Past Work Sees the Light

Back just before I left GSI Commerce, I was working on a project that I put a lot of time and effort into making into the best design I could – PBS Shop. I created the design, debated the methods, worked with developers to come up with some tricks to make it work, worked with business people to push certain ideas when the client had other ideas. After a long struggle, I finally got it the way that I wanted it to be … and then I left for my current job. I felt like I was leaving behind a child, and I wondered what would happen to it – whether it would become another victim of the that’s nice but we need to do it within x time and under budget methodology which inevitably ends up making the site worse for it.

So, when I found out that the site was up today, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was almost exactly like I had planned it out. There were a few changes here and there, but remarkably few. Some of the usability things that I had wanted, such as skip links and a usable print style sheet were missing, but I was very happy with the final version. Thanks to Kevin for doing such a nice job with the design and making this look as good as I had hoped.

You can see the improvement from original on the left (March 2007, from the Wayback Machine) to the current version on the right.

Homepage

‘Family’ Page

Sub-Topic Page

And here are two more shots of the current site – I really couldn’t find an older version of them.

Product Page

Email Form

All in all, not a bad site. You can see the whole thing at PBSShop.org.