Oladele Tobi, who goes by the username ‘tedjazz’ on Nairaland is a part-time Yabatech student who is working on redesigning Nigeria’s largest forum’s user interface.
According to Tobi, in a post on Nairaland, he took it upon himself to build a new interface because Nairaland users have been complaining about the current one.
“A lot of people have been complaining about Nairaland’s interface, but nobody attempted (to create a new one). I tried it and this is what I came up with,” he said.
From the images on his post, Ted’s interface is still a work in progress. He created two different user interfaces for the FrontPage – a list system and a grid system, and wants the Nairaland users to choose the one they prefer.
In a chat, Tobi confirmed to Techcabal that he is working on a mobile site and hopes the Nairaland owner, Seun Osewa would adopt it alongside his interface.
“You know we all complain about or have opinions about the site. I just wanted to prove that it can be better. Plus I want to find out people’s thoughts on it. I am working on a mobile site, hopefully Seun can adopt it,” he said.
I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were Tobi though. Because I’m not nearly as naive. Noble as his intentions are (and contrary to his belief that nobody else has tried), he is joining a rather long queue of would-be Nairaland improvers, whom the site’s taciturn founder, Seun Osewa has in most cases pointedly ignored. Just like he has ignored acquisition attempts. The ones whose improvements he considers invasive — like when a developer called Pystar tried to create a makeshift Nairaland API — are promptly shut down.
Nairaland, which will be a decade-old this year has seen only a few significant interface upgrades. But that has not stopped the site from growing to over 1.3 million registered users by the end of 2014. A major hack in June 2014 saw it lose almost half a year’s worth of data, but the site has since recovered.
Bankole Oluwafemi contributed to this feature.
