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Breaking news: artsy website with animations - HN doesn't like it. People over here have such a hard-on for efficiency and speed. I'll give it to you, transiti

Breaking news: artsy website with animations - HN doesn't like it. People over here have such a hard-on for efficiency and speed. I'll give it to you, transitions are on the long side - I wouldn't mind the transitions taking half the time they do now, or the image descriptions taking less time to darken. However, if the idea was just to be a simple image gallery they'd just give us a .zip file. It's obviously meant to be a laid back and slow experience. IMHO here it's definitely too slow, but people over here seem to hate everything that's not a blank site with 0 animations. I work back-end dev, I used to think everything flashy on the frontend was a waste of time. I then worked in a web agency, I've seen the thought process - usually, with _good_ designers and UX specialists, the overall experience is tailored to whatever feel they want the site to have. I worked on a virtual expo site with a museum once, it was _meant_ to be contemplative and slow. You guys would have immediately hated it, while if you took two seconds of your life to just let yourself be immersed, the whole thing was a great experience. People over here also love to rave how this is anti-user, but you people are misunderstanding the average user. Power users like you are the minority. Most people don't mind the animations, and a lot of them actually enjoy it.

spectramax 8y ago
I couldn’t disagree with you more except the complaining usually takes over the HN thread. It’s not that nerds, geeks and technology-savvy audience of HN wants something for the “power user”. It’s that we want simplicity in design. We want to get rid of decoration and get to the essence of what is being presented. Animations, fancy loaders, etc get in the way of enjoying the content. “Chill out, this is supposed to be a relaxing experience” is not the answer. It’s condescending and out of touch with reality. How can the user “Chill out” if the browser comes to a crawl, phone heats up and is confused about what is going on. Do you remember Apple’s “Cover flow” where you can scroll through album covers? This website reminds of how designers get carried away by fancy, novel ideas. It was a massive failure, everyone used album lists, it was slow as hell and Apple finally killed it in one of the recent MacOS releases. It’s not about “power users”.
- folkrav 8y ago
  > It’s not that nerds, geeks and technology-savvy audience of HN wants something for the “power user”. It’s that we want simplicity in design. We want to get rid of decoration and get to the essence of what is being presented. Animations, fancy loaders, etc get in the way of enjoying the content. My whole point was that "decoration" can be enjoyable. > “Chill out, this is supposed to be a relaxing experience” is not the answer. It’s condescending and out of touch with reality. You haven’t put forth a compelling argument besides taking an anti-cliche stance. You're assuming all users have this stance, and that's what's actually condescending and out of touch to me. You haven't really put forward any compelling argument that doesn't fit my description of HN users assuming what they are looking for in a website is in any way representative of what the average user wants. It's the same thing as the tech crowd getting shouting at phone manufacturers because they're removing the headphone jack: surprise surprise, the average user doesn't care enough about plugging in an adapter that they won't buy the phone. > Do you remember Apple’s “Cover flow” where you can scroll through album covers? This website reminds of how designers get carried away by fancy, novel ideas. It was a massive failure, everyone used album lists, it was slow as hell and Apple finally killed it in one of the recent MacOS releases. It’s not about “power users”. Cover Flow was a failure as part of a music organisation software. This is part of Google's "Arts Experiments". It's _meant_ to be pretty and flashy.
