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This is pure illusion. Otherwise reddit, 4chan, hn, google (until 2010), craigslist, and even amazon would suffocate and go away. The fact is that what makes

by gkya 9y ago

This is pure illusion. Otherwise reddit, 4chan, hn, google (until 2010), craigslist, and even amazon would suffocate and go away. The fact is that what makes a web app / web site / whatever be liked by the users is the content and the value; and often times a 2005 porn pop-under is better at that than a today's chic, pedantically over-designed website with grey huge lettering, multi-MB graphics, and tonnes of wasted empty areas. They are basically like coke, blunt useless stuff with lots of sugar.

ehnto 9y ago
Those communities are all very niche, and in fact part of their brand and image is in their design. Even though they are less flashy, that is the point. Try to convince the owner of a clothing ecommerce site that their store should look like a 4chan bulletin board while trying to sell high priced garments to the public, or that the Coke website can't have a vibrant design in line with the rest of their branding.
- Karrot_Kream 9y ago
  I'd like to pose a WhatsApp commerce group as a counterexample.
  - ehnto 9y ago
    A good counter! However it also helps the argument that the web is diverse enough that having a hyper flexible UI system is beneficial.
- Endy 9y ago
  I don't understand one point here - why wouldn't Coke be able to have vibrancy? Animated .GIF images have worked very reliably for web layouts since... forever; and I don't think anyone's going to start calling for everything to be pastels online or in a fixed color scheme. I don't feel that Reddit is by any means 'niche', either. And of course a clothing store (which is an e-commerce product) should look different from an image board; again, no one in their right mind is going to demand otherwise. But they should be able to be defined by the same set of tools (personally, when I design webpages, even under WordPress, I still use HTML tables and the center tag. Heck, I've used the marquee tag in the last year.
  - ehnto 9y ago
    I am a huge proponent of keeping it simple for websites. If you can achieve the same branding with less tooling then that is ace, and it is what I try to do. Less complexity means it's more maintainable and normally quicker to build. But it will need to be the same experience that the client asked for. Coke is never going to ask you for a react website with webpack tooling and a lambda backend, they are going to come to you with some grand vision of an application that their marketing team imagined in the shower months ago and has been workshopped into a mess. You may or may not be able to deliver that with simple HTML and CSS. I am also keen for the web to move toward some kind of stability in technology as well, the churn and wheel reinvention factory that we currently have is creating a bit of a mess but I don't think it's worth throwing the web away just yet.
    - Endy 9y ago
      My response to "grand vision" projects is to say, "work up an actual spec of what's necessary, and I'll respond based on what's technically feasible." I find that when they finally get their heads out of their entrails, most needs are very simple. Animation can be done in .gif, static images can be supported by imagemaps and tables.
- gkya 9y ago
  So Google and Amazon are niche? And if the plainness/unelaboratedness of deaign is part if Reddit's identity, why most subreddits use elaborate custom CSS? And what I'm saying is different anyways: when you provide some real value, your design is irrelevant. Otherwise you are employing the put-moar-sugar-in-it technique of marketing. Kudos if you make it work, but it's far fetched to say that it's necessary.
  - ehnto 9y ago
    The are wildly popular but they are in a niche yes. When they were not the Google we know today there were not many providing the same service or value, and potentially still isn't, so that is why they could get away with bland design. It was never bad design mind you. Amazon is also king of providing value in their markets, and their markets are also apathetic toward flashy design. I don't need animations when I am provisioning an AWS instance nor when I am buying goods at the lowest possible price I can find. However if I were not me, and I were shopping for luxury or boutique goods, a site that looked like Amazon would not instill me with confidence. My point is just that the web has diverse design and UX needs and the current toolset caters for that. If someone managed to build a platform with those benefits and more and the webs market penetration then I would be on board. I will argue still that it is necessary if you want an alternative to the web, as the alternative has to be a better value proposition for the end user not the developer.
hesarenu 9y ago
I use Amazon just because it has great service. But it's UI is atrocious. Flipkart blows it apart when it comes to UI. So easy to search based on several sub parts. it's Mobile UI is also very well done.

by gkya 9y ago

ehnto 9y ago

Those communities are all very niche, and in fact part of their brand and image is in their design. Even though they are less flashy, that is the point. Try to convince the owner of a clothing ecommerce site that their store should look like a 4chan bulletin board while trying to sell high priced garments to the public, or that the Coke website can't have a vibrant design in line with the rest of their branding.

Karrot_Kream 9y ago
I'd like to pose a WhatsApp commerce group as a counterexample.
- ehnto 9y ago
  A good counter! However it also helps the argument that the web is diverse enough that having a hyper flexible UI system is beneficial.
Endy 9y ago
I don't understand one point here - why wouldn't Coke be able to have vibrancy? Animated .GIF images have worked very reliably for web layouts since... forever; and I don't think anyone's going to start calling for everything to be pastels online or in a fixed color scheme. I don't feel that Reddit is by any means 'niche', either. And of course a clothing store (which is an e-commerce product) should look different from an image board; again, no one in their right mind is going to demand otherwise. But they should be able to be defined by the same set of tools (personally, when I design webpages, even under WordPress, I still use HTML tables and the center tag. Heck, I've used the marquee tag in the last year.
- ehnto 9y ago
  I am a huge proponent of keeping it simple for websites. If you can achieve the same branding with less tooling then that is ace, and it is what I try to do. Less complexity means it's more maintainable and normally quicker to build. But it will need to be the same experience that the client asked for. Coke is never going to ask you for a react website with webpack tooling and a lambda backend, they are going to come to you with some grand vision of an application that their marketing team imagined in the shower months ago and has been workshopped into a mess. You may or may not be able to deliver that with simple HTML and CSS. I am also keen for the web to move toward some kind of stability in technology as well, the churn and wheel reinvention factory that we currently have is creating a bit of a mess but I don't think it's worth throwing the web away just yet.
  - Endy 9y ago
    My response to "grand vision" projects is to say, "work up an actual spec of what's necessary, and I'll respond based on what's technically feasible." I find that when they finally get their heads out of their entrails, most needs are very simple. Animation can be done in .gif, static images can be supported by imagemaps and tables.
gkya 9y ago
So Google and Amazon are niche? And if the plainness/unelaboratedness of deaign is part if Reddit's identity, why most subreddits use elaborate custom CSS? And what I'm saying is different anyways: when you provide some real value, your design is irrelevant. Otherwise you are employing the put-moar-sugar-in-it technique of marketing. Kudos if you make it work, but it's far fetched to say that it's necessary.
- ehnto 9y ago
  The are wildly popular but they are in a niche yes. When they were not the Google we know today there were not many providing the same service or value, and potentially still isn't, so that is why they could get away with bland design. It was never bad design mind you. Amazon is also king of providing value in their markets, and their markets are also apathetic toward flashy design. I don't need animations when I am provisioning an AWS instance nor when I am buying goods at the lowest possible price I can find. However if I were not me, and I were shopping for luxury or boutique goods, a site that looked like Amazon would not instill me with confidence. My point is just that the web has diverse design and UX needs and the current toolset caters for that. If someone managed to build a platform with those benefits and more and the webs market penetration then I would be on board. I will argue still that it is necessary if you want an alternative to the web, as the alternative has to be a better value proposition for the end user not the developer.

hesarenu 9y ago

I use Amazon just because it has great service. But it's UI is atrocious. Flipkart blows it apart when it comes to UI. So easy to search based on several sub parts. it's Mobile UI is also very well done.