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Craiglist has great usability, its just aesthetically bland. Usability is generally the most important part of 'UX' though the 'UX industry' skews towards the a

Craiglist has great usability, its just aesthetically bland. Usability is generally the most important part of 'UX' though the 'UX industry' skews towards the attractiveness side (particularly latest aesthetic trends) as their input is easier to see/quantify there. The other important side is marketing/branding and in some ways craigslist has built that brand around its 'basic' interface.

eyelidlessness 4y ago
None of my UX complaints are about attractiveness, there are several usability difficulties for me using CL. I hope it stays brutalist and ugly and plain forever. Most of my UX complaints are about ambiguous navigation and state, which are consistent with UX from a time when web programming had those problems almost universally.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  Thanks for elaborating - but to reinforce GP's point, usability and ergonomics is a huge problem on the modern web. Personally, I'm heavily positively biased to simple and old-school UIs because, despite all the things they got wrong (like the ones you mention), they hail from an era where people cared about ergonomics, or at least weren't purposefully trying to make it bad. Simple, "brutalist" design is thus a signal for me that the site is much more likely to not be actively user-hostile. Modern UI/UX zeitgeist is driven in large part by the web and mobile, which are driven by the "attention economy". The defining aspect of attention economy is that it makes money on friction. The longer it takes you to accomplish your goals, the more opportunities there is to display you ads, or upsell you something, or tire you out and make you more susceptible to be funneled to where the vendor wants you to be. The major design guidelines and UI frameworks are written and provided by advertising companies, and are focused on controlling the interaction, not empowering users. In this environment, ergonomics and good experience - meaning a tool that helps users achieve what they want as fast as possible, and gets out of the way otherwise - is actively discouraged.
danjac 4y ago
As with developers doing resume-driven development, designers need to build a strong portfolio to land their next gig. So aesthetics comes into building their own distinctive "brand" (as opposed to the brand of the client/company they are currently working for). That's not to say they won't justify their design in terms of what the client needs, it just pushes them away from using "boring" aesthetics - for example, pushing for a trendy-looking design for a backend admin dashboard that would have been just as usable (and cheaper) to build with a bog-standard Bootstrap theme. This isn't to blame designers, that's just the economic reality of the business.

eyelidlessness 4y ago

None of my UX complaints are about attractiveness, there are several usability difficulties for me using CL. I hope it stays brutalist and ugly and plain forever. Most of my UX complaints are about ambiguous navigation and state, which are consistent with UX from a time when web programming had those problems almost universally.

TeMPOraL 4y ago
Thanks for elaborating - but to reinforce GP's point, usability and ergonomics is a huge problem on the modern web. Personally, I'm heavily positively biased to simple and old-school UIs because, despite all the things they got wrong (like the ones you mention), they hail from an era where people cared about ergonomics, or at least weren't purposefully trying to make it bad. Simple, "brutalist" design is thus a signal for me that the site is much more likely to not be actively user-hostile. Modern UI/UX zeitgeist is driven in large part by the web and mobile, which are driven by the "attention economy". The defining aspect of attention economy is that it makes money on friction. The longer it takes you to accomplish your goals, the more opportunities there is to display you ads, or upsell you something, or tire you out and make you more susceptible to be funneled to where the vendor wants you to be. The major design guidelines and UI frameworks are written and provided by advertising companies, and are focused on controlling the interaction, not empowering users. In this environment, ergonomics and good experience - meaning a tool that helps users achieve what they want as fast as possible, and gets out of the way otherwise - is actively discouraged.

danjac 4y ago

As with developers doing resume-driven development, designers need to build a strong portfolio to land their next gig. So aesthetics comes into building their own distinctive "brand" (as opposed to the brand of the client/company they are currently working for). That's not to say they won't justify their design in terms of what the client needs, it just pushes them away from using "boring" aesthetics - for example, pushing for a trendy-looking design for a backend admin dashboard that would have been just as usable (and cheaper) to build with a bog-standard Bootstrap theme. This isn't to blame designers, that's just the economic reality of the business.