Sam Brown

#446 15th November 2011 at 6pm Article 10 Comments

One of the primary reasons I wanted to work at foursquare in early 2010 was to have the ability to work on one product alone and continue to improve that over time. The majority of my freelance projects never lasted more than 3 months, once a site had shipped I had very little to do with it and would move onto another project. Being able to rapidly iterate on a single product over time and see real measured improvements has been massively satisfying.

When I started working at foursquare we had two designers, a visual designer and a user experience designer. Both working across all aspects of the product on everything from web and iOS app design to communication materials and graphic design. A grand task for just two and thankfully the team has grown to almost 10 since then with a mix of visual, interaction, ux and web ui designers.

At foursquare we see the website as an integral part of our product and getting the chance to redesign this from the ground-up was a great opportunity, one that the small redesign team has slaved, sweated and poured a vast amount of our effort into over the last few months.

The new foursquare site is a breath of fresh air compared to our old utilitarian and generic 2009 website. While we continued to push amazing new features and projects to the site, we have always felt constrained by it’s abilities and style. Today we launch a brighter, fresher and more flexible design that is not only a huge improvement visually but lays the groundwork for new features and projects that are coming down our road map in the very near future.

Gone are the days of content-in-a-blue-box and in moves the era of easier to digest content, interactivity and discovery. With easier navigation, even more photos & comments, and clearer venue details to interactive maps, venue recommendations and list discovery we hope that foursquare.com becomes the destination site for people looking to keep up with their friends, discover what’s nearby, save money and unlock rewards.