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What Working at Facebook Has Taught Me About Design Critique
- dasil003 11y agoSpeaking of design critique, are young people able to read articles with hilarious animated gifs in them? Because I literally cannot; a pity because the first section seemed promising.
- bcook 11y ago"literally"?
- dasil003 11y agoYes! I am not one who misuses "literally", nor am I one who chooses to be a pedant over every choice of words in order to willfully miss the point of any discussion. I literally could not read the article because my eye kept being dragged back to the gifs.
- Outdoorsman 11y agoAgreed...the gifs were ill-chosen and distracting...added nothing...not a good fit for the thrust of the article...
- bcook 11y agoHeh, sorry. I was trying poke fun at your post by doing what you did, regarding the article; focus on the wrong thing and disregard the the entire article/post because of a small, arguably unwise choice (gifs/misusing "literally"). The article is actually quite good.
- dasil003 11y agoThat's pretty meta, if anyone else got that I congratulate you. But to be honest, I did hesitate before posting because it was off-topic. However this is HN, not the author's comments section, so I feel it's my prerogative to comment on any aspect of the article not just the content.
- bcook 11y agoI was hesitant as well. Thankfully, HN is usually quick to downvote crap posts like mine. Lesson learned. Honestly though, I do get kinda tired of looking in the comments to see so much conversation about off-topic things like the color-scheme or background images of the linked site. "Off-topic" is subjective, of course.
- metafunctor 11y agoYes, the constant movement in the middle of text I'm trying to read is a huge distraction. It should only play once, or maybe when I mouse over it. Does Chrome have an extension to control looping gifs? Back in the day, I was able to configure my browser that looping gifs would play only once. I'd love something like that.
- bildung 11y ago> Does Chrome have an extension to control looping gifs? Have a look at Gif Jam: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gif-jam-animation-stopper/bclnijbemellankmoaafepibbboobalb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gif-jam-animation-...
- dvorwak 11y agoFocusing on the words seems to work for me.
- ldesegur 11y agoI just scrolled the window to hide the images. But I agree, it's a bad idea.
- dredmorbius 11y agoThis article optimised for lynx.
- nwjtkjn 11y agoI didn't mind them, but I definitely scrolled until they were off screen when starting to read the text below.
- mercer 11y agoFor articles that I find unpleasant to read (for reasons other than the content itself), I either use Readability through the GleeBox extension, where I can just pull up the 'console' and use the '!read' command, or I use Instapaper. I can strongly recommend the latter, as it also provides basic bookmarking, organising, highlighting and 'social' features. But for the basics a Readability bookmarklet (or something similar) should be enough. It's still annoying though (although strangely animated gifs don't bother me)!
- elcapitan 11y agoBecause of all the animation and parallax scrolling madness I got used to just scan new articles and immediately post them to instapaper or pocket for actual reading.
- afro88 11y agoMore and more I'm getting in the habit of hitting the "Reader View" button in Safari. It removes all ads, gifs, "related content" etc. and gives me the pure content: the article in an easy to read font.
- mintplant 11y agoFirefox also has a built-in Reader View but it leaves the graphics in, in case they are referred to by and necessary to understand the text.
- dredmorbius 11y agoFirefox (esp. Android), but yes, it's the very, very, very rare website whose native design is preferable to the "Reader Mode" alternative. Among the reasons I suspect Web design is a dead end. But as noted, this doesn't disable GIFs.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- maaarghk 11y agoI went into the inspector and added the css rule: img[src*=gif] { display: none; } I'm a young people and the answer is no. Maybe if it's buzzfeed and the article is comprised solely of it. But in that case the gifs would have at least relevant content in them, unlike these. I see it a lot in articles coming from people who work at Facebook and Google, maybe it's something to do with all that "fun" malarkey that they're allowed, whatever it is.
- dredmorbius 11y agoI've employed Stylish to add a number of default rules. Setting the visibility / opacity of gifs to 0 by default, but enabling them on hover, with a transition delay, works pretty well. For animations which are in fact useful, I can see them. For those which aren't, I can avoid them. Finding appropriate transition delays (usually ~0.3s for on hover, 3-6 seconds to revert) is a matter of personal taste.
- Nadya 11y agoI combine that with Greasemonkey on a per-site basis. The following script, slightly modified per-site, can make it so the page only displays the content area. No navigation, no side-bar ads, nothing but the content. Combined with Stylish to style and center the content, remove images, make the typography easier to read, and fix contrast issues/href colors. I use it for practically all news/media sites to make my reading experiences more enjoyable. It's like my own personal "Readable" or whatever the Safari add-on / that-one-site is called. :) document.body.innerHTML=document.getElementById('content').innerHTML;
- design 11y agoRead this a few weeks ago. Really useful advice.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoYes Edit: Fuck your downvotes. I answered his question. HN is such a shit show these days.
