Betabeat » youssef sarhan

In Which We Try to Get Youssef Sarhan to Make Yo, Karp!

Adrianne Jeffries — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:29:38 -0400

Mr. Sarhan.

A Q&A with the Helsinki-based designer who tries to get his favorite sites to make user experience improvements by creating Tumblrs about it.

What site is next? Tumblr?

I love what David Karp and the guys in New York have made. It's interesting you mention Tumblr, last October when Tumblr announced the new UI for their customize blogs feature, there was no easy way to enter color HEX values in the theme settings. I sent Karp a suggestion via his Tumblr and a few weeks later it was there; I'm sure I wasn't the only person with that idea. So, yes, there are lots of things Tumblr could be doing. Tumblr has created a very powerful platform of self-expression, an elegant balance of simplicity and complexity. They have shown great restraint with releasing new features, a trait so rare with many internet startups. So many of the larger 'free' tech companies are trying to do too much, it can get very noisy. I use Tumblr a lot, I have shared over 300 posts in the last year alone. It works.

Why are you giving out all this free UI advice?

What should I do with it? Keep it in my head? That would be a waste. It's not free, I learn so much from it. If Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or Google listen, brilliant. However, there came a point with Facebook that I felt their product had gone so far in a direction I wasn't comfortable with that I could not help them anymore.

Do you like New Twitter?

I love Twitter, just not the latest version of Twitter. They've raised the bar for new adopters of the service. Despite the simple idea of Twitter, it's actually quite a confusing experience. A lot of new users find it very disorientating for the first few weeks, and many stop using it because of this. I'd say the new interface doesn't help with user retention as it has made the learning curve steeper. They say they've got it covered; I have hope.

Do you like New Gmail?

It's better that it was, no doubt about that. I use it everyday for various email accounts and I'm very happy with it. Yet, I have a lot of ideas in my little black book. Yo Page! could easily happen. For instance, when there's an email thread with various attachments shared over the course of a few days, those attachments tend to disappear with time. There could be great value in building a very simple attachment file manager that is visible within email threads. When you couple this with Google Docs, you can begin to see how useful this would become.

Yo, Zuck! Designer Strikes Again With Yo, Dick!

Adrianne Jeffries — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:03:22 -0400

Youssef Sarhan, the Irish designer whose UI advice Tumblr, Yo Zuck!, earned him fame, a job interview with Facebook, and a job offer from a Helsinki startup, has turned his sights on Twitter. Mr. Sarhan's newest Tumblr, Yo, Dick! Implement This, repeats the gag of Yo Zuck!: Mr. Sarhan nitpicks at Twitter's design and logic. Users can @ reply themselves, but they can't retweet their own tweets? Sup with that? Stay tuned to see if Twitter calls Mr. Sarhan! What say you, @dickc?"Btw, google 'Yo Dick!,'" Mr. Sarhan said in an email. We did. We saw this. "Watch the music video, hilarious... I want to knock the SEO out of that! What you think?" Sounds like a worthy goal to us.

Yo Zuck! Tumblr Got Designer an Interview at Facebook, But No Job Offer. Still, He Made Out Pretty Well

Adrianne Jeffries — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 13:01:54 -0400

Mr. Sarhan.

Irish web designer Youssef Sarhan started a Tumblr called Yo Zuck! Implement This at yozuck.tumblr.com, a collection of his ideas for features and improvements for Facebook. A few days later, he got a call from Facebook for an interview. "It went pretty well, actually," Mr. Sarhan said, but a week later Facebook turned him down. The Irish designer was understandably disappointed.

But he couldn't stay bummed for long. The publicity around his Tumblr led to other offers. "Being featured on Techcrunch, CNET and a host of other sites pushed the message further than I had ever anticipated. It seemed every time I checked my mail I had a new message from some new start-up or CEO looking to improve the interface and experience of their product. It was a little overwhelming," he wrote.

He's now headed to Helsinki, Finland, after accepting an offer from Blaast, a platform for mobile apps in the cloud. "I’m incredibly excited by what they are doing," Mr. Sarhan writes. "Some of the (design) challenges Blaast face are staggering and will be instrumental in defining the future of mobile computing for millions if not billions of people. But more on that soon."

