The Sixty One is a digg-like music website, with a small twist: It plays like an adventure game. You level up and rack up points by bumping (digging) tracks, as well as everything else you can do on the site. It keeps you interacted while you learn some great new music. It’s a pretty nice concept, and actually one I thought of awhile ago (I was going to call it Atomic Radio…guess they beat me to it). Also when you are playing a song, it doesn’t shut off if you navigate elsewhere on the site, which is pretty awesome.
I had heard about the site almost a year ago when it was too new to the scene, and quickly discovered that I found the site unusable. My main problem with the site is the interface and usability. It’s horrendous. Navigating the site and design just hurts my eyes, and nothing grabs my attention properly, and I find it hard to find what I want to click on. The colors are bad, the typography too heavy…and overall its just plain poor design. Granted, the whole site is only run by 2 guys, so I can’t blame them too heavily if they aren’t designers. But the design itself ruined what should have been a fun, engaging experience.
A few of my friends have discovered the site and it’s gaining in popularity, so I decided to check it out again. Since that first time I discovered the site, they had made 0 changes. Probably a lot of backend technical advances, but not design. So, because I needed some practice, I redesigned The Sixty One. I kept true to the colors and general layout, but added enough interface features to completely differentiate between my design and theirs. The new navigation is probably the most useful aspect here, as theirs just didn’t make any sense. Mine slides open sub-navigation instead of splitting it into two lines. Makes a big difference. Oh, and I came up with an idea for a logo, as they currently don’t have one.
I will possibly contact theSixtyOne and see what they say. I like to do a lot of mockup and redesigns for practice, so if you like my style, contact me.
Cheers,
Matthew Lettini
