6 ms·

I think some people have focused too much on his mockup rather than his point - Stack Overflow's design is poor, with some very bizarre decisions. He only touch

by halo 16y ago

I think some people have focused too much on his mockup rather than his point - Stack Overflow's design is poor, with some very bizarre decisions. He only touches on some of the problems with the site. Let's take the bright orange banner at the top of the screen that appears only to new users. Obviously, it's not just new users that see it. It's anyone who hasn't got a cookie on their browser indicating they haven't closed the ugly bright orange banner before, so it's hitting plenty of people who know this information already. But let's ignore that, and ask whether it does the job: how useful is the information contained in the big ugly bright orange banner to new users? Not very, I suspect. For most users, the purpose of the site will be implicit - from context (because they did a search for their problem and were linked to it), from the design (it looks like a Q&A site), and from the content (questions and answers). If it's not implicit, then the exact same information is explicitly stated in a box on the right-hand-side of the site. No other popular modern site on the web does these sort of popups anymore, so I don't see why the creators of Stack Overflow thought they were a good idea. In addition, why does the big ugly annoying bright orange banner link to the FAQ? What pecentage of new users will ever want, need, or read the FAQ? Users don't read anything. If the idea is to encourage sign-ups, then create a sign-up link, not a link to something nobody will read. Then there's the functionality of the big ugly annoying intrusive bright orange banner. It loads after the rest of the page loads, then shifts all the elements of the DOM down. Just in case you'd missed the bright orange banner that distracts you while using the site, it scrolls with you, displaying on all Stack Overflow pages until you're forced to go out of your way to move your mouse to close it (with their weird 'close' icon), when finally (if you're near the top) it shifts the DOM up again, just to ensure it can be maximally irritating. I don't see how "you’re seeing the one-time new user screen layout" should be regarded as any sort of defence for the big ugly annoying intrusive distracting irritating bright orange banner. Do new users somehow deserve bad design and bad functionality? In my eyes, Stack Overflow has firmly been a success despite its poor design. It's not as though Experts Exchange set a very high bar to beat usability-wise.

brown9-2 16y ago
Let's take the bright orange banner at the top of the screen that appears only to new users. This is not displayed to new users only. It's also used to give registered users alerts about new answers to their questions, comments on their answers, changes to questions they are following, etc. Seems to be a general purpose alerting/messaging feature which was then brought over to drawing attention to "new" visitors about what SO is.
confuzatron 16y ago
Agree. SO is a really busy, 'kitchen sink' design that looks like it's been given a thin coat of CSS by programmers. It looks spartan in a way that suggests the authors are scared of using anything 'fancy' due to not knowing what would work stylistically. I use SO, so it isn't a deal breaker for me, but I feel it could be so much better.
coliveira 16y ago
The orange banner is the worst part of the design. I hate it, and have refrained to use the site in part because of it.
- pg 16y ago
  Same here. Whenever a web site has some intrusive pop-up like thing like this, I almost reflexively reach for the back button. The worst is AllThingsD's "note about tracking cookies." Why do they think they need that?
  - johns 16y ago
    I can see how it could be annoying for new or low-engagement users. But for me (and I imagine many other regulars) I love seeing that bar. It means something good has happened on something I care about. Someone answered my question or commented on an answer of mine or I got a badge or something else I'm interested in. It never shows me things I don't care about.
    - Devilboy 16y ago
      | ...It means something good has happened on something I care about. Or you're not logged in...
  - thomasz 16y ago
    In the very near future, every website in the EU will need something like this or face legal consequences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Privacy_and_Electronic_Communications#Cookies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Privacy_and_Electr...
bobbyi 16y ago
> rather than his point - Stack Overflow's design is poor, Well, that's supposed to be his point. But saying something is "poor" because it doesn't match your personal taste isn't really much of a point and will never convince anyone. And nobody is obligated to provide a "defense" for not liking your favorite color. "To my ears, the Rolling Stones succeeded despite that the fact they are poor songwriters and Mick Jagger has limited vocal range"
- lovskogen 16y ago
  It's not his taste – it's objective criticism of the user interface.
  - notahacker 16y ago
    comments like "I’m happy to be proved wrong on this, but who actually clicks on these tags...I’m not a fan of tag clouds" are pretty subjective criticisms of the user interface... I'm sure an objective measurement of how often the tags were clicked would prove him wrong. As he observes himself, any UI-centred redesign should be based on metrics and user testing. Redesign in a vacuum is much worse than design by developers.
    - lovskogen 16y ago
      Not all of his points are objective, but not all are subjective either. I agree the re-align isn't 100%, but I would not cut down all his points.
stoney 16y ago
It's also not obvious that the orange banner won't come back next time you visit the site. I've never closed it before today because I assumed that it would just come back next time, so there was no point in closing it.
theBobMcCormick 16y ago
I do agree that the "improved" mockup is easier on the eyes than the current Stack Overflow design, but I'm not convinced that Stack Overflow's success is "despite its poor design". Maybe Stack Overflows... umm.. how shall I put this.. distinctive design is actually part of whats made it so successful. I mean, let's face it, when you're googling around and land on a Stack Overflow page, you KNOW you've landed on Stack Overflow, even if you weren't paying attention to the URL. It's look is definitely distinctive and unique. Maybe that's more important than being pretty. It does seem there are a lot of famously ugly sites that are also famously successful (CraigsList, PlentyOfFish, etc) I'm also reminded of the recent HN post about those long ugly salesletter sites, and how they convert much better than attractive web 2.0ish sites. Maybe (for web sites), being pretty isn't all it's cracked up to be?
- MaysonL 16y ago
  Personally, I have resisted becoming an SO user because, and only because it's so fugly.
- wazoox 16y ago
  > Maybe (for web sites), being pretty isn't all it's cracked up to be? Being pretty isn't much, but actual usability of SO is quite poor. I've used it since the beta and I learnt about some functionalities through this analysis, that I missed because they're so badly laid out! I'm pretty sure that stackexchange-based sites NOT targeted to highly technical people will fail, because of the extremely poor UI.

