uod is a website for accessing other websites that have a crappy interface.

Tell us what's wrong with that website, and we make an intermediate website that upgrades that site and gives it the feel (if not the look) that you want.

Every "upgraded website" comes with several themes and the call for people to create custom themes for them.

So for example my local bus company website forces me to enter the name of the station that I want to get on at, rather than asking me where I am and giving me the closest station(s) and time-table. In comes UOD to help. I tell the staff there about the problem, and within a week I have a new website that will ask me for my location and destination, or if I give it the bus line and it sees where I am will give me the closest bus and the next one. Hooray.
-- pashute, Sep 20 2014

Good idea (so, [+]) except for two problems:

(1) The upgraded website would be very vulnerable to changes in the primary website.

(2) Are you really willing to pay $500 to improve somebody else's website that you use?

(3) There may be copyright issues with re-formatting someone else's site content

(4) This means there are actually 3 problems, not two.

So that's four problems in total.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 20 2014


No plobrems.

(1) Since it is essentially a mapping interface, the infrequent changes to the primary webstite can be dealt with quickly.

(2) Who is paying $500 to improve somebody else's website? This will be an open source effort, with dozens of volunteer programmers. The hosting may cost some, but then it will win the Google contest, and win each of us a few thousand dollars in return.

(3) We are not reformatting anything. We are asking you relevant questions which will be filled into the original site's content. If its a terrible university student website or dumb library website, the UOD will not be using any of the images of the University or their texts. It will be totally the UOD's property, and in the end either (a) it leads you to the primary site with the result, a la LetMeGoogleThat4U, or (b) it aggregates the results from that site, and returns it to you. There of course will be websites that you cannot plug into, but those are probably well designed, and therefore well protected websites, so typically they won't need the UOD.

(4) That means there is possibly one problem, but probably it isn't one.

So that's half my answer. The other half is a 'thank you' for considering half of this idea favorably.
-- pashute, Sep 22 2014


One man's usability issue is another's feature.
e.g.
I want to access my neighbour's bank-account, but I don't have their logon details, here is $500, can you sort it out please?

Also, computability problems arise. Say you want to know the fastest route between bus-stops A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J. If you type in a particular combination and say, "Is this the fastest?" then fine, no problems. But if instead you say, "Which is the fastest of all possible routes?" the time taken to compute that result (rather than simply check one already provided) will be significantly longer. That (might) mean that the solution to this particular usability issue will require a bigger server, rather than more coders.
-- Zeuxis, Sep 22 2014


//This will be an open source effort// Aha. That was not in the original idea, but it makes it better.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Sep 22 2014


Your concept is proven in the case of twitter:

Twitter's app & website are not that great, so there are tons of "Twitter" apps on the mobile market that are just new UI's in front of twitter's data & more people use those apps than twitter.

But, to pull this off, you need the website to provide stable API's, as twitter does. Otherwise, as was earlier pointed-out, the underlying website changes will break your integration.

Also, subjectivity: What's a better UI for some will be worse for others, as the "U" in UI is the user, and the users come in many different segments, skills, languages, etc.
-- sophocles, Sep 25 2014



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