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Just glancing at the design I can see that the whitespace is all messed up. The previous design was more compact, one could easily view most or all of the neces
by Olscore 10y ago
Just glancing at the design I can see that the whitespace is all messed up. The previous design was more compact, one could easily view most or all of the necessary information in a smaller space. But that is just glancing at it. The newer design seems to be following the newer web motif of flat design, generous space, etc.
Back in the 2007-2010 era of websites, somebody mentioned that "ugly" websites work. Not that fancy or flat design is bad. But the sheer simplicity of ugly websites forces people to focus on the content, context and functionality. The ugly websites pointed out were MySpace and Craigslist mainly, but you could probably add a few others like Drudge Report and Plenty of Fish. Even Hacker News is pretty "ugly" but it obviously works great.
- sotojuan 10y agoReddit is another great example.
- rustoffee 10y agoSpot on.
- goshx 10y agoand 4chan
- zxcvcxz 10y agoNo it's not, it didn't get popular until it was redesigned. It's proof that sites can be too ugly, but that sites don't have to be particularly pretty.
- rspeer 10y agoWhat redesign are you referring to? Reddit has never changed much in its design. I'm looking at it in the Wayback Machine from before subreddits were introduced, and it still looks like the same site. Reddit got popular when Digg was redesigned.
- Throwaway23412 10y agoI was literally just thinking that reddit's staff are either all back-end engineers or don't do anything at all. reddit has barely changed at all in the past several years. The design has barely changed. They finally just recently put out a mobile app. Little to no improvement has been made in moderator tools. Where is this redesign you seem to be seeing?
- rustoffee 10y agoThat is so true! That is why we are seeing a new trend in web design called "Brutalism".
- rhizome 10y agoBrutalism isn't "making things look ugly," it's using building-block type materials in architecture. It comes from the French word for "raw."
- theoh 10y agoNot so fast. There are actually a few etymologies for the term in architecture. It does often imply a deliberate crudeness and a harshness, supposedly an honest response to the character of the materials. To the untrained eye this is close enough to "ugly" that most people don't distinguish. There's also a very strong argument that brutalism represents a turn away from the values of western humanism (typically expressed, historically, in classical architecture) toward a vulgar, bleak conception of modernity. Another aspect is that it tends to be "sublime" rather than "beautiful", which, again, translates to negative vibes for many people. It's not a term that I'm happy to see being applied now to some essentially cosmetic aspects of web design.
- allendoerfer 10y agoI always find this "language evolves"-argument a bit strange. Maybe I am reactionary, but it is "though" not "tho". More people using it wrong, does not make it right to me. In some cases I will eventually adapt, but not when it is about concept that was invented, explained and named by a person with sources you can cite to prove it.
- Throwaway23412 10y agoUnfortunately, language is a social construct and relies entirely on popular consensus of words. Words like "literally" and "inflammable" have grown to take on their opposite meanings. One could argue that "though" is an inefficient way to spell that word and too easily confused with the spelling of "thought". I share a similar peeve as you with the use of "women" as an adjective. All through grade school and high school, the use of "women" as a noun was pummeled into my head. Now, I routinely see presumably college-educated journalists use it as an adjective ("women scientists", "women engineers", etc.)
- bachmeier 10y agoThe questions you should ask when designing a website: What am I trying to communicate? Can someone easily get that information from my site? If there is interaction - is it easy for the user to figure out what to do? The questions that actually get asked when designing a website: Does it feel modern? Am I using the latest technologies? Would I feel comfortable telling my buddies how I created the site? I have nothing against modernizing a site, other than the fact that it's not that important, and it's really easy to screw it up.
- godzillabrennus 10y agoYou can break all of communication down to Know, Feel and Do. What do you want someone to Know, to Feel and ultimately to Do. http://www.yale.edu/fin-bus/resources/docs/SurvHandbookChap3.pdf http://www.yale.edu/fin-bus/resources/docs/SurvHandbookChap3...
