6 ms·

The worst designed website I’d ever created was the most popular. Everything I thought I knew about the importance of design had been blown out of the water.

by ams6110 10y ago

The worst designed website I’d ever created was the most popular. Everything I thought I knew about the importance of design had been blown out of the water. Just look at Drudge Report for another example of this.

tyingq 10y ago
Chinese websites have a penchant for a very busy design that's really odd. I don't get why this sort of setup is desirable: A large insurance company in China: http://pingan.com/ http://pingan.com/ Similar, a large bank: https://www.dahsing.com/html/tc/index.html https://www.dahsing.com/html/tc/index.html China Postal Office: http://www.chinapost.com.cn/ http://www.chinapost.com.cn/
- kolinko 10y ago
  May be cultural differences due to different writing systems.
- Waterluvian 10y ago
  Odd thought: does their alphabet contribute to that feeling too? On average, each character looks considerably busier with more lines and curves than letters of the Latin alphabet.
  - tyingq 10y ago
    I don't think it's that. Just the raw count of "clickable things" is much higher. Try some of the menus. Or "translate this page"...it doesn't look better. I suspect it's just a cultural thing about information density.
    - theartfuldodger 10y ago
      There have been articles on HN in the past about the stark difference of "good design" for Asian sites. I remember some reference to the busy crowded streets and their signage. From that article I found lingscars.com which is now my most favorite commercial website. Make sure to read the copy and check out the source code
    - theartfuldodger 10y ago
      There have been articles on HN in the past about the stark difference of "good design" for Asian sites. I remember some reference to the busy crowded streets and their signage. From that article I found lingscars.com which is now my most favorite commercial website. Make sure to read the copy and check out the source code
    - theartfuldodger 10y ago
      There have been articles on HN in the past about the stark difference of "good design" for Asian sites. I remember some reference to the busy crowded streets and their signage. From that article I found lingscars.com which is now my most favorite commercial website. Make sure to read the copy and check out the source code
  - rhizome 10y ago
    I read recently that written Chinese has something like a 10x information density over written English, so you might be onto something there.
- ghaff 10y ago
  It's not just China. A lot of websites, event signage, ads, etc. in much of eastern Asia look to my Western eyes like something someone's kid put together for a school project. The script may be part of it--it doesn't lend itself to the sort of clean sparse design that's in vogue in a lot of the West. But, as you say, there's also just a lot of clutter and generally cheesy art work, stock photos, etc.
  - ValentineC 10y ago
    I found this (and the corresponding article) to be a good read on why Asian websites are that way (the lower comment threads seem to be more relevant to the topic): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718067
- pswilson14 10y ago
  Significant cultural difference makes for really interesting design differences in apps and websites! Americans (maybe Westerners more broadly) tend to prefer simple designs with plenty of white space, where Chinese users find a simple design to be annoying and difficult to use. They want the content all in one place - whitespace is wasted space. I've read once that this might have something to do with slow internet in China, which leads to users wanting to reach content in as few clicks/page loads as possible, but I'm not sure how accurate that is.
sverige 10y ago
Actually, Drudge Report is a great example of website design that works. OK, maybe you hate Drudge for political reasons, but his site gets more visitors than yours. You might be able to learn something from that. I have visited it pretty regularly since 1998 and it is awesome that it looks the same now as it did then. There's no stuff that floats up or down or around or in from one of the edges, no blinking fucking arrow telling me to scroll down for more info (as if I hadn't figured that out since the only thing visible is three words in a 400 pt. font and that's not exactly what I was looking for), no autoplay videos, no hamburger buns, no tabs, none of what passes for "good web design." I can see at a glance what I might be interested in, and when I click on it, I get more info. A back arrow gets me back to the place I started. Tell me again how that's bad design.
- ams6110 10y ago
  I agree actually -- I mentioned Drudge Report as another example of the phenomenon that a website can be popular without a lot of visual design. Maybe the point is that content trumps appearance. Also good point about the design not changing. I hate that seemingly every time I go to pay my Comcast bill the UX is different.
  - barrkel 10y ago
    It sounds like you're conflating appearance with visual design. I think they're barely related. Appearance has to do with aesthetics, design has to do with use. They certainly intersect in that they both affect the end result, but their purposes are almost completely orthogonal.
- tombrossman 10y ago
  Matt is an interesting character and I recommend people watch him at this National Press Club talk back in '98. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvcA75f9_ik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvcA75f9_ik If you can't spare the 40 minutes to watch it all, skip to the end when he takes questions.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  It is classic design that just works. The modern design aesthetic often focuses too tightly on optimizing some specific set of use cases. The problem is when they build the journey maps or whatever, the designers often don't understand the use cases completely or are specifically focused on optimizing some metric. My local newspaper does the overdesigned path. The information you need is purposely not easy to find. Their objective is literally to make you abandon your quest and look at the "e-edition" of the paper newspaper because it generates more revenue. In other contexts, this stuff is most obvious in responsive web apps, where the designers just bury features for whatever reason.
pmiller2 10y ago
My go-to example here is Craigslist. It's pretty fugly, but functional enough as a site, not to mention useful for the content.
hbosch 10y ago
Craigslist is another example. Dense, "ugly", but the wheels continue to spin. There is no magic bullet in design. Drudge Report's design would never work for a product like Facebook, or Stanford.edu for instance - your design says specific things. Drudge is like a Costco; it's intentionally "raw" to give the (false) impression that it's simply so focused on delivering a product that they don't have time/don't care about design. Lots of approaches work for different reasons. The reason why you should avoid using out-of-the-box UIs like bootstrap is similar - by taking a generic approach your design says nothing...
- rhizome 10y ago
  Put things where people are able to figure out what to click on to see the thing they want to see. A 2px vs 3px border doesn't affect that, it's just an implementation detail.