  - spectramax 8y ago
    I think we are both arguing in a healthy manner - I realized and I edited my post. Continuing: “Cover Flow was a failure as part of a music organisation software.” - I feel like we should separate presentation from art. There are exceptions such as experiential art, performance art, where presentation is the art. Just the way cover flow gets in the way of enjoying music, animated websites get in the way of the content (the experiment). Experiment is fine, its presentation is flawed. I strongly and vehemently oppose anything that gets in the way of the content. Imagine if Rothko’s paintings were displayed in a gold plated frame with LEDs flashing - I’m taking it to an extreme to make a point that designers should do as little as possible and allow the content to speak for itself. It doesn’t mean that we should get rid of designers and hand over a .zip file of the images. It means that don’t make the experience frustrating. Don’t add your own flair.
dominicr 8y ago
This site reminds me a bit of how the web used to be and I like that occasionally. It forces me to slow down and explore, not funneled through a proscribed experience.
- pohl 8y ago
  [in the year 2000] Conan: our modems will no longer be slow, so we'll fake the slow, client-side.
  - dominicr 8y ago
    Artisian Internet
pault 8y ago
I started my career as a designer and I agree with you in principle, but this site was really frustrating to browse. I closed it after looking at one photo because I didn't want to wait to see more.
- folkrav 8y ago
  Yes, as I said this one's particularly slow, most transitions should be sped up. However most of them make sense, they're just way too slow.
gurpreet- 8y ago
I for one love this website. So clean and aesthetically pleasing. People who aren't devs would love the attention to detail, the high-res images and the animations. Well done! PS: You can press your arrow keys to move forwards and backwards through each slide, removing the delay between the slides.
ASalazarMX 8y ago
I don't mind artsy websites and animations if the topic is artsy. I hate them when they're supposed to show information and they present it as if using an eye dropper. When eye-candy is needlessly drawn out, it feels sluggish and unresponsive. I don't know a lot about general users, but I know the users I work with and they foremost want FLUID INTERFACES. They don't always have them, but they always want them.
- folkrav 8y ago
  I strongly disagree that the topic should have anything to do in limiting the form used to present it. This site is a google art experiment. In art, form is usually pretty much just as important as content.
zemo 8y ago
yeah I agree with this strongly. My experience with HN is that HN comments are essentially that HN users view non power users with contempt and dislike everything that can't be expressed through logical axioms. It's almost like it's a holistic experience whose entire design criteria is not "get information into people's heads as fast as possible". The duplicates are pretty annoying though. and besides, if you swipe the images left and right, the interface is plenty fast.
bborud 8y ago
The UI was slow as a trickle of cold honey on my machine. Because it was asking my machine to do more than it was capable of. Normally this isn't a problem. I use this machine to work on CAD models and while not a speed monster, it is doing just fine. Heck, I can even run Slack on it. Above a certain response time threshold a UI goes from being "slow" to being "unusable" or simply "broken". This isn't a matter of opinion, it is a reality. And I'm afraid that you will have to be a lot more charming and persuasive to make me forget reality :-) UX specialists that do not take sluggishness seriously simply aren't UX specialists in any meaningful sense of the word. I'm sorry, but life doesn't hand out medals for mere participation. (As for the site: I clicked around a bit, but the sluggishness of the site made me lose interest before really grasping what cleverness I was supposed to experience)

