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The Berkshire Hathaway Site is a master class in human-centered design
- mmcgaha 6y agoWhat caused so many people to start using "master class" in this way? Usage appears to be on the rise too: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%22master%20class%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...
- buffin 6y agoIt's a new elearning platform with a good advertising budget. https://www.masterclass.com/ https://www.masterclass.com/ That must explain the google trend.
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- aerodog 6y agoError 1020 Ray ID: 583eb7e1fa8bda42 • 2020-04-14 16:14:10 UTC Access denied What happened? This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks.
- flyinglizard 6y agoThe Berkshire Hathaway sure can look like that precisely because it’s the website of Berkshire Hathaway, an established and trusted holding company - pretty much the hallmark of blue chip investment. Furthermore, Berkshire does not try to entice visitors or market any services through its website. Its only purpose is shareholder communication, and for that, this website is one step removed from sending those by fax.
- zaroth 6y agoFunny enough, they do find space for a Geico ad on the page.
- kenneth 6y agoGeico is most important company in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, and is wholly owned by Berkshire Hathaway. The insurance business is Berkshire's primary business, and all the cash generated from premiums (the float), which is just theirs to do with what they please until claims come in, is what has allowed it to invest and buy other businesses.
- PaulHoule 6y agoAlso, Berkshire Hathaway is a master at PR, and the "aw shucks" authenticity of Warren Buffet is a centerpiece of it. Warren Buffet still appeals to Middle Americans even though his company has been at the heart of just about everything that went wrong in finance and business in the 2010s. For instance, they bought a number of food-related brands such as Kraft, made changes that damaged the taste of the products, and seemed blindsided when sales fell. They replaced the cheese in Kraft Mac and Cheese with Milk Protein Concentrate from China, which hurt the sensory qualities of the product dramatically. Within a few years, most store brands had made the change to keep up. Later on I saw Kraft MC ads all over NYC asking you to remember how much you liked it when you were small that don't tell you that it tastes much worse than it did then. They'll sell you a box, sure, but then you'll spit it out and never buy it again. Jim Cramer has talked about the decline of big food brands on his show many times, but he doesn't say Warren Buffet or Berkshire Hathaway has anything to do with it because he can do no wrong in the eyes of media companies that are swimming in Geico ad cash. Similarly, CNBC sends Becky Quick out to Omaha as often as they can. The oldsters in the audience really likes Warren Buffet and Warren Buffet thinks Becky Quick is a babe (I sure do) and leers at her more and more as dementia claims his mind. It is in plain view but doesn't get talked about because the media can't get enough of that Gecko. When I read an article like that I don't think the author got paid off, it's just they see that all the respectable people act as if they'd been paid off so you can look respectable by acting as if you were paid off too. It's like those fake influencers who can't get paid but pretend they do because maybe someday they will be.
- kbumsik 6y ago> Berkshire does not try to entice visitors or market any services through its website At least Warren does it in the CEO's message :) https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/message.html https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/message.html
- barkingcat 6y agoI wouldn't be surprised if one of the reasons the site has remained this way is that people do fax this site to shareholders. In some cases that's a requirement.
- davio 6y agoI thought I typo'd the URL and was getting hacked the first time I went to their site. That was in the 2000s.
- gav 6y agoAnother example is Alphabet: https://abc.xyz/ https://abc.xyz/ Almost all the content is intended for investors, and that's behind the link at the top right.
- JadeNB 6y ago> The Berkshire Hathaway sure can look like that precisely because it’s the website of Berkshire Hathaway, an established and trusted holding company - pretty much the hallmark of blue chip investment. > Furthermore, Berkshire does not try to entice visitors or market any services through its website. Its only purpose is shareholder communication, and for that, this website is one step removed from sending those by fax. That's exactly what the post says: > The official website is built for the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. It’s not built to convert customers. It’s not built for you or me. Shareholders are really only concerned with very specific things: news releases, reports and letters from Warren Buffett to name a few.
