WordPress | Product Designer
A Cover Letter
To My Esteemed Future Colleagues,
I need to understand what y’all are doing with WordPress.
For over a decade now you have shipped a new theme every year. I imagine there are some internal reasons for doing this, like say measuring performance in other areas of the platform. However, to the end user, I wonder if it’s starting to have a strange, subconscious side-effect.
You see for many people a blog is a straightforward thing. It is a relatively concrete thing, and it’s safe to say that the whole developed world understands what it means to provide a blogging platform. Let’s a look at your list of philosophies. I’d like to share some thoughts on two of them:
“Design for the Majority”
At what point does the majority no longer need a blog to be like a blog was twenty years five ago? If the theme from which it gets its name is any indication, 2017 is a year when the defaults demand links to be listed down the right side, that a search box needs both the word “Search…” as well as a symbol, and radio buttons are still hanging around? I can appreciate adherence to web standards, but does that mean expecting more from the user?
“Striving for Simplicity”
Does a publishing platform that strives for simplicity need to welcome new users with a five step setup wizard? I must walk through a set of branding and configuration exercises before I can begin to press words? There has got to be a better way.
In closing, the headline statement of the past few State of the Word addresses is what percentage of the internet powered by Wordpress. You’re up to twenty-seven now, and I think it’s worth evaluating how you’re living up to what that number represents. You are quite literally shaping the internet. It represents leadership.
I’d like to help,
JD Lewin
PS — The single design that I am currently most proud of creating doesn’t exist yet. I want to build it with you.
