Okay Geek Farm
A fresh take on the design of Skype for Mac
Brandon Davenport
Ever since of the inception of Skype for Mac, people have been slightly under whelmed with the design of the interface. Skype 5.0 Beta for Mac was a step in the right direction, but was a clumsy attempt to simplify the interface while keeping all of the functionality. It was in-consistent, blank and a little messy, but UI designer Daryl Ginn has taken a whack at it and we think he’s made something that could really work for the text iteration of Skype for Mac.
Why Daryl’s design caught our eye
We like this take on Skype for Mac because it takes the elements we use most (Chat, Contacts, Favorites and History) and places them in the lime-light, and they stand out well (top left). It’s also nice to see a clean chat window with a simplified conversation stream with tons of breathing room, in fact I think the key to this design is breathing room. Skype has been cluttered over the years with all sorts of stuff, and I really think they need a clean sweep of the UI and get back to basics of what makes Skype really awesome… talking to people.
Why Skype needs more than a new design
It seems that Skype has started to loose grip of what made it great, and has snow-balled in useless features and services over the past few years. I mean Facebook functionality in Skype? Why? The whole reason I have been using Skype is because it was a great, fast and stable way to talk to people and share ideas. I will never use the new stuff they’ve added to Skype, and the day Skype finally gets over-run by “more stuff”, I (and the entire Okay Geek team) will be jumping ship looking for a simpler way to have a conversation and share ideas and files.
So please Skype, look at some of the design community’s ideas and ask them why they don’t like Skype the way it is. Get some fresh thinking into your company and try not to loose your footing. You are a communications company who’s focus is to allow people to talk for free, and allow companies to pay for open and limitless connectivity. You aren’t MSN, you aren’t Facebook, and you can’t bend over and take this crap from Microsoft. We want a better designed, fresh and “back to roots” Skype.
