Can You See The New Medium Design?

Quick reactions of a possible new Medium design for stories

Medium is notorious for testing new site designs and features in a live environment. If you happen to be using Medium at just the right time, you can see these features before they are officially announced. It seems like they are live-testing a new Medium design this week.

I’m in the middle of some severe SEO updates to my Medium writing. It’s a painstaking process that requires opening every story and making the necessary changes. A few times throughout this process, the new Medium design for individual stories popped up instead of the current “official” plan — I’ve not seen any changes to profile pages, the front page, or publications.

Is this a new Medium design?

My best description of the new Medium design is “Twitter-like.” Granted, it’s not a fair assessment since Twitter is more of a feed, and this design is for articles. Though, the fixed sidebars (menu on the left and author info on the right with related links) and the scrolling content are very similar to the Twitter layout (and other social sites, for that matter).

Catching a new Medium design is a roll of the dice. It appeared for some of my stories while not for others. When I refreshed the new design’s stories, they often returned to the current “live” version of Medium.

There’s no telling when (or if) this new Medium design will ever officially launch. I’ve stumbled onto live tests in the past that didn’t become widespread for weeks — some never launched.

Can anyone else see this new Medium design, or is it just me?

For the record, I’m not enrolled in any Medium beta programs (that I’m aware of) and am not testing any new features for the platform.