spectramax 8y ago

I couldn’t disagree with you more except the complaining usually takes over the HN thread. It’s not that nerds, geeks and technology-savvy audience of HN wants something for the “power user”. It’s that we want simplicity in design. We want to get rid of decoration and get to the essence of what is being presented. Animations, fancy loaders, etc get in the way of enjoying the content. “Chill out, this is supposed to be a relaxing experience” is not the answer. It’s condescending and out of touch with reality. How can the user “Chill out” if the browser comes to a crawl, phone heats up and is confused about what is going on. Do you remember Apple’s “Cover flow” where you can scroll through album covers? This website reminds of how designers get carried away by fancy, novel ideas. It was a massive failure, everyone used album lists, it was slow as hell and Apple finally killed it in one of the recent MacOS releases. It’s not about “power users”.

folkrav 8y ago
> It’s not that nerds, geeks and technology-savvy audience of HN wants something for the “power user”. It’s that we want simplicity in design. We want to get rid of decoration and get to the essence of what is being presented. Animations, fancy loaders, etc get in the way of enjoying the content. My whole point was that "decoration" can be enjoyable. > “Chill out, this is supposed to be a relaxing experience” is not the answer. It’s condescending and out of touch with reality. You haven’t put forth a compelling argument besides taking an anti-cliche stance. You're assuming all users have this stance, and that's what's actually condescending and out of touch to me. You haven't really put forward any compelling argument that doesn't fit my description of HN users assuming what they are looking for in a website is in any way representative of what the average user wants. It's the same thing as the tech crowd getting shouting at phone manufacturers because they're removing the headphone jack: surprise surprise, the average user doesn't care enough about plugging in an adapter that they won't buy the phone. > Do you remember Apple’s “Cover flow” where you can scroll through album covers? This website reminds of how designers get carried away by fancy, novel ideas. It was a massive failure, everyone used album lists, it was slow as hell and Apple finally killed it in one of the recent MacOS releases. It’s not about “power users”. Cover Flow was a failure as part of a music organisation software. This is part of Google's "Arts Experiments". It's _meant_ to be pretty and flashy.
- spectramax 8y ago
  I think we are both arguing in a healthy manner - I realized and I edited my post. Continuing: “Cover Flow was a failure as part of a music organisation software.” - I feel like we should separate presentation from art. There are exceptions such as experiential art, performance art, where presentation is the art. Just the way cover flow gets in the way of enjoying music, animated websites get in the way of the content (the experiment). Experiment is fine, its presentation is flawed. I strongly and vehemently oppose anything that gets in the way of the content. Imagine if Rothko’s paintings were displayed in a gold plated frame with LEDs flashing - I’m taking it to an extreme to make a point that designers should do as little as possible and allow the content to speak for itself. It doesn’t mean that we should get rid of designers and hand over a .zip file of the images. It means that don’t make the experience frustrating. Don’t add your own flair.

dominicr 8y ago

This site reminds me a bit of how the web used to be and I like that occasionally. It forces me to slow down and explore, not funneled through a proscribed experience.

pohl 8y ago
[in the year 2000] Conan: our modems will no longer be slow, so we'll fake the slow, client-side.
- dominicr 8y ago
  Artisian Internet

pault 8y ago

I started my career as a designer and I agree with you in principle, but this site was really frustrating to browse. I closed it after looking at one photo because I didn't want to wait to see more.

folkrav 8y ago
Yes, as I said this one's particularly slow, most transitions should be sped up. However most of them make sense, they're just way too slow.

gurpreet- 8y ago

I for one love this website. So clean and aesthetically pleasing. People who aren't devs would love the attention to detail, the high-res images and the animations. Well done! PS: You can press your arrow keys to move forwards and backwards through each slide, removing the delay between the slides.

ASalazarMX 8y ago

I don't mind artsy websites and animations if the topic is artsy. I hate them when they're supposed to show information and they present it as if using an eye dropper. When eye-candy is needlessly drawn out, it feels sluggish and unresponsive. I don't know a lot about general users, but I know the users I work with and they foremost want FLUID INTERFACES. They don't always have them, but they always want them.

folkrav 8y ago
I strongly disagree that the topic should have anything to do in limiting the form used to present it. This site is a google art experiment. In art, form is usually pretty much just as important as content.

zemo 8y ago

yeah I agree with this strongly. My experience with HN is that HN comments are essentially that HN users view non power users with contempt and dislike everything that can't be expressed through logical axioms. It's almost like it's a holistic experience whose entire design criteria is not "get information into people's heads as fast as possible". The duplicates are pretty annoying though. and besides, if you swipe the images left and right, the interface is plenty fast.

bborud 8y ago

The UI was slow as a trickle of cold honey on my machine. Because it was asking my machine to do more than it was capable of. Normally this isn't a problem. I use this machine to work on CAD models and while not a speed monster, it is doing just fine. Heck, I can even run Slack on it. Above a certain response time threshold a UI goes from being "slow" to being "unusable" or simply "broken". This isn't a matter of opinion, it is a reality. And I'm afraid that you will have to be a lot more charming and persuasive to make me forget reality :-) UX specialists that do not take sluggishness seriously simply aren't UX specialists in any meaningful sense of the word. I'm sorry, but life doesn't hand out medals for mere participation. (As for the site: I clicked around a bit, but the sluggishness of the site made me lose interest before really grasping what cleverness I was supposed to experience)