FeedBurner - Extreme Makeover Edition
If you haven't heard the news, we launched a significant redesign of FeedBurner.com yesterday. I'm very pleased with the result, and although web applications are never truly done, you can always point to certain milestones of evolution in each where the product experience is permanently transformed. I think we passed one of those markers yesterday and I'm optimistic we've laid the groundwork for expanding our services without undue complexity bubbling over, as we were already suffering some of that with a site design that was fundamentally unchanged since its launch in February 2004.
If you've been working with an interface long enough, you start to lose perspective on the details that work and those that are in desperate need of update because your target audience has changed, the product has grown in stature within the marketplace, or (more likely) both. I'm proud to say the lion's share of the XHTML heavy lifting and thoughtful interaction design thinking came from John Zeratsky, our "new" hire from earlier this summer for just this sort of comprehensive, design-and-build work. John's 'new eyes' made this redesign more substantial and comprehensive. Major credit also goes to Jessie Chavez, the engineer who rolled with every design revision punch and brought it all together right on the target release date. Of course, the whole thing wouldn't have happened properly without the entire FeedBurner team contributing at some level, so once again we're all in each others' debt. We'll sort it out using a system of cocktails or some other medium of exchange one day soon, I just know it.
Anyway, a couple of hours off, then we move on to the next project. Like I said, you're never truly done!