by ams6110 10y ago

tyingq 10y ago

Chinese websites have a penchant for a very busy design that's really odd. I don't get why this sort of setup is desirable: A large insurance company in China: http://pingan.com/ http://pingan.com/ Similar, a large bank: https://www.dahsing.com/html/tc/index.html https://www.dahsing.com/html/tc/index.html China Postal Office: http://www.chinapost.com.cn/ http://www.chinapost.com.cn/

kolinko 10y ago
May be cultural differences due to different writing systems.
Waterluvian 10y ago
Odd thought: does their alphabet contribute to that feeling too? On average, each character looks considerably busier with more lines and curves than letters of the Latin alphabet.
- tyingq 10y ago
  I don't think it's that. Just the raw count of "clickable things" is much higher. Try some of the menus. Or "translate this page"...it doesn't look better. I suspect it's just a cultural thing about information density.
  - theartfuldodger 10y ago
    There have been articles on HN in the past about the stark difference of "good design" for Asian sites. I remember some reference to the busy crowded streets and their signage. From that article I found lingscars.com which is now my most favorite commercial website. Make sure to read the copy and check out the source code
  - theartfuldodger 10y ago
    There have been articles on HN in the past about the stark difference of "good design" for Asian sites. I remember some reference to the busy crowded streets and their signage. From that article I found lingscars.com which is now my most favorite commercial website. Make sure to read the copy and check out the source code
  - theartfuldodger 10y ago
    There have been articles on HN in the past about the stark difference of "good design" for Asian sites. I remember some reference to the busy crowded streets and their signage. From that article I found lingscars.com which is now my most favorite commercial website. Make sure to read the copy and check out the source code
- rhizome 10y ago
  I read recently that written Chinese has something like a 10x information density over written English, so you might be onto something there.
ghaff 10y ago
It's not just China. A lot of websites, event signage, ads, etc. in much of eastern Asia look to my Western eyes like something someone's kid put together for a school project. The script may be part of it--it doesn't lend itself to the sort of clean sparse design that's in vogue in a lot of the West. But, as you say, there's also just a lot of clutter and generally cheesy art work, stock photos, etc.
- ValentineC 10y ago
  I found this (and the corresponding article) to be a good read on why Asian websites are that way (the lower comment threads seem to be more relevant to the topic): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718067
pswilson14 10y ago
Significant cultural difference makes for really interesting design differences in apps and websites! Americans (maybe Westerners more broadly) tend to prefer simple designs with plenty of white space, where Chinese users find a simple design to be annoying and difficult to use. They want the content all in one place - whitespace is wasted space. I've read once that this might have something to do with slow internet in China, which leads to users wanting to reach content in as few clicks/page loads as possible, but I'm not sure how accurate that is.

sverige 10y ago

Actually, Drudge Report is a great example of website design that works. OK, maybe you hate Drudge for political reasons, but his site gets more visitors than yours. You might be able to learn something from that. I have visited it pretty regularly since 1998 and it is awesome that it looks the same now as it did then. There's no stuff that floats up or down or around or in from one of the edges, no blinking fucking arrow telling me to scroll down for more info (as if I hadn't figured that out since the only thing visible is three words in a 400 pt. font and that's not exactly what I was looking for), no autoplay videos, no hamburger buns, no tabs, none of what passes for "good web design." I can see at a glance what I might be interested in, and when I click on it, I get more info. A back arrow gets me back to the place I started. Tell me again how that's bad design.

ams6110 10y ago
I agree actually -- I mentioned Drudge Report as another example of the phenomenon that a website can be popular without a lot of visual design. Maybe the point is that content trumps appearance. Also good point about the design not changing. I hate that seemingly every time I go to pay my Comcast bill the UX is different.
- barrkel 10y ago
  It sounds like you're conflating appearance with visual design. I think they're barely related. Appearance has to do with aesthetics, design has to do with use. They certainly intersect in that they both affect the end result, but their purposes are almost completely orthogonal.
tombrossman 10y ago
Matt is an interesting character and I recommend people watch him at this National Press Club talk back in '98. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvcA75f9_ik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvcA75f9_ik If you can't spare the 40 minutes to watch it all, skip to the end when he takes questions.
Spooky23 10y ago
It is classic design that just works. The modern design aesthetic often focuses too tightly on optimizing some specific set of use cases. The problem is when they build the journey maps or whatever, the designers often don't understand the use cases completely or are specifically focused on optimizing some metric. My local newspaper does the overdesigned path. The information you need is purposely not easy to find. Their objective is literally to make you abandon your quest and look at the "e-edition" of the paper newspaper because it generates more revenue. In other contexts, this stuff is most obvious in responsive web apps, where the designers just bury features for whatever reason.

pmiller2 10y ago

My go-to example here is Craigslist. It's pretty fugly, but functional enough as a site, not to mention useful for the content.

hbosch 10y ago

Craigslist is another example. Dense, "ugly", but the wheels continue to spin. There is no magic bullet in design. Drudge Report's design would never work for a product like Facebook, or Stanford.edu for instance - your design says specific things. Drudge is like a Costco; it's intentionally "raw" to give the (false) impression that it's simply so focused on delivering a product that they don't have time/don't care about design. Lots of approaches work for different reasons. The reason why you should avoid using out-of-the-box UIs like bootstrap is similar - by taking a generic approach your design says nothing...

rhizome 10y ago
Put things where people are able to figure out what to click on to see the thing they want to see. A 2px vs 3px border doesn't affect that, it's just an implementation detail.