Usability vs Design – TheSixtyOne.com

For almost two years I was a regular listener on the music site TheSixtyOne.com. It offered a wide and eclectic range of music from largely unsigned musicians, all uploaded by the artists themselves. Much of the music was also available for free download. In addition to the music itself, the site featured a unique gaming aspect that allowed you to “heart” songs you liked and then gain points and levels depending on how well your songs did with other listeners. And capping off the appeal of the site was its community aspect, where people could form groups and communicate and share music with each other, as well as comment on songs and engage the artists in discussions.

In late January the site experienced an unannounced and radical design change that was not well-accepted by its users, including me.

In a graduate course I’m taking on Information Architecture, we were discussing marketing vs usability, and the conversation brought me back to T61′s recent redesign, which highlights the potential tensions between marketing and web design as well as between design and usabillity.

The issues with the redesign are many. Many complained that the community aspects were destroyed and many of the the functions we came to enjoy such as sorting by genre, and personal (but sharable) playlists, were taken away… all without any forewarning. Furthermore, the site’s creators seemingly turned a blind eye to criticisms or even pleas for explanations or assistance navigating the new features, many of which were confusing or didn’t function correctly.

As a result of the design change and lack of communication with its sizable regular userbase, T61 appears to have run off many of its long-time users.

So this issue raises a pressing question with usability.

On one hand, I can understand the compulsion to make a “slicker” design, and offer more eye-candy, which the redesign does in spades. They want to try to make money and attract advertisers (and additional venture capital, if the rumors are true). I don’t begrudge them that. After all, they’ve obviously invested enormous time and resources building and maintaining a site with so much content and bandwidth requirements.

However, it seems that they have fallen victim to the same thing as so many corporate sites – design over function, appearance over usability. People don’t LIKE the functions on the new site, and can’t find the things they want to do. The labels are confusing, the navigation is haphazard, and it’s nearly impossible to find the content you want.

While the business stakeholders (marketing, advertising, whatever) may like a website, if it fails on basic usability criteria, there’s a problem. In my final analysis, a site should be simple and easy to use. Appealing designs are a plus, but should never be the most important element.

So what do you think?

The old T61 site: http://old.thesixtyone.com/ (note: they have been slowly dismantling this site and several functions have been removed since the switch)

The current T61 site: http://www.thesixtyone.com/

Some of the commentary about the change and the user revolt: