5 ms·

Web design? Screw aesthetics

15 points by MrAlmostWrong 17y ago

ugh 17y ago
Great article but I don’t get the title.
- iamwil 17y ago
  link. bait.
shadowsun7 17y ago
I've known Scrivs from his days in 9rules, and while I respect what he's doing over at Drawar, I'm beginning to question his focus on design as an answer to ... well, everything. Good design only helps if your site is useful; this in particular applies to both blogs (like his) and webapps. He argued recently that: Do you think it bothers the Gowalla people that they put so much care and effort into the design of everything that they do and Foursquare is still right there with them with a significantly worse design? That's missing the point. The point is that Foursquare is doing something right, and that something is likely more than just design. I've not looked into the location app space recently, but my guess is that Foursquare reached critical mass before Gowalla did. Connecting an app's value to its design only makes sense when all else is equal. When Google is brought up as an example of mediocre design that succeeds, people come out from the woodworks to argue that it is actually great design and base it on the success that they have had. I don’t believe it. I think design only gives you an advantage when you're competing in a space with little or no technical differentiation. In this case, Google has had such a huge technical advantage over its competitors that it didn't matter what design they used anyway.
- sketerpot 17y ago
  Remember when the internet was slow? If Google had loaded down their design with huge amounts of images and clutter, they wouldn't have been nearly as attractive in a world of "portal" search engines.
  - ugh 17y ago
    Good design =! many images Minimalist search pages can look better than Google’s without being any bigger.
hegemonicon 17y ago
It's well known that Google collects massive amounts of data, and does massive amounts of UI testing (such as the infamous testing between 85 different shades of blue), so I'm somewhat skeptical that it's design is mediocre because this guy says it is and he's a web designer. Data trumps intuition every day of the week.
- boucher 17y ago
  You are skeptical because you believe that this is a data problem. He believes (as do I) that it is not a data problem. Making more people click your button is not, on its own, good design. There's more to aesthetics than conversion rates. You can argue aesthetics aren't important, but it's simply not the same subject as the kind of data collecting A/B testing that Google does.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    I have a hard time understanding how people can reject the notion that design is a data problem. I know I might be wrong about this. Random thoughts: If your design doesn't accomplish a business objective, it may be better, but it is irrelevant to the business. If data indicates your aesthetic doesn't increase a metric, then ultimately the only rational decision to make is to minimize the cost of your aesthetic. All things being equal, you take the equivalently successful design that imposes the least costs. If the data indicates that your design decreases a metric, then ultimately the only rational decision is to kill the design. There are also probably non-obvious cost factors. A much better Google SERP design may be more aesthetically strong, and may not hurt metrics --- it may even marginally improve metrics --- however, if the end result of that aesthetic is that every other page at Google needs to cost more to cohere with the SERP, then, again, it may be irrational to improve the design. Companies spend a lot of money on design. Companies tell themselves a lot of things about design. Somebody's whole career is predicated on the idea that the lobby of a class A office building in the Chicago Loop needs to be just-so. In the building I'm in now, somebody spent several million dollars to improve the aesthetics. I think that probably has more to do with vanity than it does with business. Corporate annual reports are a marquee design project. Companies spend serious dollars on them. Berkshire Hathaway does theirs in Word, set in Times New Roman. They seem to be doing OK. Sell me on aesthetics more? I don't see it.
ThomPete 17y ago
Design is problem solving. Nothing else. You don't apply aesthetics to a design you apply a style to a design. Whether something is aesthetic i grounded in culture, history and so many other things. The google style is bad by print and 1999 standards, but we have come to like it because judging visual things is not only about how they look but how we feel about them.
- shadowsun7 17y ago
  Worth noting: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/06/logos.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/06/logos.html About thirty years ago, three companies dreamed up logos that have become so powerful, I don't even have to show you the images to get them to pop up in your head. A sneaker company paid a few hundred dollars for an abstract, upside down wave, a coffee company picked a half-naked mermaid (is there any other kind) that cost them nothing, and a computer company picked [hired a PR firm that picked] a piece of fruit with a bite out of it. What the images had in common: nothing. They range from abstract to woodcut to groovy. The art of picking a logo, even one for the Olympics, has almost nothing to do with taste or back story. A great logo doesn't mean anything until the brand makes it worth something. Likewise, great aesthetics/graphics mean nothing until the brand makes it worth something.
davidedicillo 17y ago
Aesthetic is a consequence of good design. A good design is almost a science. If you ask anybody to divide a page in two section, it isn't a coincidence if almost everyone will divided it using the Golden Ratio without even knowing what it is.
- shrughes 17y ago
  Yes, because people automatically solve x^2-x-1=0 in their heads when dividing up the page. Wait, my bad, it's just that people looking for that sort of thing take whatever ratio they see and round it to the nearest multiple of the golden ratio, and ignore any other ratios because they don't count. Why don't you look at the top colored bar at Hacker News and compute its ratio against the entire page? Why not count the ratio of this comment box? Why does the resize draggie that Chrome puts in the bottom right hand corner of the comment box have a 1:1 ratio? Why does the reply button, and most other buttons online, have a ratio larger than 2:1? All the windows I have open on my screen that are divided into sections don't follow the golden ratio. None of their sizes are the golden rectangle. My monitor doesn't follow the golden ratio. My aesthetically pleasing coffee mugs don't follow the ratio -- wait, the handle's smaller than the width of the brim, but not less than half as small. It must be the golden ratio.

15 points by MrAlmostWrong 17y ago

ugh 17y ago

Great article but I don’t get the title.

iamwil 17y ago
link. bait.

shadowsun7 17y ago

I've known Scrivs from his days in 9rules, and while I respect what he's doing over at Drawar, I'm beginning to question his focus on design as an answer to ... well, everything. Good design only helps if your site is useful; this in particular applies to both blogs (like his) and webapps. He argued recently that: Do you think it bothers the Gowalla people that they put so much care and effort into the design of everything that they do and Foursquare is still right there with them with a significantly worse design? That's missing the point. The point is that Foursquare is doing something right, and that something is likely more than just design. I've not looked into the location app space recently, but my guess is that Foursquare reached critical mass before Gowalla did. Connecting an app's value to its design only makes sense when all else is equal. When Google is brought up as an example of mediocre design that succeeds, people come out from the woodworks to argue that it is actually great design and base it on the success that they have had. I don’t believe it. I think design only gives you an advantage when you're competing in a space with little or no technical differentiation. In this case, Google has had such a huge technical advantage over its competitors that it didn't matter what design they used anyway.

sketerpot 17y ago
Remember when the internet was slow? If Google had loaded down their design with huge amounts of images and clutter, they wouldn't have been nearly as attractive in a world of "portal" search engines.
- ugh 17y ago
  Good design =! many images Minimalist search pages can look better than Google’s without being any bigger.

hegemonicon 17y ago

It's well known that Google collects massive amounts of data, and does massive amounts of UI testing (such as the infamous testing between 85 different shades of blue), so I'm somewhat skeptical that it's design is mediocre because this guy says it is and he's a web designer. Data trumps intuition every day of the week.

boucher 17y ago
You are skeptical because you believe that this is a data problem. He believes (as do I) that it is not a data problem. Making more people click your button is not, on its own, good design. There's more to aesthetics than conversion rates. You can argue aesthetics aren't important, but it's simply not the same subject as the kind of data collecting A/B testing that Google does.
- tptacek 17y ago
  I have a hard time understanding how people can reject the notion that design is a data problem. I know I might be wrong about this. Random thoughts: If your design doesn't accomplish a business objective, it may be better, but it is irrelevant to the business. If data indicates your aesthetic doesn't increase a metric, then ultimately the only rational decision to make is to minimize the cost of your aesthetic. All things being equal, you take the equivalently successful design that imposes the least costs. If the data indicates that your design decreases a metric, then ultimately the only rational decision is to kill the design. There are also probably non-obvious cost factors. A much better Google SERP design may be more aesthetically strong, and may not hurt metrics --- it may even marginally improve metrics --- however, if the end result of that aesthetic is that every other page at Google needs to cost more to cohere with the SERP, then, again, it may be irrational to improve the design. Companies spend a lot of money on design. Companies tell themselves a lot of things about design. Somebody's whole career is predicated on the idea that the lobby of a class A office building in the Chicago Loop needs to be just-so. In the building I'm in now, somebody spent several million dollars to improve the aesthetics. I think that probably has more to do with vanity than it does with business. Corporate annual reports are a marquee design project. Companies spend serious dollars on them. Berkshire Hathaway does theirs in Word, set in Times New Roman. They seem to be doing OK. Sell me on aesthetics more? I don't see it.

ThomPete 17y ago

Design is problem solving. Nothing else. You don't apply aesthetics to a design you apply a style to a design. Whether something is aesthetic i grounded in culture, history and so many other things. The google style is bad by print and 1999 standards, but we have come to like it because judging visual things is not only about how they look but how we feel about them.

shadowsun7 17y ago
Worth noting: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/06/logos.html http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/06/logos.html About thirty years ago, three companies dreamed up logos that have become so powerful, I don't even have to show you the images to get them to pop up in your head. A sneaker company paid a few hundred dollars for an abstract, upside down wave, a coffee company picked a half-naked mermaid (is there any other kind) that cost them nothing, and a computer company picked [hired a PR firm that picked] a piece of fruit with a bite out of it. What the images had in common: nothing. They range from abstract to woodcut to groovy. The art of picking a logo, even one for the Olympics, has almost nothing to do with taste or back story. A great logo doesn't mean anything until the brand makes it worth something. Likewise, great aesthetics/graphics mean nothing until the brand makes it worth something.

davidedicillo 17y ago

Aesthetic is a consequence of good design. A good design is almost a science. If you ask anybody to divide a page in two section, it isn't a coincidence if almost everyone will divided it using the Golden Ratio without even knowing what it is.

shrughes 17y ago
Yes, because people automatically solve x^2-x-1=0 in their heads when dividing up the page. Wait, my bad, it's just that people looking for that sort of thing take whatever ratio they see and round it to the nearest multiple of the golden ratio, and ignore any other ratios because they don't count. Why don't you look at the top colored bar at Hacker News and compute its ratio against the entire page? Why not count the ratio of this comment box? Why does the resize draggie that Chrome puts in the bottom right hand corner of the comment box have a 1:1 ratio? Why does the reply button, and most other buttons online, have a ratio larger than 2:1? All the windows I have open on my screen that are divided into sections don't follow the golden ratio. None of their sizes are the golden rectangle. My monitor doesn't follow the golden ratio. My aesthetically pleasing coffee mugs don't follow the ratio -- wait, the handle's smaller than the width of the brim, but not less than half as small. It must be the golden ratio.