An interview with Facebook, a job offer and internet fame? Now, if only Zuck would implement replies to comments.

Interview with Designer Behind ‘Yo Zuck’ Tumblr

Adrianne Jeffries — Tue, 03 May 2011 10:24:31 -0400

Youssef Sarhan

Youssef Sarhan thinks about Facebook a lot. For example: "I was at a birthday party this weekend, everyone had a camera and hundreds if not thousands of photos were taken. But where are all these photos? Well, they are dispersed among all my friends profile pages. So I was thinking... What if you could tag a photo, video or entire album to an event so it would appear on the event’s page. This would give folks a go-to place for all things after-party." Most Facebook users probably have a few complaints or suggestions for the social network, but Mr. Sarhan is addressing his concerns directly to its CEO: "Yo Zuck! Implement this."

That's from Mr. Sarhan's Tumblr of Facebook suggestions, "Yo Zuck!," which has 13 suggested features or tweaks for Facebook illustrated with animated wireframes. Facebook has already started talking to Mr. Sarhan (no job offer yet) after being intrigued by some of his ideas. So far Mr. Sarhan has suggested everything from anniversary reminders to a Facebook browser.

1. Who are you?

My name is Youssef Sarhan, I am a 23 year old designer from Dublin, Ireland. Last year, I graduated from The National College of Art & Design, here in Dublin, Ireland. I have a curiosity for all things creative, I'll turn my hand to anything. At present I am a designer at an enterprise-level CMS Firm, working on User Interface, UX and Brand design.

2. How do you distinguish between what should be integrated into Facebook and what should be an app?

Before you can answer that you need to ask what overall direction the product should be taking. At present new features aim for a 100 percent uptake, I'd like to see Facebook developing features for groups of individuals not just all individuals.

3. Are you going to try to build any of these things you've suggested?

I'll leave that to them.

4. What do you think Facebook will look like in five years?

That's kind of like asking me what it's like to play golf on the moon, I have absolutely no idea but it sounds awesome. Five years is a long long time in tech, I don't think Facebook are even sure what it'll be like in five years.

My own hunch would be that Facebook will align itself more with online commerce. Huge potential for growth in that area. Think, Facebook Shops.

5. I speculated that Facebook might want to offer you a job... did they? Would you want to work there?

I can't predict the future, so let's see what happens.

6. How did Facebook find your Tumblr?

The internet is awesome.

“Yo Zuck” Tumblr Gets Facebook’s Attention

Adrianne Jeffries — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:06:45 -0400

Youssef Sarhan

How do you get Mark Zuckerberg's attention? Irish web designer Youssef Sarhan did it by creating a new Tumblr called Yo Zuck! Implement This at yozuck.tumblr.com, a collection of his ideas for features and improvements for Facebook: video chat, group chat, a fix for broken video links, a site-wide online status indicator--all tricked out with animated .GIFs to show how such features would look.

Betabeat loved the Tumblr and so we tried to speak with Mr. Sarhan--but Facebook has already gotten to him.

"Quite simply, Facebook have been in touch and I feel as a gesture of loyalty I would prefer to keep correspondence exclusive, at least for the moment," he said in an email.

Not bad for a days-old Tumblr.

Everyone who is a Facebook user (and that's everyone, come on) has thoughts on how Facebook should change. But Mr. Sarhan has been thinking about design and next-level Facebooking for a while. "It is estimated that there are currently two billion active internet users; of which over 600 million use the exact same design everyday," he wrote, referring to Facebook's mammoth userbase.

There are only nine suggestions total, and Mr. Sarhan also gets a little fuzzy on the details. "The internet could be so much more fun and so much more engaging if Facebook themselves developed and released a browser," he said in one video post titled "The Facebook Browser," his most ambitious suggestion. "So it would be a browser built from the ground up or whatever way they do it that has got deep access to everybody's social graph. I can only imagine how that would both improve the browsing experience of the internet and Facebook as well as vastly improving the potential for monetizing that information."

We're curious to hear what Zuck had to say, but Mr. Sarhan is discreet. "I'd prefer to hold out on any interviews for the moment. I hope that you understand and I'll be in touch soon," he said.

And now the irresponsible speculation--yo Zuck, you gonna give this kid a job?