- onion2k 10y agoBack in the 2007-2010 era of websites, somebody mentioned that "ugly" websites work. Yes, and they were wrong for any meaningful sample of websites. You can point to ugly yet hugely successful websites but that ignores the millions of ugly, failed websites that have long since stopped serving visitors. And equally, there are examples of beautiful sites that work and beautiful sites that didn't. How good a website looks has a short term impact on how it's perceived, but great content (where "content" has a lot of different meanings) is always more important. That's true regardless of how much effort you spend on design.
- TickleSteve 10y agoThe point to the quote being: "aesthetics is orthogonal to usability". not "all ugly websites are usable".
- spriggan3 10y agoTo me this is more about the fact that incremental changes are better than a complete redesign. The previous design had its flaws but people were used to it.
- xenadu02 10y agoThere is an ongoing trend of equating "simplicity/removing distractions" with "hiding or removing information/making it less useful". Make something as simple as it needs to be, but no simpler. Most designers I see these days seem to forget that last bit. In this specific example the whole purpose of the request system is to vote and secondarily get other people to vote with you. The new design eliminated almost everything that made the old one useful. It isn't simpler, it's simplistic.
- stcredzero 10y agoMake something as simple as it needs to be, but no simpler. Most designers I see these days seem to forget that last bit. People are copying the pointless "elegant simplicity" signalling of the new Apple Macbook. I think this is probably one of the best filters you can find, if you are perceptive enough to be able to use it: See whether or not someone prioritizes signalling over actual functionality/semantic content/logic. Observe how often this happens. Compare the effort that goes into signalling versus more substantive observation and analysis. If someone isn't self aware of their signalling, and hasn't differentiated that concept from actual value/competence, quietly disengage.
- lurkinggrue 10y agoThe wasted space thing drives me crazy. I tried the new beta for Evernote and it was mostly empty space that the text can't be in. Please, let me have some interface "distracton" please. My reaction was Nope, roll back to the previous version.
- a-nikolaev 10y agoI may be wrong, but I think that this site's UI is far from simple. It looks clean, but that's different thing. The new interface feels very unconventional, in fact. It may become convenient once you've learned what everything means, but until then you'd feel puzzled. ~~ Of course, I could not try to work with the old site, but the old screenshots looked more informative than the new ones. Not surprised at all by the results.
- jandrese 10y ago
- CamperBob2 10y agoBack in the 2007-2010 era of websites, somebody mentioned that "ugly" websites work. One obvious example being Amazon. As a consumer I will generally go with whoever gives me the most information about whatever I'm doing/learning/buying with the least clicking around. Indulging in the modern "design" trend of giving me 5 million white pixels is not how you sell stuff to me. I'm not looking to buy white pixels, I'm all stocked up on those.
- EpicEng 10y agoI don't agree with Amazon as an example, but I agree completely re: modern Web design.
- Consultant32452 10y agoYou may find this writeup from an Amazon veteran about how Amazon goes about designing things. It's 100% about accessibility over aesthetics. Ihttps://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX
- dingaling 10y ago> It's 100% about accessibility over aesthetics. That surprises me, since when I visit Amazon's UK homepage my fan kicks-in and there's a noticable delay before I can start typing-in the product for which I want to search; all so that they can load an enormous Prime promotion carousel and rows upon rows of 'product suggestions' in which I have never shown any interest. Today it includes pearl ear-rings.
- aptwebapps 10y agoThings have changed a bit in the five years or so since that was written. I don't think Bezos controls every pixel any more. OT: I really miss Yegge's writing. I wish he publish more.
- hammock 10y agoA couple of red flags that stood out to me in the write up itself as revealing of a mindset that could lead to such drastic results: "To be honest, the graphic below is pretty much useless. I just think it’s pretty, so it’s staying in." "I was FORCED to conduct usability studies"
- OddsUXs 10y agoSeems like bad jokes may affect user conversion. I should write my next article on that.
- archemike_ 10y agohttp://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/