- flyinglizard 6y agoYes, but even those functions could be filled by something which doesn’t look like a printout of 1994 lynx session. It’s a statement. It’s unfashionably fashionable.
- perl4ever 6y agoI'm not sure that theory makes sense. If you want SEC filings, you can get them at sec.gov, which is also kind of retro.
- JadeNB 6y agoI'm not advancing any theory, only pointing out that what flyinglizard said (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867783) is what the article said.
- mattl 6y ago> On first impression, Option B looks straight out of the 80s. The text is off, the font is off, the URLs look outdated What web browser was this guy using in the 80s?
- fabianmg 6y agohttps://literarydevices.net/hyperbole/ https://literarydevices.net/hyperbole/
- SilasX 6y agoHyperbole is when you use obvious, extreme exaggerations. Going one unit past "completely plausible" is a confused, weak use of the technique. For example, I wouldn't call it hyperbole (or effective writing) if you referred to an interest rate of 45% as 55% "to emphasize how big it is".
- mywittyname 6y agoAgreed. It's kind of distracting because, when you read it, you start thinking, "is that right?" My immediate thought was to go look up with Mosaic came out and determine if there were graphical browsers before that, which, I think, is not what the author intended.
- SilasX 6y agoI have that problem generally, where I will automatically think of plausible interpretations of what someone is saying (like, here, imagining that early graphical browsers e.g. for minitel looked like this), and thus often can't tell if someone is joking.
- mattl 6y agoIt's similar to how there's a notion that all websites from the mid 90s were full of marquee tags and MIDI music and everything was in Comic Sans.
- perl4ever 6y ago
- mercwear 6y agoI believe that "Master class" is taking it a bit too far. The site has remained the same because there is no reason to update it. If the simplistic design was revolutionary or represented something other than "Don't fix what is not broken" they would be using the same format for their portfolio companies. The site gets the info out to the people that need it, nothing more nothing less. It's a good design for what they are trying to do however it's a terrible design for many other companies.
- runawaybottle 6y agoWhat would the author say about Shazam? Is it a master class that Shazam is one button you press and hold it up to a speaker? It’s the only possible form Shazam could take. Choosing the obvious form in a design exercises where the choices are already narrowed down for you isn’t really a profound example of simplifying a complex idea. The Mac OS dock might be a real master class, the Windows start bar (for it’s time, to some degree, before it get’s overwhelmed).
- SilasX 6y agoI agree Master Class is too much[1], but it's still better than most sites I deal with today: the information is easy to find, doesn't overload your browser, and plays nice with extensions. Plus, it's usable on mobile. Not optimized, sure, but at least it doesn't break my ability to use it on mobile: I can just zoom in as necessary. But that's more of an indictment of out-of-control web design that's all too common. [1] I think the author could plausibly mean "class" in the sense of "lesson", since he contrasts it with the other, newer site design and uses them to illustrate the difference purposes, but a) that's a bit of a stretch, and b) he never frames it as a lesson or uses the word "class" for the rest of the article.
- vearwhershuh 6y agoThe practical lesson here is, as always: be extremely wealthy. No matter what you do, people will think it is profoundly smart.
- oefrha 6y agoExactly. Pretty sure however berkshirehathaway.com is deigned builtin.com will find genius in it. Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of unadorned personal websites (including that of yours truly), especially in academic circles, or websites of old-school software projects look just like this masterpiece.
- JakeTheAndroid 6y agoI'm not sure what you're saying here. Do you expect builtin to find your personal site for this writeup? Does your site have the same purpose and is it being consumed the same way as BH? Can builtin know that your site design is effectively for the consumers that visit the site? Whereas with BH, they can be sure that this page gets used as BH has a wide net of consumers that'd need to leverage this site. If this design was a major blocked to business effectivity, BH has enough money to change it. The fact that they haven't suggests it's at least good enough.
