Kevin Bury - User Interface Design

Thank You Yahoo!

Friday was my last day at Yahoo! After 4 years I have decided it is time for a new challenge. I had a great time at Yahoo! and will miss the team there very much. We accomplished a great deal together - from the new HotJobs recruiter platform and signing of the newspaper consortium deal, all the way to the totally redesigned My Yahoo! and launch of Yahoo! Buzz. Yahoo! is an incredible place to work and I consider myself very fortunate to have been there and to have worked with so many talented people.

On April 14th I start my new gig as Principal Designer at LinkedIn. I’ve been a huge fan of LinkedIn for years. The potential seems enormous and I think it will be challenging and fun.

Introducing Yahoo! Buzz

We just launched Yahoo! Buzz - another product designed by the Yahoo! Front Doors user experience team. Buzz is a site that surfaces stories from around the net. Top stories are determined by user votes, searches, and other user activity.

Yahoo! Buzz can highlight anything - a major news event, an intriguing video or image, or an interesting blog post - and instead of editors, real people vote and search for their favorite stories to determine the top rated content from across the Web. Yahoo! Buzz ranks the most popular content of the moment using a unique approach that combines consumer votes with search popularity to give a story a Buzz Score.

Stories with a high Buzz Score can be featured in the Today Module on the Yahoo! Front Page. This opens up the Yahoo! front page to the best content chosen by users as well as traditional content chosen by editors.

We worked very hard on Buzz and we hope you like it. Here’s what ReadWriteWeb had to say about us (view story).

Go to http://buzz.yahoo.com/ and try Yahoo! Buzz for yourself.

The New Yahoo! Search Assistant

We just went live with the new Yahoo! search assistant. As the user begins to type in the search box, the search assistant appears below displaying likely matches. On the search results page the assistant also shows related “pivot” matches. Let’s say the user is searching for “Star Trek” - pivot matches would be things like “Next Generation” and “Enterprise”. The search assistant can be a huge help in formulating a search, especially when the user isn’t totally sure what they are searching for.
The search assistant came about as a result of a close collaboration between the Yahoo! Search and Front Page design teams. Go to http://www.yahoo.com/ to try the new search assistant for yourself.

In-Line Video on the Yahoo! Front Page.

Check out the new in-line video player on the Yahoo! Front Page. In the past, clicking on a video link opened up a video playing in a new window. The Front Doors design team redesigned the experience to open up the player in-line. Now, when a user clicks on a video link the player animates open and plays the video right there. When finished, the user can play another video or close the player.

Not only is the new user experience less disruptive, the video loads in a fraction of the time it did with the old player. To see it in action, go to http://www.yahoo.com/. Sometimes there is a video available on the first tab, if not, click on the video tab and you will see a collection of the most popular videos of the day.

New Version of My Yahoo! Now Available

The new version of My Yahoo! is now in beta! Go to http://cm.my.yahoo.com/upgrade to upgrade. We have totally redesigned the product packing in lots of new features. We’ve also made the product much more efficient to use. Things that used to require multiple pages to perform can now be done in-line - without ever having to leave your page.

You can choose from over 2 million modules to display on your customized page. To add a module, click “Personalize This Page”. The “Extravaganza” opens (that’s what we call it internally) at the top of your page. You can browse, search and preview modules from the extravaganza. When you find one you like, simply click “Add”.

New Modules

We have added tons of new and redesigned modules to My Yahoo! The new portfolio module let’s you track your stocks, and the new movies module keeps you informed about new movies opening in your area. Many of the modules were designed by the My Yahoo! design team. Others were developed by other groups both inside and outside of Yahoo!

Open Modules

Use My Yahoo! as your aggregator of information across the internet. You can monitor your Facebook friends, check your Netflix queue, and keep track of your Yahoo! and Gmail inboxes.

Customize The Look of your My Yahoo! Page

Choose from over 40 different My Yahoo! themes. We are adding more all the time. Just go to Personalize this page and click “Change Color”.