5 ms·

This. I was a UI/UX guy for about 5 years and worked for a company that pumped out thousands of sites a year. A bunch of their designs won awards and I saw the

This. I was a UI/UX guy for about 5 years and worked for a company that pumped out thousands of sites a year. A bunch of their designs won awards and I saw their model and thought I could do that, it seemed easy. The hitch was that I was going to design really cool sites, with all kinds of animations, huge text, have really cool navigation menus, etc. In short, I had a very romantic idea that I would dictate some incredible design to my clients. I thought I was like the Frank Lloyd Wright of design and whatever I showed people they would swoon and then go with whatever uber cool thing I showed them. Reality set in with my first client. Same thing, they didn't want cool shit, they just wanted their potential clients to find information about their work and contact them to hire them. After another 4-5 clients, I suddenly realized that web designers aren't some artist creating ultra cool, ultra rare stuff that your clients must absolutely have like a Banksy piece, they have more fundamental problems they're trying to solve and want you to solve them for them. I got my ego checked in a hurry, but it was a good lesson to learn. You're not selling art, you're selling a solution to their problems.

ozim 2y ago
It is not only that. For example wannabe EDM DJs think they have to be creative and find tracks that no one ever heard to be edgy or whatever… most of people pay for having cookie cutter songs played so they can dance and have a good experience and they don’t want to be surprised on EDM event - well there are big names that can do whatever they want of course but that is different expectation. The same with software devs that they think, it must be “framework like code, extensible, reusable that will be there for 20 years” - well no if it is crud app most likely it will be trashed in 2 years stop overthinking and just do it :)
- caseyohara 2y ago
  Wow, this couldn't be further from the truth. It might be true for DJs playing "main stage" style EDM (poppy mainstream music) but for most electronic subgenres – especially techno – the crowd absolutely expects the DJ to be a superb crate digger and pull out new and deep tracks they've never heard before. No one goes to a techno club to hear rinsed tracks; they want the DJ to show them music they've never heard before. Before the digital age, people would go out to see touring DJs specifically for their collection of rare records that no one else had and you couldn't hear anywhere else. This is still true today in the more underground scenes. It's the opposite of cookie cutter.
  - carlmr 2y ago
    It's like the perfect conterexample, a good DJ needs to have really good taste and constantly listen to new tracks and think about where they can be used. Designers everyone thinks are more creative than they are. DJs most people think are less creative than they need to be.
    - brailsafe 2y ago
      Sounds to me like they work out to be the same in this respect, only differing in perception. Both are solving problems with approximately similar levels of caching ideas and techniques and experience, while developing proficiency with similar quantities of tools. They're both generally making their money solving problems with all of that, only occasionally getting a chance to express themselves in some unusual artistic way that most likely won't be a viable income stream until they've really made a name for themselves; save for the rare circumstance they are Aphex Twin
  - jrflowers 2y ago
    Most DJs do not make their livings at techno clubs. The majority are hired to play bars and events that do not cater to particularly discerning audiences.
    - phpnode 2y ago
      Exactly. The DJs that are innovative, crate digging, slightly pretentious music nerds are almost exclusively hobbyists, with a vanishingly tiny percentage of them being able to eek out a meagre living from it. The majority of full time DJs cater to mainstream audiences who absolutely do want to hear the same 50 - 100 tracks on rotation every time they go out. They want to dance and sing along to music that they're familiar with, and if the DJ doesn't play what they know then they won't dance, they won't stay, and the DJ won't remain employed. It's actually very similar to web design - innovation has its place, but 99% of the time people want familiarity. Source: spent a decade as a professional DJ
      - 2y ago
- maeil 2y ago
  I'm not sure how to phrase this in a way that complies with the spirit of HN (open to suggestions!) but that's a pretty American take on electronic music. It's not necessiraly wrong, but it holds just as much for any other genre of music and the choice of "EDM" to make the point is pretty typical.
  - morbicer 2y ago
    I am with you, let's get bashed as Euro-snobs. I listen to electronic music for 25+ years, different genres and I never grokked what exactly is EDM. To me it's a vague hodgepodge of mainstream pruduction spanning anything from Guetta to Skrillex. People around me who like electronic music refer to it as techno, house, dnb, psytrance, hardcore, what have you. There are crossovers and there are multi-genre festivals. But no one says "I am going to an EDM event tonight" There's expectation that you will hear some classic hits but people expect to hear something new as well. Edit: Wikipedia actually shines a light on the resurfacing of EDM "brand" in USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music#Terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music#Termino...
    - britzkopf 2y ago
      That actually points to the problem I have with it. I don't think many jazz lovers would balk at reference to a performance as a "jazz performance" without a specification of which one of its subvariants (which by the way are far less numerous than EDM - compare here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jazz_genres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jazz_genres, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_music_genres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_music_genre...). But in my experience, electronic music fans quite often feel compelled to endlessly nitpick over which subgenre some (almost always) 4/4, uptempo, 4 minute track belongs to.
      - maeil 2y ago
