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> They mostly exist because they are convenient, useful, and logical. What happens, when, in the words of the article, you "Do not be constrained by questions

> They mostly exist because they are convenient, useful, and logical. What happens, when, in the words of the article, you "Do not be constrained by questions of usability, legibility, and flexibility"? The answer, it appears, is their re-design of HN: https://interface.fh-potsdam.de/future-retro/HN/ https://interface.fh-potsdam.de/future-retro/HN/ which I find unusable.

zipwitch 8y ago
The pure white screen has a certain aesthetic appeal, but the total lack of content puts it considerably below the original. (I assume this must be an intended effect, given the complete absence of error messages.)
rytill 8y ago
Actually wouldn't be terrible if the comments appeared in a more orderly fashion. Right now, they spawn randomly and can even overlap which makes it actually unreadable.
Retric 8y ago
That's shockingly bad. The expanded view with lines between comments and their parents which scroll independently is literally the worst website UI I have ever seen. And I recall some terrible flash abominations.
greenhatman 8y ago
That was a pretty hilarious experience.
- smhost 8y ago
  the day/night button on the bottom right is genius satire
singingboyo 8y ago
The medium redesign is also awful. Its inability to handle my portrait-oriented monitor did trigger a sense of childish amusement (truncating POOR to POO) but it's entirely impossible to read anything using it.
Retr0spectrum 8y ago
The "redesign" is a joke, right?
reaperducer 8y ago
I can't imagine what they think someone with disabilities is supposed to do with that.
- cannonedhamster 8y ago
  They don't care about people with disabilities. They don't even care about people without disabilities. It's not usable for people who are not differently abled.
booleandilemma 8y ago
Is this brutalist design?
- anthk 8y ago
  No, brutalist is HN, lobste.rs or the Oreilly CD Bookshelf. Or any Unix CS guide with those square Motif-like buttons.
polynomial 8y ago
That site could induce a seizure in David Parsons.
nine_k 8y ago
> Do not be constrained by questions of usability, legibility, and flexibility That is, create a work of art (as opposed to utility). Okay, art is nice, too. But mixing artistry and utility is quite hard. Designing a nice, livable house, or a store, is a craft. Building fancy sand castles is a (pastime) art. But mixing the fancy free-form with being actually usable by thousands takes lots of work, resources, and time, because what you'd have to build is a cathedral. (If you think modern technology makes it simple, look at the history of building the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.)
greendestiny_re 8y ago
Only an artist could come up with this: http://prntscr.com/lgk7x0 http://prntscr.com/lgk7x0

zipwitch 8y ago

The pure white screen has a certain aesthetic appeal, but the total lack of content puts it considerably below the original. (I assume this must be an intended effect, given the complete absence of error messages.)

rytill 8y ago

Actually wouldn't be terrible if the comments appeared in a more orderly fashion. Right now, they spawn randomly and can even overlap which makes it actually unreadable.

Retric 8y ago

That's shockingly bad. The expanded view with lines between comments and their parents which scroll independently is literally the worst website UI I have ever seen. And I recall some terrible flash abominations.

greenhatman 8y ago

That was a pretty hilarious experience.

smhost 8y ago
the day/night button on the bottom right is genius satire

singingboyo 8y ago

The medium redesign is also awful. Its inability to handle my portrait-oriented monitor did trigger a sense of childish amusement (truncating POOR to POO) but it's entirely impossible to read anything using it.

Retr0spectrum 8y ago

The "redesign" is a joke, right?

reaperducer 8y ago

I can't imagine what they think someone with disabilities is supposed to do with that.

cannonedhamster 8y ago
They don't care about people with disabilities. They don't even care about people without disabilities. It's not usable for people who are not differently abled.

booleandilemma 8y ago

Is this brutalist design?

anthk 8y ago
No, brutalist is HN, lobste.rs or the Oreilly CD Bookshelf. Or any Unix CS guide with those square Motif-like buttons.

polynomial 8y ago

That site could induce a seizure in David Parsons.

nine_k 8y ago

> Do not be constrained by questions of usability, legibility, and flexibility That is, create a work of art (as opposed to utility). Okay, art is nice, too. But mixing artistry and utility is quite hard. Designing a nice, livable house, or a store, is a craft. Building fancy sand castles is a (pastime) art. But mixing the fancy free-form with being actually usable by thousands takes lots of work, resources, and time, because what you'd have to build is a cathedral. (If you think modern technology makes it simple, look at the history of building the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.)

greendestiny_re 8y ago

Only an artist could come up with this: http://prntscr.com/lgk7x0 http://prntscr.com/lgk7x0