[duopixel]

While the new design is better visually, it follows a trend that I've seen the past few years and that I don't particularly like: it dedicates almost all of the real estate trying to convince you that the Khan Academy is great, while downplaying the videos which are the actual content of the site.

This is fine for an app or content that is behind a "registerwall", because you must convince the user that registering is worthwhile. But in the Khan Academy the courses a freely available. Instead of presenting me a video of Sal chatting with Bill G on the stage of TED, I'd prefer a video that is likely to expand my understanding of the universe.

[jasonrr]

Totally fair criticism. Like any design effort, it represents a careful priority balancing act. The Khan Academy is trying to do a lot of things, and communicating that effectively is a challenge. For example, not everyone is as knowledgeable as you are about what the Khan Academy offers and why they should care. The good news is that people don't have any trouble finding the videos, so I don't think the design is causing too much damage from the perspective of getting to the content you want.

That said, the sketches/mockups that led us to the current iteration of the design also included both the idea of featured content in the main video carousel and different homepage content for users who are signed in. They didn't make the cut yet, but we haven't forgotten about them.

Ultimately, I agree that we want to make it as efficient as possible to get to the content you want quickly, and I don't think we're there yet.

[neovive]

Great job on the redesign. I've been following Khan Academy for a long time and the new design is great leap in usability and the playlist feature is excellent. The old site required a lot of in-browser searching and definitely was not as appealing to younger audiences.

BTW: Sal's TED talk was very inspiring and really demonstrated the amazing potential of his work. It's great to see all of the recognition and support he is receiving and the excellent team now in place. His talk even inspired me to start blogging about Education last month -- see the first post on Education2.org [http://www.education2.org/2011/03/welcome-to-education2-org].

[rubergly]

One of the complaints I've recently seen pop up consistently regarding Khan Academy is something to the effect of "Why should I trust this one guy? What does he know?" Prominent displays of Bill Gates helps to convince a random visitor of the site that, yes, this is a big deal and is someone you can trust, which is something a visitor otherwise couldn't possibly know until watching and carefully critiquing several videos. The wall of links is definitely important, especially the "wow' factor of the overwhelming number of videos, but without the proper context, that list of videos could look like a content farm, and a visitor might never be convinced to click through several links in order to see how legitimate they are.