Creative Commons Launches, by Jeffrey Veen

Creative Commons Launches

A couple months ago, Matt Haughey dropped by the Adaptive Path offices and asked us for help with Creative Commons site. They had just started work on a great new promotion with Wired Magazine, including a CC-licensed compact disc in every issue going out to subscribers. Big names, too, including David Byrne and the Beastie Boys.

We jumped at the chance, of course, since we're big supporters of their effort to provide flexibility within the often overly-restrictive copyright law. The project was interesting from an audience point-of-view, as well. The Creative Commons site as historically been a site for copyright lawyers and policy wonks, but with a unique blend of artists looking to license their work. And with the Wired publicity, the audience would broaden even more.

So we did one of my favorite design techniques: we stripped absolutely everything away, and started putting them back on the page one-by-one. With each element, we spent time justifying it's existence through discussions with the executives at CC and our own experience. It was a painful process -- a site of any age builds up cruft based on organization culture -- but in the end, well worth it.

A round of usability testing yielded even further tweaks, as well as a some startling observations. Case in point: nearly every user asked "This sounds great, how much does it cost?" Changing the tag-line to include the word "nonprofit" instantly realigned new users' expectations with the organizations goals.

Finally, Matt commissioned Doug Bowman of stopdesign for new icons. The two graphics on the home page are his handiwork.

Have a look, and let us know what you think in the comments.

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 21 October 2004 at 10:56 AM. It was filed under Web Design. | View blog reactions

Comments

1. On 21 October 2004 at 12:06 PM Jamison wrote:

I took a peak before I finished reading this entry, so without even knowing Doug Bowman designed the icons, my first reaction was that it was very reminiscent of the Blogger redesign. I don't mean that as anything negative, the design is very nice, very clean, it just visually reminds me of Blogger.

As for the new design, and I expect usability proved out that this works fine this way, but... looking at the home page, I'm not sure what the distinction is between "Learn More" and the "about" section below it. Having linked off and read both, then poked around a little more, I'm still not sure their distinction. There seems to be some overlap in what they communicate.

And with the new prominence of searching for work I'm left scratching my head about how I can add my work to this directory.

I really want to see Creative Commons take off, and have my blog licenced under a CC License, so if there's a directory where I can be added so others can use my work, I'd love to help expand it.

What I was looking for was either some kind of link letting me know how to add my blog to the directory, or if that's not available some sort of messaging letting me know how it finds work (perhaps it just searches the web and only indexes CC licenced work). Either was, some explanation would be nice, so I know how work made it into this directory.

Those are the only comments I have. Hope it's useful feedback, great job!

2. On 21 October 2004 at 1:02 PM Gordon wrote:

Ditto with the Blogger doubletake.

As for the lefthand navigation, it could do with a qualifier I think, why would I click on Audio or Video, when I can see two huge "buttons" for Find and Publish.. I realise that this design will aid people coming back to the site, but is a tad disorientating for first time users. Or might be something as simple as a border that's need to tie that section together. Seems to be floating?

All in all though, minor quibbles on a nice clean design. Other than that navigational confusion, the rest of the site is clearer labelled, and I didn't get lost despite there being a lot of content there to get through.

3. On 21 October 2004 at 11:08 PM Jj wrote:

Overall nice and clean. One major quip is that the left-hand navigation on the front page is in desperate need of some sort of "button-feedback" .. Even something subtle as underlining on rollover would make them feel more like buttons and less like bizarrely placed site summaries. And I too did a Blogger double-take; it's the thick-black-lined gradient-filled icons causing it.

4. On 22 October 2004 at 12:15 AM Matt Haughey wrote:

Thanks for the feedback, it's great. I'd always meant to make the left side options on the homepage feel more like buttons with rollovers, so I'll definitely get that going in the next few days.

On the search side of things, we're working on an "add your URL" feature, as it currently stands you just add a license to your page and wait for us to index it each week. We should add a message making it clear how one gets into the search results.

5. On 22 October 2004 at 5:44 AM Mark Wubben wrote:

The top section of the home page looks a bit disjointed with the rest of the page. It looks fine on subpages though.

6. On 22 October 2004 at 5:59 AM Andrew wrote:

I wish that it didn't refer to creative work as "stuff": "Publish your stuff safely and legally." If I'm storing some files somewhere, that's "stuff"; but music I've written on photos I've taken shouldn't be reduced to that sort of coarse term. "Creative work", which is used everywhere else on the site, is the better term.

7. On 22 October 2004 at 8:30 AM Alex wrote:

I've known about Creative Commons as Copyright-type organization. I was still having problems understanding what the effects of the diffent combinations of licensing for someone wanting to use the CC license. Questions are usually: what legal recourse do I have when someone ignores the CC license?

So I go to the site and see: "Find" and "Publish". The navigation says "Audio", "Images", "Video", "Text", and "Education". My first reaction was CC has become a content distribution organization.

If it wasn't for your posting, my reaction was the CC license was over and CC is now a "stock" delivery company.

8. On 22 October 2004 at 9:55 AM Mark Wubben wrote:

I wrote:
"The top section of the home page looks a bit disjointed with the rest of the page. It looks fine on subpages though."

I think I could have been more clear with that remark. I find the design on the top section of the home page a bit disjointed... it feels disconnected or something. Because the sub pages have a slightly different design it feels better there.

9. On 23 October 2004 at 8:38 AM Robert Andrews wrote:

Haven't *used* it yet, but I have *seen* it - and, Jeff, that is lovely.

10. On 24 October 2004 at 9:03 PM John Phillips wrote:

I stubled into a usability problem nearly immediately. I clicked the Find image icon and played around with the search a little, looking for images.

After I was done, I couldn't find my way back to the main page. I clicked on the CC logo in the upper left corner, looked like a site logo that would take me to the home page. It took me to the "search home" home instead.

I eventually discovered the link at the bottom back to the page, but was about to start hacking the URL. (This is actually what made me realize that the search was off of a different URL: search.creativecommons.org.)

Just went back and noticed that the text at the the top of the page "Creative Commons Search" contains a link, but the text color that tells me it's a link is far too subtle to notice without seriously looking. Just doesn't look like a link.

11. On 25 October 2004 at 1:14 AM Jonas wrote:

I think it's a miss.

Design-wise it is almost identical to Blogger. I think that is a mistake because CC is already too much connected with the blogging movement. It needs to reach out to a larger audience.

My suggestion for inspiration is more like governmental sites. It should have a much more neutral (boring?) design.

The standards-adherence thing is very good, of course. You should stick to that.

12. On 26 October 2004 at 1:19 AM Andrew Donaldson wrote:

Makes me feel better to know that even hardened veterans get 'stuck in a style' sometimes (re: Blogger/CreativeCommons similarities).

13. On 27 October 2004 at 11:01 AM John Philllips wrote:

Jeff,
I don't know if you regularly read these comments, but after posting the comment above, I got a starnge challenge-response email from your mailblocks.com email account.

This struck me as odd, becuase I hadn't tried to email you, just post a comment.

14. On 29 October 2004 at 8:17 AM veen wrote:

John,

The MovableType software I use to publish this blog sends me email whenever there is a new comment posted, and it does so from the commenter's email address (makes replying easier).

It didn't occur to me that it would get piped through my mailblocks accout, but it certainly does. And that makes no sense at all. Thanks for pointing that out. I'll go figure out a way to fix it...