- oefrha 6y agoWhat I’m saying is this is just the boring old way of writing websites and it’s still widely practiced today, there’s hardly any genius in it, nor is it a masterpiece. Also, your argument that any company with enough money to fix a dysfunctional website must have a good enough website is kinda laughable.
- tootie 6y agoIt's not just that, it's also notoriety and reputation. No one is going to that site to learn what BH is and what it has to offer. They don't care about any SEO beyond people searching "Berkshire Hathaway". They're not a B2C brand. They are not converting sales. They are not creating Brand Halo. It's basically just their federally-mandated SEC filings.
- whoisjuan 6y agoOh yeah. User-agent stylesheets and a list of links. The pinnacle of human-centered design. /s The author either doesn't understand design or has a very low-bar for tactically good user-centered experiences, or both. I can list an endless list of bad things on this website: - Bad information architecture. - Poor contextualization, narrative, and direction of a message (just because it's Berkshire Hathaway, doesn't mean that I automatically know what I'm trying to find in their website) - Poor document structure that renders at the whole width of wide screens and doesn't wrap for small screens. - Bad typography and typographic scale (can a visually impaired person read the small text that shows dates and footnotes?) - Bad use of color. Everything is blue, the links are purple. Usually in plain stylesheets blue is reserved for links and purple for clicked links. - External links don't open in a new tab. - No branding. Can a user trust that this is an official website? - No navigational elements (navbar, breadcrumbs, etc) that allow a user to return to the main page (which is supposed to be the "master class of human-centered design). Every click is a dead-end. - Multiple SEO and accessibility issues: - Does not have a <meta name="viewport"> tag with width or initial-scaleNo `<meta name="viewport">` tag found. Document does not have a meta description - Text is illegible because there's no viewport meta tag optimized for mobile screens. - Tap targets are too small because there's no viewport meta tag optimized for mobile screens - The page does not contain a heading, skip link, or landmark region
- freeone3000 6y agoMaybe the default HTML experience is, on its own, a good user-centered experience.
- whoisjuan 6y agoI doubt very much that anybody can launch a website / web-app today with only user-agent stylesheets and be successful. Even for an internal product that would be seen as bad/lazy/unoptimal.
- ardy42 6y ago> I doubt very much that anybody can launch a website / web-app today with only user-agent stylesheets and be successful. Even for an internal product that would be seen as bad/lazy/unoptimal. The triumph of form over function.
- dna_polymerase 6y agoOption B serves the user with relevant information too fast. That might be nice for the user, but for SEO, it is horrible, since Google incentives building websites that suck users in and never let them go (by incorporating time spent on the page into their ranking).
- jasonv 6y agoThe colors are painful (to my eyes) and non-standard. I disagree with the article.
- deusxm86 6y ago"Master Class" in HCI? This is a farce. View this on any mobile device and you realize that it breaks all rules of HCI.
- DanTheManPR 6y agoThe poor mobile support is pretty unforgivable. I do really like old-fashioned websites such as Craigslist or very straightforward blogs such as Paul Graham's. But this particular example does have a lot of usability problems.
- deusxm86 6y agoBH forgot about the introduction of mobile devices in the last 10+ years.
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- dceddia 6y agoIt seems this article is idolizing the ugliness of the site as being some some kind of contrarian user-centered design. User-centered doesn't have to mean ugly, though. There's a whole lot of middle ground between "default-styled page from 1995" and "2020 SaaS landing page with flashy illustrations that doesn't explain what it does". You might remember http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ vs. http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ from a few years back. Some minimal tweaks to typography/colors/spacing can make a big difference.
- whoisjuan 6y agoNot only that. Aesthetics are a function of design. They allow us to understand a message, follow a narrative and more deeply empathize with objects to the point that we may be forgiving of small issues. They are part of how we behave and interact with many things that surround us and influence us. They help us to create mental models for the world because they become an attribute of the objects we desire or loathe. Of course, utilitarian and plain boring design aesthetics have a place in the world, but imagine if everything was like this website. It would be almost impossible to generate opinions because we don't have any distinct reference to help us imagine if something could be more harmonic and visually appealing. I believe that the goal of aesthetics is precisely to empower people to generate feelings toward objects that otherwise wouldn't generate a connection. It's the same reason why we can appreciate art or admire nature. Because those things are full of visual attributes that help us to elicit thoughts and re-describe things as we see them (ugly, funny, colorful, boring, etc).
