Ugh those hombows were pretty good but I should have ordered one instead of two. They were bigger than I’d thought they’d be. That’s what she said.

Yesterday I spent a couple minutes clicking around the redesigned MAC site. Mainly I wanted to check out a couple eye shadow colors, but also I’d heard about this big redesign and wanted to see it for myself. I did not see the previous version.

On first glance, it *looks* cool, but I soon realized what a mess it truly is. First of all, they decided to go with a very dated mostly Flash model. Goddamn I wish these stupid non-techie companies would realize no one gives a shit about Flash. We want clean design, we want intuitive user interface, and we want it to be fast. This web site has only one of these elements, and it’s still not that great because having an all-black background everywhere may fit with your black branding, but it is fucking unreadable.

So anyway, there are many UI problems but I’ll focus on the two worst. First, the so-called search. I was looking for a specific color. I typed the name of the shadow into the search box. The thing spun around for quite some time. Then it said that the search returned “no results”. Upon further investigation, I saw that they did have my color, it was just out of stock. But, still viewable on the product page. Why not display a search result, then? I still won’t be able to add it to my bag, but I could add to favorites, for when it does become available again.

This brings me to the other huge problem. MAC has dozens of colors in their palette of eye shadows. When I got to the eye shadow product page, still looking for the color I wanted, I was faced with a grid of teeny 10 x 10 pixel thumbnails, not labeled at all until you mouse over them, at which point the hero shot below brings up a color-corrected swatch of pigmented powder. Who the hell has time to mouse over 126 tiny squares in the hopes of finding what they want? There was no alternate given to look at a text list or dropdown menu. FAIL. It took a stupidly long time to find the one I wanted.

It looks like the designers at this website spent all their time focusing on cute Flash toys like a color picker that is essentially useless, instead of developing a smart, bug-free user interface. I’ll stick with Nordstrom if I decide to buy from this brand.

The positives I found on this site: they have set up a program where if you have a number of used MAC makeup containers, you can send them back to the company where they will be reused/recycled, and they give you a free lipstick in return. Brilliant idea. Of course I can’t imagine a situation where I would burn through five eyeshadow pots, but hey, I know there are girls out there that do.

Also the photography is good — I dislike makeup swatches that are clearly from the photoshop color picker. I want a real photo of the color whenever possible, and the texture too, and if it has any shimmer or glitter.

The site also has a few instructional videos that demonstrate on a model how to do certain makeup techniques. This can all be found on youtube, also, but still, they tried. Again, I think they sacrificed good UI for a neat-o feature, but whatever.

Thus endeth my review. Now to drink a coffee.