        It could be that I'm just not trained enough on other genres, but I'd argue that the differences are generally bigger, and the genres being much more numerous makes perfect sense. Because "Electronic [Dance] Music" just means that electronic instruments were used more prominently than any acoustic instruments. That says extremely little about the music. Whereas Jazz means something very specific. To name three "Electronic Music" genres, if you compare Hardstyle vs UK Dubstep vs Tropical House, I'd say the difference is much bigger between any pair than "Nu Jazz" vs "New Orleans Jazz". You can conveniently grow an opinion on this here: https://everynoise.com/ https://everynoise.com/ There are genres of electronic music that are like metal (very uptempo, in-your-face, maximalist) and ones that are like jazz (smooth, free-flowing, open, not maximalist). Both being very common and huge subgenres. But where's the jazz that sounds like metal or the metal that sounds like jazz? They might exist, but would be incredibly niche. Besides, people nitpicking over subgenres exists in many genres. Metal (or really "Music featuring heavy electric guitars") is famous for it. But in both it's only a small minority of people who spends their time doing this, mostly teens or people online, very rarely people actually visiting and enjoying shows. "Jazz" should be compared to "Techno". And people definitely go to "Techno" festivals, even though you can further divide it into "Hard techno", "Industrial techno" and so on.
- britzkopf 2y ago
  Whoa there. I've not done the polling but I suspect most EDM consumers think of themselves as music lovers the same way other people like jazz etc. I tend more to agree with your assessment that the vast majority of it is not in the same category as "real" music but I don't think attendees of a rave would go along with that.
DigiEggz 2y ago
Do you have any examples of some "cool" sites that you designed, even prototypes? You piqued my interest.
- burningChrome 2y ago
  When parallax scrolling was cool and different, I designed an architecture site for a local architect using the effect. It was very similar to this site where you had jarring transitions, background changes and images moving at different speeds. https://doubble.group/sg/ https://doubble.group/sg/ The end result was very similar to site above and we all got a lot of positive feedback when their current clients saw it because they were blown away. While I was busy separating my shoulder patting myself on the back - we realized a few months in, the engagement was horrendous. The leads from their contact form dried up to almost nothing. Analytics showed an insane drop off from the home page. None of the internal pages were getting any traffic. We quickly realized that nobody could find any content on the site, they couldn't get to the contact page very easily, the content was hard to find and or read because of the motion and animation that constantly took your focus off of what you, as a user, were trying to do. We had up for four months before having to pull it and put up their old site, then re-design another simple, more refined site that would work better for their users. It was a great lesson to learn about solving problems or trying to create something cool that nobody could use. We also designed a site for a local event to support a women's shelter and used parallax again to tell a story of how women are shuffled through a system that does little to protect them from their ex-husbands or violent abusers. It used the same techniques in this, where you had both horizontal and vertical scrolling in both directions to show a timeline and story with illustrations and infographics. https://collagestudio.ca/en https://collagestudio.ca/en This also got a ton of good feedback and we had a few other non-profits approach us to do something similar for them and we did a few more using the same template we had, but switching some elements to make it original for each client. This worked out much better because if people were able to digest the story and the points you were trying to make, it had a better impact than new clients trying to find specific content and the contact page. Hope that helps!
  - carlmr 2y ago
chefandy 2y ago
> The hitch was that I was going to design really cool sites, with all kinds of animations, huge text, have really cool navigation menus, etc. In short, I had a very romantic idea that I would dictate some incredible design to my clients. I thought I was like the Frank Lloyd Wright of design and whatever I showed people they would swoon and then go with whatever uber cool thing I showed them. hmmm... That approach is anathema to every other UI designer or UX person I encountered in that field. The core of UI design is 100% about clarity-- letting the user focus on exactly what they need to solve their problem. The core guiding principle of UX work is designing based on empirical research, and then iterating based on user testing... even if it doesn't work out like that in practice, it's still laser-focused on helping the user achieve what they need. Did you transfer into the field from a non-web-design background? The people I've seen approach web design with the intent of making some sexy website that's flashy for its own sake were a) front-end developers that thought the technical know-how was the hard part, b) branding and identity designers, or maybe print designers that never had to consider designs that people actually had to do stuff with, and c) small-org IT people that were sick of IT and were charged with maintaining the organization's website so they figured it would be an easy switch.
- bluGill 2y ago
  UI and UX designers had their heyday in the 1990s. Every UI I see today shows that UX designers were not invited to have input.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    >UI and UX designers had their heyday in the 1990s. But also back then, anyone could and did call themselves a UI/UX developer because it was trendy to do so and paid well. Most weren't actually good at it.
  - chefandy 2y ago
    That's weird because the dozens of UI designers and also UX designers and researchers (UI design and UX Design are not the same thing) I know are employed doing exactly what they were trained to do. If you think UX was at an apex in the 90s, you haven't actually looked.
f1shy 2y ago
In UI you want to be anything but original. It should be as “the same” as possible.