- smilebot 6y agoIn my opinion, this article seems to be biased with Halo effect.
- nabla9 6y agoThe quality of the site is not coming from the quality of web design (it's not that good). It's the purity of the function that leads to good design. The function is to provide information for stock owners and potential investors, many of them are old people. The site is not trying to sell, influence or impress. Berkshire is selling nothing to consumers or visitors. Their subsidiaries that sell have their own websites. Berkshire HQ has just 25 staffers. Their subsidiaries employ close to 400,000 people.
- mrxd 6y agoYou have to pick colors and typefaces, why not pick good ones? There are probably millions of choices that are both beautiful and functional. The author seems to believe that there's an essential zero-sum relationship between form and functionality, i.e. by removing "bells and whistles", you've somehow improved the finding of information. That doesn't make sense to me.
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- ajay-d 6y agoRenaissance Technologies - one of the "most secretive and successful" hedge funds in the world has a pretty bare bones site too https://www.rentec.com/ https://www.rentec.com/
- vikramkr 6y agoBecause they dont need anything else on their website, because the people that invest in their fund dont find them through a website. You dont get to decide to invest in funds like those, they get to pick whose money they accept, they dont even necessarily need a website
- kolanos 6y agoYou'd think that site would be accessible. And while it's not terrible, all the unordered lists with a single list item in them is crazy annoying if you're using a screen reader.
- JoshTko 6y agoOne more aspect of why this design is appropriate is consistency. The 1998 version found in the wayback machine is basically the same design. Given the product the consistency is especially appreciated.
- JackFr 6y ago> Option B looks straight out of the eighties From Wikipedia: "[Tim Berners-Lee] wrote the first web browser in 1990 while employed at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. The browser was released outside CERN in 1991, first to other research institutions starting in January 1991 and then to the general public in August 1991." I guess the eighties have become a frame of mind rather than a period in time.
- perl4ever 6y agoI think sometimes primitive graphics are equated with Prodigy, which was around in the 80s, I think.
- efa 6y ago<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Adobe PageMill 2.0 Win"> Awesome!
- maxk42 6y agoTLDR: Don't use CSS.
- oxalorg 6y agoWhenever I come across a website which looks like its from the 90s I click a button [0] in my bookmarks bar to prettify it. [0] https://oxal.org/projects/sakura/bookmark https://oxal.org/projects/sakura/bookmark
- tonytubes23 6y agoThe business is owned by quite literally the tightest man on the planet. (tight as in frugal) It's not good design. It's a legacy system. It still 'does the job', so upgrading it is probably seen as an unnecessary expense.
- ghego1 6y agoI don't understand why so many upvotes. While the underlying concept of the article is correct, and the author deserves credit for that, the argument made to support it can be true only if the reader accepts the premise of the article itself (option B is made having the user at the center), which the author openly admits he/she has no clue if that is the case.
- ksec 6y ago>Access denied >What happened? >This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. So being HNed is now considered as DDoS? Last time I checked an article on HN Front page got me about 30K in a day, even if that happened to be all within the one minute, how could that be classified as DDoS?
- chrisked 6y agoApplaud Simons for another master piece with RenTec https://www.rentec.com/ https://www.rentec.com/
- blawson 6y agoAlways loved Benchmark Capital's website design: http://www.benchmark.com http://www.benchmark.com It's great to be able to say "we are so good all we need is an unsecured landing page from the 90s."
- darepublic 6y agoEchoing what others in these comments have said, simple and direct is good but to call this site a masterclass in design is really going overboard
- kreetx 6y agoAnd now the said site is trying to cope with the traffic.. They should use a cdn.