---
title: Building Medium
date: 2013-04-08T07:36:47+00:00
modified: 2016-05-30T16:32:44+00:00
image:: https://kaspars.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/making-of-medium-publishing-platform.png
permalink: https://kaspars.net/blog/building-medium
post_type: post
author:
  name: Kaspars
  avatar: https://reverse.kaspars.net/gravatar/avatar/92bfcd3a8c3a21a033a6484d32c25a40b113ec6891f674336081513d5c98ef76?s=96&d=mm&r=g
post_tag:
  - Critique
  - User Experience
  - User Interface
category:
  - Observatory
post_format:
  - Link
---

# Building Medium

[![One of the first iterations of Medium publishing platform](https://kaspars.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/making-of-medium-publishing-platform.png?strip=all&quality=90&resize=500,360)](http://www.teehanlax.com/story/medium/)

[The making of Medium.com](http://www.teehanlax.com/story/medium/) is a truly great insight into how a team of paid designers and developers led by one vision and visionary try to build a modern day publishing platform.

While the idea behind Medium might be good, I think that at the **current iteration** the interface for consuming the content is really terrible and confusing. All posts are grouped into “collections” (which are just glorified categories) and they are almost impossible to navigate. It doesn’t provide any sense of the amount of collections there is or a way to see most popular / populated collections.

**Update:** It looks like they have recently added a [dedicated page for all collections](https://medium.com/collections) which makes it a lot easier to navigate and explore.