ozim 2y ago

It is not only that. For example wannabe EDM DJs think they have to be creative and find tracks that no one ever heard to be edgy or whatever… most of people pay for having cookie cutter songs played so they can dance and have a good experience and they don’t want to be surprised on EDM event - well there are big names that can do whatever they want of course but that is different expectation. The same with software devs that they think, it must be “framework like code, extensible, reusable that will be there for 20 years” - well no if it is crud app most likely it will be trashed in 2 years stop overthinking and just do it :)

caseyohara 2y ago
Wow, this couldn't be further from the truth. It might be true for DJs playing "main stage" style EDM (poppy mainstream music) but for most electronic subgenres – especially techno – the crowd absolutely expects the DJ to be a superb crate digger and pull out new and deep tracks they've never heard before. No one goes to a techno club to hear rinsed tracks; they want the DJ to show them music they've never heard before. Before the digital age, people would go out to see touring DJs specifically for their collection of rare records that no one else had and you couldn't hear anywhere else. This is still true today in the more underground scenes. It's the opposite of cookie cutter.
- carlmr 2y ago
  It's like the perfect conterexample, a good DJ needs to have really good taste and constantly listen to new tracks and think about where they can be used. Designers everyone thinks are more creative than they are. DJs most people think are less creative than they need to be.
  - brailsafe 2y ago
    Sounds to me like they work out to be the same in this respect, only differing in perception. Both are solving problems with approximately similar levels of caching ideas and techniques and experience, while developing proficiency with similar quantities of tools. They're both generally making their money solving problems with all of that, only occasionally getting a chance to express themselves in some unusual artistic way that most likely won't be a viable income stream until they've really made a name for themselves; save for the rare circumstance they are Aphex Twin
- jrflowers 2y ago
  Most DJs do not make their livings at techno clubs. The majority are hired to play bars and events that do not cater to particularly discerning audiences.
  - phpnode 2y ago
    Exactly. The DJs that are innovative, crate digging, slightly pretentious music nerds are almost exclusively hobbyists, with a vanishingly tiny percentage of them being able to eek out a meagre living from it. The majority of full time DJs cater to mainstream audiences who absolutely do want to hear the same 50 - 100 tracks on rotation every time they go out. They want to dance and sing along to music that they're familiar with, and if the DJ doesn't play what they know then they won't dance, they won't stay, and the DJ won't remain employed. It's actually very similar to web design - innovation has its place, but 99% of the time people want familiarity. Source: spent a decade as a professional DJ
    - 2y ago
maeil 2y ago
I'm not sure how to phrase this in a way that complies with the spirit of HN (open to suggestions!) but that's a pretty American take on electronic music. It's not necessiraly wrong, but it holds just as much for any other genre of music and the choice of "EDM" to make the point is pretty typical.
- morbicer 2y ago
  I am with you, let's get bashed as Euro-snobs. I listen to electronic music for 25+ years, different genres and I never grokked what exactly is EDM. To me it's a vague hodgepodge of mainstream pruduction spanning anything from Guetta to Skrillex. People around me who like electronic music refer to it as techno, house, dnb, psytrance, hardcore, what have you. There are crossovers and there are multi-genre festivals. But no one says "I am going to an EDM event tonight" There's expectation that you will hear some classic hits but people expect to hear something new as well. Edit: Wikipedia actually shines a light on the resurfacing of EDM "brand" in USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music#Terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music#Termino...
  - britzkopf 2y ago
    That actually points to the problem I have with it. I don't think many jazz lovers would balk at reference to a performance as a "jazz performance" without a specification of which one of its subvariants (which by the way are far less numerous than EDM - compare here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jazz_genres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_jazz_genres, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_music_genres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electronic_music_genre...). But in my experience, electronic music fans quite often feel compelled to endlessly nitpick over which subgenre some (almost always) 4/4, uptempo, 4 minute track belongs to.
    - maeil 2y ago
      It could be that I'm just not trained enough on other genres, but I'd argue that the differences are generally bigger, and the genres being much more numerous makes perfect sense. Because "Electronic [Dance] Music" just means that electronic instruments were used more prominently than any acoustic instruments. That says extremely little about the music. Whereas Jazz means something very specific. To name three "Electronic Music" genres, if you compare Hardstyle vs UK Dubstep vs Tropical House, I'd say the difference is much bigger between any pair than "Nu Jazz" vs "New Orleans Jazz". You can conveniently grow an opinion on this here: https://everynoise.com/ https://everynoise.com/ There are genres of electronic music that are like metal (very uptempo, in-your-face, maximalist) and ones that are like jazz (smooth, free-flowing, open, not maximalist). Both being very common and huge subgenres. But where's the jazz that sounds like metal or the metal that sounds like jazz? They might exist, but would be incredibly niche. Besides, people nitpicking over subgenres exists in many genres. Metal (or really "Music featuring heavy electric guitars") is famous for it. But in both it's only a small minority of people who spends their time doing this, mostly teens or people online, very rarely people actually visiting and enjoying shows. "Jazz" should be compared to "Techno". And people definitely go to "Techno" festivals, even though you can further divide it into "Hard techno", "Industrial techno" and so on.
britzkopf 2y ago
Whoa there. I've not done the polling but I suspect most EDM consumers think of themselves as music lovers the same way other people like jazz etc. I tend more to agree with your assessment that the vast majority of it is not in the same category as "real" music but I don't think attendees of a rave would go along with that.

