"Redesign Must Die", by Rosenfeld

http://www.slideshare.net/lrosenfeld/redesign-must-die

I've had Rosenfeld's polar bear branded O'Reilly book about information architecture for as along as I can remember. It's one of the books I recommend to folks getting started in web design. So I enjoyed this set of slides that I only discovered this week.

While there is not accompanying audio, for those who've been in the business of UI design for any time, the slides themselves tell the story.

I was particularly struck by this presentation because I work at a University and Rosenfeld's examples of how his alma mater continued to redesign and rebrand their home website hit close to home. Our communications department does much the same thing. They have a total homepage redesign schedule of every 3 years. This isn't based on user feedback or any analytics or, apparently, common web sense. It's a decision made years ago by someone in marketing. And it makes me nuts.

I'm a fan of "refine" rather than "redesign", and that is one of the central points of the slides. Hope you guys find the information interesting.