by halo 16y ago

brown9-2 16y ago

Let's take the bright orange banner at the top of the screen that appears only to new users. This is not displayed to new users only. It's also used to give registered users alerts about new answers to their questions, comments on their answers, changes to questions they are following, etc. Seems to be a general purpose alerting/messaging feature which was then brought over to drawing attention to "new" visitors about what SO is.

confuzatron 16y ago

Agree. SO is a really busy, 'kitchen sink' design that looks like it's been given a thin coat of CSS by programmers. It looks spartan in a way that suggests the authors are scared of using anything 'fancy' due to not knowing what would work stylistically. I use SO, so it isn't a deal breaker for me, but I feel it could be so much better.

coliveira 16y ago

The orange banner is the worst part of the design. I hate it, and have refrained to use the site in part because of it.

pg 16y ago
Same here. Whenever a web site has some intrusive pop-up like thing like this, I almost reflexively reach for the back button. The worst is AllThingsD's "note about tracking cookies." Why do they think they need that?
- johns 16y ago
  I can see how it could be annoying for new or low-engagement users. But for me (and I imagine many other regulars) I love seeing that bar. It means something good has happened on something I care about. Someone answered my question or commented on an answer of mine or I got a badge or something else I'm interested in. It never shows me things I don't care about.
  - Devilboy 16y ago
    | ...It means something good has happened on something I care about. Or you're not logged in...
- thomasz 16y ago
  In the very near future, every website in the EU will need something like this or face legal consequences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Privacy_and_Electronic_Communications#Cookies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_Privacy_and_Electr...

bobbyi 16y ago

> rather than his point - Stack Overflow's design is poor, Well, that's supposed to be his point. But saying something is "poor" because it doesn't match your personal taste isn't really much of a point and will never convince anyone. And nobody is obligated to provide a "defense" for not liking your favorite color. "To my ears, the Rolling Stones succeeded despite that the fact they are poor songwriters and Mick Jagger has limited vocal range"

lovskogen 16y ago
It's not his taste – it's objective criticism of the user interface.
- notahacker 16y ago
  comments like "I’m happy to be proved wrong on this, but who actually clicks on these tags...I’m not a fan of tag clouds" are pretty subjective criticisms of the user interface... I'm sure an objective measurement of how often the tags were clicked would prove him wrong. As he observes himself, any UI-centred redesign should be based on metrics and user testing. Redesign in a vacuum is much worse than design by developers.
  - lovskogen 16y ago
    Not all of his points are objective, but not all are subjective either. I agree the re-align isn't 100%, but I would not cut down all his points.

stoney 16y ago

It's also not obvious that the orange banner won't come back next time you visit the site. I've never closed it before today because I assumed that it would just come back next time, so there was no point in closing it.

theBobMcCormick 16y ago

I do agree that the "improved" mockup is easier on the eyes than the current Stack Overflow design, but I'm not convinced that Stack Overflow's success is "despite its poor design". Maybe Stack Overflows... umm.. how shall I put this.. distinctive design is actually part of whats made it so successful. I mean, let's face it, when you're googling around and land on a Stack Overflow page, you KNOW you've landed on Stack Overflow, even if you weren't paying attention to the URL. It's look is definitely distinctive and unique. Maybe that's more important than being pretty. It does seem there are a lot of famously ugly sites that are also famously successful (CraigsList, PlentyOfFish, etc) I'm also reminded of the recent HN post about those long ugly salesletter sites, and how they convert much better than attractive web 2.0ish sites. Maybe (for web sites), being pretty isn't all it's cracked up to be?

MaysonL 16y ago
Personally, I have resisted becoming an SO user because, and only because it's so fugly.
wazoox 16y ago
> Maybe (for web sites), being pretty isn't all it's cracked up to be? Being pretty isn't much, but actual usability of SO is quite poor. I've used it since the beta and I learnt about some functionalities through this analysis, that I missed because they're so badly laid out! I'm pretty sure that stackexchange-based sites NOT targeted to highly technical people will fail, because of the extremely poor UI.