Flickr's product has scaled incredibly and increased in complexity over the past 8 years. We've begun the process of redesigning the site in stages, hitting the portions of the site with the highest engagement and greatest opportunities first. This presentation gives a quick explanation of why we've taken this approach and how we're managing the process.

1. choosing to
redesign in stages
Phil King
Director, Product Design
@pkingdesign

2. re: Flickr
We’re 8 years old, part of Yahoo since 2005
42 people work on Flickr - 4 designers, 6 FE’s, ~20 engineers total
6.8 billion photos, 73+ million members, 3.7 billion PV’s / month
flickr.com/photos/heather/3111752337/

3. Our product continues to scale and become more complex
Challenged not on features, but on creating simplicity and beauty
We can’t re-envision the site through incremental feature launches
The Need to Redesign
flickr.com/photos/saraewood/6258668995/

4. Complexity vs.
A Big Redesign
Flickr has over 1,600 page templates
Users experience multiple parts of the product daily (uploader, photos, groups,
organizer, search, sharing, etc). Not everything can be simplified away.
We must modernize, simplify, and beautify: but how?
flickr.com/photos/dominik99/384027019/

5. Redesign in Stages vs. One Big Release
• risk of Frankenstein product • less UX fragmentation
• frequent, smaller user churn • larger community impact
• repeated PR bumps • single, big PR boost
• faster time to market • long wait / no shipping
• iteration & course correction
No clear winner for every product. We chose stages for the speed to
market and opportunities to iterate.

6. Ease of
Use &
Beauty
2012 2013
Redesign in Stages
faster time to market with higher coordination cost
simplify & beautify key experiences, but not everything
mix of new visual style with old, must blend or accept inconsistency
improve biggest inconsistencies as we go

7. Building Bridges
Identified design elements of existing product we’re happy with to preserve in new designs
Set goals to achieve with new designs
Frequent design reviews to ensure we’re pushing hard enough, building bridges to existing site experience
flickr.com/photos/kevincollins/3924467695/

8. Last year we made thumbnail displays consistent across the site
Good functionality, design not modern enough

9. Now we’re shipping this: iterate design & functionality each time, improves everywhere we put it
Rolling out more places makes site feel newer, more consistent
Building bridges with consistent typography, iconography, and colors

10. Our old, but very reliable uploadr

11. The new Uploadr - totally new design, rich functionality
Must build bridges to existing design language through iconography, type, color etc.

12. Thanks!
Phil King
flic.kr/pkingdesign
@pkingdesign