4 ms·

I think you're wrong. Websites have the ability to be extremly good looking and slick with killer animations and everything big and obvious. But if you look at

I think you're wrong. Websites have the ability to be extremly good looking and slick with killer animations and everything big and obvious. But if you look at the most popular websites in the world - there is no clear design advantage. Better looking or flashy websites don't seem to do significantly better. Rather, functional and useful websites do better. It's the same with the apps. A flashy app will get you noticed, but after the user uses the app for a while, the flashiness disappears and he's just interested in getting the result he wants from the app as quickly as possible. The rest becomes secondary. Look at this website here that I'm typing this on. It's not flashy or particularly gorgeous, but it's very functional, and so very useful and sticky. Software is craft, not art.

rayboyd 17y ago
I find it odd people constantly knock Microsoft or state how low the bar is they set, based on something like a bloody icon. e.g. Personally speaking I consider the Ribbon to be a wonderful piece of GUI design and the implementation when used in a contextual manner is superb. They took a bloated unfriendly (but critical) set of menus and commands and made them easy to use again catering to an extremely broad demographic. Comparing something like ConvertBot (which incidentally is a lovely piece of work) to that level of HCI design is ridiculous IMO, and just demonstrates a lack of understanding of the craft.
cracki 17y ago
if you have only few websites that offer content, sure, the one with the best content wins. but iphone apps are a little different. they offer functionality more often than content. functionality can't vary by orders of magnitude as content can. so you have many iphone apps that pretty much do the same things, differing only in minor features. if the "primary" criterion isn't enough to make the decision, people turn to UX. feels obvious to me. if i had two websites (your example, not mine), and both offered almost the same content, i'd pick the one that appeals to me more. that's how i made my choice of search engine. the major ones hardly differ in the quality of their results.

rayboyd 17y ago

I find it odd people constantly knock Microsoft or state how low the bar is they set, based on something like a bloody icon. e.g. Personally speaking I consider the Ribbon to be a wonderful piece of GUI design and the implementation when used in a contextual manner is superb. They took a bloated unfriendly (but critical) set of menus and commands and made them easy to use again catering to an extremely broad demographic. Comparing something like ConvertBot (which incidentally is a lovely piece of work) to that level of HCI design is ridiculous IMO, and just demonstrates a lack of understanding of the craft.

cracki 17y ago

if you have only few websites that offer content, sure, the one with the best content wins. but iphone apps are a little different. they offer functionality more often than content. functionality can't vary by orders of magnitude as content can. so you have many iphone apps that pretty much do the same things, differing only in minor features. if the "primary" criterion isn't enough to make the decision, people turn to UX. feels obvious to me. if i had two websites (your example, not mine), and both offered almost the same content, i'd pick the one that appeals to me more. that's how i made my choice of search engine. the major ones hardly differ in the quality of their results.