7 ms·

Quote of the day: "This is where you stop looking at your startup as a self-masturbatory piece of UX genius and start looking at it as a business" There was an

Quote of the day: "This is where you stop looking at your startup as a self-masturbatory piece of UX genius and start looking at it as a business" There was an article on HN the other day about expedia increasing revenue by removing a confusing form field on their booking process. I think the lesson is that users find different things confusing / annoying than UX experts (or web designers). UX experts ramble on about 'clutter' and simplification, however, in my experience, everyday people have a high tolerance to clutter as long as its the right clutter and that clutter is easy to understand (or is a really great deal). At the end of the day, put your faith in data driven split testing, not UX zealots.

jasonlotito 16y ago
And anecdote about my first experience with the intricacies of design. A company I worked for about 10 years ago was building an application that had lots of graphic elements to it. One of the colours they were using was red. It was being used throughout the application in bold ways. It looked really nice and slick. However, when we went to show it off to the partners, they were taken aback. See, they were from Taiwan (or some other nation in that region, I forget which), and they were almost insulted by the colour red. Using red was frowned upon for reasons I can't remember, but I believe it had to do with poor luck. Basically, it was bad to use the red. It was at that moment that I realised that UX is not as easy as making it simple to use. UX isn't build around rules, but reason built on testing.
- asolove 16y ago
  Do you perhaps have this backwards? In the West, the common association green-good, red-bad is pretty common. In Asia it is usually reversed: green-bad, red-good.
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    Maybe. There was a lot of green in the application as well, so that could very well have been it. It was 10 years ago, and I wasn't involved in the design. Whatever the color, it looked good design wise, but we had to change the color because of the culture.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- Nekojoe 16y ago
  I've come across things like this before. I’d say it’s part of localisation as well as UX design. We were making a flash sales page, it had red stars on as part of the key GUI design. The sales and marketing team loved it, it worked well, was straightforward to use. However some of the representatives in some Easter European Countries objected to the red stars, and associated with communist regime, for those regions we changed them to green stars so not to be insensitive. We never even considered the red stars being bad, but to some of the Eastern European users it would have been offensive.
raganwald 16y ago
I take issue with the expression "UX Experts" as you use it. In fact, I deliberately invoke the "No True Scotsman" argument: If someone is an actual expert in the field, they know that what they find confusing is different than what a user finds confusing, and that what they find aesthetically offensive is irrelevant to what works or doesn't work for the target audience/user. What you are speaking of is the "UX Zealot," exactly as you say at the end of your argument.
- al_james 16y ago
  Yes true. Apologies to any true UX experts (who are not UX zealots) I may have offended.
  - raganwald 16y ago
    Note that I am not claiming that "The set of all UX professionals who are also experts is non-empty," just that if someone is an expert, then certain things apply. So you may not need to apologise :-)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Nekojoe 16y ago
Here's the article - Expedia on how one extra data field can cost $12m (silicon.com) - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1859871 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1859871

jasonlotito 16y ago

And anecdote about my first experience with the intricacies of design. A company I worked for about 10 years ago was building an application that had lots of graphic elements to it. One of the colours they were using was red. It was being used throughout the application in bold ways. It looked really nice and slick. However, when we went to show it off to the partners, they were taken aback. See, they were from Taiwan (or some other nation in that region, I forget which), and they were almost insulted by the colour red. Using red was frowned upon for reasons I can't remember, but I believe it had to do with poor luck. Basically, it was bad to use the red. It was at that moment that I realised that UX is not as easy as making it simple to use. UX isn't build around rules, but reason built on testing.

asolove 16y ago
Do you perhaps have this backwards? In the West, the common association green-good, red-bad is pretty common. In Asia it is usually reversed: green-bad, red-good.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  Maybe. There was a lot of green in the application as well, so that could very well have been it. It was 10 years ago, and I wasn't involved in the design. Whatever the color, it looked good design wise, but we had to change the color because of the culture.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Nekojoe 16y ago
I've come across things like this before. I’d say it’s part of localisation as well as UX design. We were making a flash sales page, it had red stars on as part of the key GUI design. The sales and marketing team loved it, it worked well, was straightforward to use. However some of the representatives in some Easter European Countries objected to the red stars, and associated with communist regime, for those regions we changed them to green stars so not to be insensitive. We never even considered the red stars being bad, but to some of the Eastern European users it would have been offensive.

raganwald 16y ago

I take issue with the expression "UX Experts" as you use it. In fact, I deliberately invoke the "No True Scotsman" argument: If someone is an actual expert in the field, they know that what they find confusing is different than what a user finds confusing, and that what they find aesthetically offensive is irrelevant to what works or doesn't work for the target audience/user. What you are speaking of is the "UX Zealot," exactly as you say at the end of your argument.

al_james 16y ago
Yes true. Apologies to any true UX experts (who are not UX zealots) I may have offended.
- raganwald 16y ago
  Note that I am not claiming that "The set of all UX professionals who are also experts is non-empty," just that if someone is an expert, then certain things apply. So you may not need to apologise :-)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

Nekojoe 16y ago

Here's the article - Expedia on how one extra data field can cost $12m (silicon.com) - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1859871 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1859871