Introduction

1

• Introduction
• Craigslist.com wants to provide community info
  for the Web. This information includes
  classifieds, house sale/rental offerings,
  community announcements, personal and for the
  focus of this evaluation, job postings.
• With some simple redesigned elements,
  Craigslist.com can increase it suability to is
  s.f. bay area job seekers.

• Site Solutions At A Glance
• Craigslist was originally designed with a
  relatively tech-savvy audience in mind.
• Because of that, the design is very clean, very
  Nielsen-like in its sparse and simple design.
• Due to this aesthetic, the textual display code
  is where substantial changes can be made for the
  greatest effect.
• The changes noted are themed around jobs, and
  also specifically around how a user understands
  Craigslist.com is organized.
• These are mainly grouping solutions, lowering
  the cognitive load on the user.

2

• Problems
• Lots of jobs to choose from. On the home page
  there are 24 groupings of jobs.
• Job seekers go straight to this section of the
  page. Once entering the pages of this section,
  users want to browse around the different job
  groupings.
• Since there are 24 of them, your ideal job might
  not fit into just one of these groupings.
• For example, would you put a human factors job
  under "internet engineering jobs", or "web design
  jobs" or "software jobs"?

• Some additional comments about the home page
• Although grouping is done well overall, the
  title of the page, san francisco bay area, isn't
  visually attached to the rest of the content.
  With all of these blocks of text, it is hard to
  group them accordingly.
• This site may be for the benefit of tech-savvy
  users, but the use of a greater-than sign instead
  of "search" or "go" for the search submit button
  is unconventional. Also, the search text field is
  quite limiting due to it small width.
• One great element on this page is the user of
  red as a pop-out to show new content areas.

3

• Problems
• This is where you might get into trouble.
• There is no one-to-one matching of the original
  24 job groupings on the home page, and the 24 job
  groupings provided in the drop-down menu
  displayed throughout the jobs section.
• This inconsistency in language shows a lack of
  visual momentum, requiring a higher cognitive
  load on the user to decide what action to take.

• Redesign
• The simplest redesign would be to match one on
  to the other, preferably to match the home page
  job groupings on to the drop-down menu.

4

• Problems
• A job seeker will usually explore the locations
  of jobs.
• This step can be confusing due to a design
  choice. There is
• no clear hierarchy, on the home page or in the
  jobs section, of the difference between s.f.
  bayarea sub-regions (san francisco, south bay,
  etc.).
• Even on the top of the jobs pages, the
  structure, with pipes between each subgroup, is
  confusing and doesn't help me understand the
  hierarchy. (There's also too much going on
  between the breadcrumbs and the list of
  geographic regions.)

• Redesign
• By providing some visual hierarchywith bold
  type and indentationto these elements on the
  home page this clarification will be made when it
  is first presented.
• In addition, providing similar hierarchy in the
  jobs section (although not in the same vertical
  design, but still accomplishing the same purpose)
  it is reiterated and provides redundant
  information and valuable grouping of information
  to the user.

5

• Problems
• The problem with the locations of jobs comes
  into play when a user is trying to post a resume.
• The site requires you to choose a sub-region of
  the s.f bayarea in order to get to the posting
  process (it's the first step, shown in the screen
  shot to the left).
• But what's the difference between these choices?
  What, for example, constitutes south bay and not
  peninsula?
• Without additional cues, mislabeling could run
  rampant. (This is especially true if they don't
  know that s.f. bayarea is the uber-region for
  all of these sub-regions).

• Redesign
• Provide a list of cities for reference for each
  of these sub-regions to help posters get through
  this process.
• In addition, a labeled map would help those not
  knowledgeable of the s.f. bayarea to help them
  understand the context of the site as a whole.
  (The map won't help in specific bordering areas
  unless it's detailed enoughthus the list of
  cities can help provide specific answers.)