they are not your vision.

Thanks to the Adaptive Path blog for pointing out this great page.

Technorati Tags: user experience UX flickr web design web2.0

Posted by Mark Allen on Friday, January 5, 2007