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Even more than bravado, I’ve dedicated my entire life’s work to this claim. Design is incredibly undervalued on HN, and I make contrarian claims to not only ru

Even more than bravado, I’ve dedicated my entire life’s work to this claim. Design is incredibly undervalued on HN, and I make contrarian claims to not only ruffle a few feathers, but because it’s a fundamental thesis of mine. Note aesthetics are also a functional beauty to me, I enjoy both refactoring code and typesetting a landing page as part of the design process.

ommunist 9y ago
up for that. This is probably because design value cannot be easily quantified and gives too much space to office politics, both things are not what many HN people like.
andkon 9y ago
I feel like my original answer ended up playing to that tendency to undervalue design here. Which ain't great. I guess my point was that it's super easy to look at a design and feel like it looks great and miss the fact that design is developed closer to the conclusion of a process that begins with developing a compelling message and story. Because folks miss that, "what's a great landing page?" is a question that usually ends up delivering a lot of landing pages that look the dopest, appeal to the most people, whose design and message is accessible, rather than landing pages that are actually successful at doing what they need to do (which may fly right by folks not in the intended audience). Fwiw, I think you're right. 3x is probably what the match of design and message results in, especially because a lot of what software does can't be described merely in words. It needs design to put the accent on the right things, or else will fail to communicate (most of the time).
majewsky 9y ago
> Design is incredibly undervalued on HN Looks like we're reading different HNs.
- mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
  Not really. I can concur with HN and developers in general not giving a shit about design. I can’t tell you how many developers I’ve spoken to who tried launching their own product only to go silent after I sent them a design proposal. Devs seem to have a very limited understanding of value of design.

ommunist 9y ago

up for that. This is probably because design value cannot be easily quantified and gives too much space to office politics, both things are not what many HN people like.

andkon 9y ago

I feel like my original answer ended up playing to that tendency to undervalue design here. Which ain't great. I guess my point was that it's super easy to look at a design and feel like it looks great and miss the fact that design is developed closer to the conclusion of a process that begins with developing a compelling message and story. Because folks miss that, "what's a great landing page?" is a question that usually ends up delivering a lot of landing pages that look the dopest, appeal to the most people, whose design and message is accessible, rather than landing pages that are actually successful at doing what they need to do (which may fly right by folks not in the intended audience). Fwiw, I think you're right. 3x is probably what the match of design and message results in, especially because a lot of what software does can't be described merely in words. It needs design to put the accent on the right things, or else will fail to communicate (most of the time).

majewsky 9y ago

> Design is incredibly undervalued on HN Looks like we're reading different HNs.

mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
Not really. I can concur with HN and developers in general not giving a shit about design. I can’t tell you how many developers I’ve spoken to who tried launching their own product only to go silent after I sent them a design proposal. Devs seem to have a very limited understanding of value of design.