Redesign Mozilla, Happy Cog shows you the process

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 1:20 am

Just one of the concepts from Happy Cog on redesignmozilla.org

Just recently, Happy Cog created a Web site called Redesign Mozilla. It gives the public a chance to view the design process for one of the most reputable companies on the internet, Mozilla. I find the experiment completely awesome, because people get to see inside of the designers mind, and get to interact with the designs Happy Cog is attempting to pitch (acting as sort of a public focus group).

But, it does raise a couple of questions in my head. In our past thread, George Thompson made a really great point in the Tropicana discussion, basically saying that sometimes things don’t need a redesign. A good friend sent me the book Designing Design by Kenya Hara and in the book it sort of dabbles into the same points, I will do my best to review the book later. But if we cannot understand why things need a redesign, then the object or brand probably didn’t need to have one in the first place.

Elegant, unique, and easy to navigate.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Happy Cog, just like the other 50,000 fan boys out there who whimper at the knee’s to the sight of Mr. Zeldman. But does Mozilla.org really need a redesign? Couldn’t they just use the very good looking Mozilla.com design and make a variation of it? I’m afraid that this might take the toll of Tropicana from the mock-ups I have seen so far.