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I feel like I read something new every week on HN about design philosophy; make your product this way not that way, try to do this and not that, here's 10 examp

I feel like I read something new every week on HN about design philosophy; make your product this way not that way, try to do this and not that, here's 10 examples of products that failed because of x, here's 5 products that were successful because of y - maybe it's time to realise that there's no monolithic overarching "right" way to design a product. This is how we ended up with the current trendy cohort of minimalist apps with flat dark designs, with mobile apps that all look the same, with products that miss killer features for the sake of simplicity, with the annoying typefaces that all tech companies use that make it "trendy".

Jenk 5y ago
Same, and with each new article the X or Y reasons get that little bit more abstract. Eventually I'm sure we'll see articles that say "They failed because they didn't _care_" or "They succeeded becasuse they _listened_" and that's as much depth as we'll get from them.
giancarlostoro 5y ago
"Why this HN comment is correct on design", "Why said revered HN comment is incorrect on design", "HN comment creates cult" Jokes aside, I tend to agree with you. No matter is so black or white, if something failed, it was a host of things that went wrong. If something succeeded, it was as well numerous things. The most common successful factors are the ones people role their eyes over cause everyone already knows 'dedication' and 'hard work' are factors, but they don't always get you results, they're just the most common factors.
fnord77 5y ago
yes, lots of philosophy and little actual science (testing hypotheses etc)
- hellomyguys 5y ago
  Well I would argue the monolithic look on apps is a to some degree a byproduct of testing. It makes sense that most apps' buttons, layouts, design patterns look the same and are considered "easiest" to use by A/B testing standards. You don't have to learn anything new to use those designs.
whatgoodisaroad 5y ago
Right, in a way I think this opening tweet just undercuts the entire argument. It's a simplistic description of a problem, which the body of the article returns with a simplistic sort of solution. The truth is that I want paste to match formatting sometimes, and putting that many emphatic "ever"s in the tweet reads like an act of denial towards how tricky design can be. In the case of pasting, we've solved he problem with a pair of keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+v to match formatting, ctrl+shift+v to strip formatting. Effectively, this makes matching format the convention. I actually think matching is probably more common. Now keyboard shortcuts are not sexy design. They aren't user friendly and are described derisively as "power user" features. But what they are is probably the optional solution to a design problem, and sometimes that's not exciting.
philosopher1234 5y ago
>This is how we ended up with the current trendy cohort of minimalist apps with flat dark designs, with mobile apps that all look the same, with products that miss killer features for the sake of simplicity, with the annoying typefaces that all tech companies use that make it "trendy". i like all these things, and am glad this is the way the world is.
passivate 5y ago
In every functional department, there is some amount of this - UX folks want to update the design language, advertising needs a fresh campaign for the new version, devs want to move to some new framework, and/or rewrite etc. Everyone thinks their actions are well justified - except for the user who rarely benefits :)

Jenk 5y ago

Same, and with each new article the X or Y reasons get that little bit more abstract. Eventually I'm sure we'll see articles that say "They failed because they didn't _care_" or "They succeeded becasuse they _listened_" and that's as much depth as we'll get from them.

giancarlostoro 5y ago

"Why this HN comment is correct on design", "Why said revered HN comment is incorrect on design", "HN comment creates cult" Jokes aside, I tend to agree with you. No matter is so black or white, if something failed, it was a host of things that went wrong. If something succeeded, it was as well numerous things. The most common successful factors are the ones people role their eyes over cause everyone already knows 'dedication' and 'hard work' are factors, but they don't always get you results, they're just the most common factors.

fnord77 5y ago

yes, lots of philosophy and little actual science (testing hypotheses etc)

hellomyguys 5y ago
Well I would argue the monolithic look on apps is a to some degree a byproduct of testing. It makes sense that most apps' buttons, layouts, design patterns look the same and are considered "easiest" to use by A/B testing standards. You don't have to learn anything new to use those designs.

whatgoodisaroad 5y ago

Right, in a way I think this opening tweet just undercuts the entire argument. It's a simplistic description of a problem, which the body of the article returns with a simplistic sort of solution. The truth is that I want paste to match formatting sometimes, and putting that many emphatic "ever"s in the tweet reads like an act of denial towards how tricky design can be. In the case of pasting, we've solved he problem with a pair of keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+v to match formatting, ctrl+shift+v to strip formatting. Effectively, this makes matching format the convention. I actually think matching is probably more common. Now keyboard shortcuts are not sexy design. They aren't user friendly and are described derisively as "power user" features. But what they are is probably the optional solution to a design problem, and sometimes that's not exciting.

philosopher1234 5y ago

>This is how we ended up with the current trendy cohort of minimalist apps with flat dark designs, with mobile apps that all look the same, with products that miss killer features for the sake of simplicity, with the annoying typefaces that all tech companies use that make it "trendy". i like all these things, and am glad this is the way the world is.

passivate 5y ago

In every functional department, there is some amount of this - UX folks want to update the design language, advertising needs a fresh campaign for the new version, devs want to move to some new framework, and/or rewrite etc. Everyone thinks their actions are well justified - except for the user who rarely benefits :)