DigiEggz 2y ago

Do you have any examples of some "cool" sites that you designed, even prototypes? You piqued my interest.

burningChrome 2y ago
When parallax scrolling was cool and different, I designed an architecture site for a local architect using the effect. It was very similar to this site where you had jarring transitions, background changes and images moving at different speeds. https://doubble.group/sg/ https://doubble.group/sg/ The end result was very similar to site above and we all got a lot of positive feedback when their current clients saw it because they were blown away. While I was busy separating my shoulder patting myself on the back - we realized a few months in, the engagement was horrendous. The leads from their contact form dried up to almost nothing. Analytics showed an insane drop off from the home page. None of the internal pages were getting any traffic. We quickly realized that nobody could find any content on the site, they couldn't get to the contact page very easily, the content was hard to find and or read because of the motion and animation that constantly took your focus off of what you, as a user, were trying to do. We had up for four months before having to pull it and put up their old site, then re-design another simple, more refined site that would work better for their users. It was a great lesson to learn about solving problems or trying to create something cool that nobody could use. We also designed a site for a local event to support a women's shelter and used parallax again to tell a story of how women are shuffled through a system that does little to protect them from their ex-husbands or violent abusers. It used the same techniques in this, where you had both horizontal and vertical scrolling in both directions to show a timeline and story with illustrations and infographics. https://collagestudio.ca/en https://collagestudio.ca/en This also got a ton of good feedback and we had a few other non-profits approach us to do something similar for them and we did a few more using the same template we had, but switching some elements to make it original for each client. This worked out much better because if people were able to digest the story and the points you were trying to make, it had a better impact than new clients trying to find specific content and the contact page. Hope that helps!
- carlmr 2y ago

chefandy 2y ago

> The hitch was that I was going to design really cool sites, with all kinds of animations, huge text, have really cool navigation menus, etc. In short, I had a very romantic idea that I would dictate some incredible design to my clients. I thought I was like the Frank Lloyd Wright of design and whatever I showed people they would swoon and then go with whatever uber cool thing I showed them. hmmm... That approach is anathema to every other UI designer or UX person I encountered in that field. The core of UI design is 100% about clarity-- letting the user focus on exactly what they need to solve their problem. The core guiding principle of UX work is designing based on empirical research, and then iterating based on user testing... even if it doesn't work out like that in practice, it's still laser-focused on helping the user achieve what they need. Did you transfer into the field from a non-web-design background? The people I've seen approach web design with the intent of making some sexy website that's flashy for its own sake were a) front-end developers that thought the technical know-how was the hard part, b) branding and identity designers, or maybe print designers that never had to consider designs that people actually had to do stuff with, and c) small-org IT people that were sick of IT and were charged with maintaining the organization's website so they figured it would be an easy switch.

bluGill 2y ago
UI and UX designers had their heyday in the 1990s. Every UI I see today shows that UX designers were not invited to have input.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >UI and UX designers had their heyday in the 1990s. But also back then, anyone could and did call themselves a UI/UX developer because it was trendy to do so and paid well. Most weren't actually good at it.
- chefandy 2y ago
  That's weird because the dozens of UI designers and also UX designers and researchers (UI design and UX Design are not the same thing) I know are employed doing exactly what they were trained to do. If you think UX was at an apex in the 90s, you haven't actually looked.

f1shy 2y ago

In UI you want to be anything but original. It should be as “the same” as possible.