- dang 11y ago> Fuck your downvotes. [...] HN is such a shit show these days. Please don't post comments like this. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10922770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10922770 and marked it off-topic.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoSomeone asked a yes/no question. I answered yes. And got downvoted. I stand by my statement.
- dang 11y agoEveryone gets downvoted. Yes, it's annoying, but venting that annoyance back on the site adds nothing of value, only off-topic noise. The HN guidelines ask everyone not to do that, so please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- forrestthewoods 11y agoHow do I delete my HN account and all it's comments?
- softawre 11y agohttp://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+delete+my+HN+account+and+all+it%27s+comments http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+delete+my+HN+account+and+all+i...
- forrestthewoods 11y ago
- moron4hire 11y agoI don't think this is useful for startups in general. It sounds like it's good for gigantocorps like IBM and Facebook (and yes, I'm lumping them together, as they have more in common than they differ). For a lean startup, I don't think you're going to have the depth in your staff nor the time to put into these sorts of activities. It's all-hands-on-deck, and we don't have time to slow down and hand-hold each other through their own work. I'd be hiring people I trust to get their work done without me needing to tell them they are or are not doing a good job. I mean, at a particularly early stage startup, establishing the "three roles" could be the entire company. In such a scenario, how do we not already know each other's intimate business?
- kcorbitt 11y agoCode reviews/design critiques are extremely valuable even if you only have two developers, and they're both great at their jobs. It's not about not trusting the other members of your team, it's about learning from each others' experiences and creating a better product together. But I agree that the level of ceremony surrounding the process will vary a lot based on the size of your organization.
- tkt 11y agoI agree that review/critique is just as important, even if you have only a few people. Even with a small group though, roles for participants can help keep conversations on track and civil and ensure everyone can participate.
- moron4hire 11y agoEstablishing roles for bad-actor participants is not how you keep conversations on track and keep them civil, it's how you get passive aggression.
- iofj 11y agoA lot of corporate policies are about limiting damage by bad actors.
- tkt 11y agoLearning to give and receive feedback is one of the skills that will make you and your team better and is an important part of communication. Effective communication is crucial, no matter the size of the team. The list of the distinctions between 'criticism' and 'criticism' in this article is particularly valuable. Criticism passes judgement — Critique poses questions; Criticism finds fault — Critique uncovers opportunity; Criticism is personal — Critique is objective; Criticism is vague — Critique is concrete; Criticism tears down — Critique builds up; Criticism is ego-centric — Critique is altruistic; Criticism is adversarial — Critique is cooperative; Criticism belittles the designer — Critique improves the design
- philliphaydon 11y agoI disagree. Criticism is awesome. If people can't handle criticism then they should change profession. If 1 person says something negative. Then there's 1000s more who feel the same who say nothing. Constructive criticism is even better. Criticism is only personal if you make it personal. Criticism is only egocentric if you make it egocentric. Criticism is on vague when it is not constructive. Criticism only belittles if it is targeted at the person and not the thing being critiqued.
- SolaceQuantum 11y agoFeedback has been and always will be a two way street. It's on the critiquer to word their comments in an impersonal, constructive manner just as much as it is on the critiqued to receive comments with grace and poise. Feedback is an active collaboration for a better product and all involved parties are on the hook to contribute in a manner that allows all other parties to also contribute.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago>Criticism is only personal if you make it personal. Criticism is only egocentric if you make it That usually begins with the person doing the criticizing.
- swsieber 11y ago“He who takes offense when offense was not intended is a fool, yet he who takes offense when offense is intended is an even greater fool for he has succumbed to the will of his adversary.” ― Brigham Young That said, I do think the GP has a point: it is possible to divide feedback according to the two sets of criteria mentioned, and that things go better when we craft our communication to be the nicer one (he called it critique, you call it constructive criticism). I'm not going to use the fact that people should be able to handle criticism to give mean feedback. And I think that's the point he's making - we should choose to be nice.
- makecheck 11y agoIt's vital to learn to see past emotion when receiving statements from critics. I have heard lots of comments about my projects over the years and I have noticed some patterns: - Negative feedback is usually all you get. You have to motivate yourself by imagining that most people are pretty happy based on downloads/client-count/whatever. - People aren't good at communicating when they're frustrated but they usually turn into nice people once you've fixed the problem. Most people just have a job to do and a deadline to meet. Pay attention to what they say is wrong, and not their mood. - Strangely, people will spend great amounts of time writing comments on random web sites or review pages about issues that they will never even E-mail you about, no matter how easy you make it for them to contact you. Therefore, if you really want to get some realistic critiques of your work, you may have to scour the web for them. I look at it this way: real, honest feedback is rare and vital to really understand what you may have overlooked. Even if you can't possibly contact the Random Web Commenter, find and fix their issues and you'll end up with a better product.