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Uber, Airbnb, Robinhood all took off because they created easy to use beautiful apps (compared to their predecessors). The anti-design bias in this forum is ge

Uber, Airbnb, Robinhood all took off because they created easy to use beautiful apps (compared to their predecessors). The anti-design bias in this forum is genuinely unhinged. I see some saying the entire destruction of the natural world stems from design lol.

progbits 9mo ago
No they took of because they used illegal practices and VC money to undercut competitors.
- ethbr1 9mo ago
  Bit of column A, bit of column B.
- oompydoompy74 9mo ago
  I think we can pretty safely assume that every large and successful company has done horrible and illegal things to get themselves there. That being said I think design and ease of use still play a significant part in Uber’s success.
  - kjellsbells 9mo ago
    Well, I didn't have Balzac on today's HN bingo card, for sure! "Behind every great fortune is an equally great crime." https://www.britannica.com/biography/Honore-de-Balzac/La-Comedie-humaine https://www.britannica.com/biography/Honore-de-Balzac/La-Com...
naikrovek 9mo ago
design for design's sake is bad, and that's what Liquid Glass is. There was no thought behind it. It is 2026 and UIs are still abysmally slow in many cases. How is that even remotely possible? Now, with that in mind, consider (just for a moment) why people might think that UX people don't know what they're doing.
- ethbr1 9mo ago
  > It is 2026 and UIs are still abysmally slow in many cases. How is that even remotely possible? Because UI/X teams were separated from engineering. (Same thing happened with modern building architecture) It's fundamentally impossible to optimize if you're unaware of physical constraints. We need to get rid of the "It's okay to be a UI/UX designer who doesn't code" cult. (Looking at you, Adobe and Figma...)
  - naikrovek 9mo ago
    Agreed. The further you are away from how a computer works internally, the worse your product for a computer will be. We have convinced ourselves as an industry that this is not true, but it is true.
  - kergonath 9mo ago
    > We need to get rid of the "It's okay to be a UI/UX designer who doesn't code" cult. I don’t think designers who don’t code are really a problem. They just need to dogfood, and be lead by someone who cares (and dogfoods as well).
    - makapuf 9mo ago
      In the case of Apple, I really doubt its designers don't dogfood. Do you expect them to have Android phones and linux desktops?
      - 0x457 9mo ago
        I have a strong feeling people working and approving Liquid Glass didn't dog food it in dark mode because it just looked BAD in the first builds available.
      - collingreen 9mo ago
        I sometimes wonder if anyone in charge at Apple uses Apple devices the way I do. I expect they have one, consistently-apple, high-end setup and it probably works very well for their style. Some things are great but others are insane and it seems like that happens most when using things like non-apple monitors or not typing a certain way on the phone or if you don't drive the same car. Switching windows between two non apple monitors after waking from sleep is wildly unpredictable and has insane ux like resizing itself after a drag. My carplay always starts something playing on my car speakers even when I wasn't listening to anything before connecting. It's so off it's comical. The iPhone alarm will go off like normal, loudly from the speaker, even if you're currently on the phone and have it up to your ear. This has been a problem since my very first iPhone. There has been a bug about plugged in physical headphones being unrecognized sometimes after waking from sleep even if it worked fine when going into sleep. I checked once in probably 2014 and Apples' official response was that it literally wasn't physically possible despite all of us people experiencing it. The bug was ancient even at that time and >ten years later my m4 macbook pro STILL DOES IT. Apple and apple fanboys seem to take the stance that these are all user error on my part (remember the "you just aren't a Mac person" era?). I bet some of these are configurable with settings deep in some menu somewhere so from a certain perspective that's right but also underscores my point about the limitations of myopic dogfooding. As a fun aside, the ux for turning on the "Voice Over" tutorial is the worse thing I've ever experienced on an Apple device. I was laughing out loud trying to figure out how to get out of it instead of finishing the unknown remaining steps. I feel bad for folks who need that accessibility in order to be effective.
dec0dedab0de 9mo ago
None of those companies had predecessors.
airstrike 9mo ago
That statement is just 100% demonstrably false. I don't think anyone seriously believes Uber, Airbnb and Robinhood won because of "beautiful apps".
- BurningFrog 9mo ago
  Beauty has real value, but usability is far more important. Unfortunately, most of the SW industry isn't even aware of the difference: For beauty you hire a graphic designer For usability you hire a PhD in cognitive psychology
- 0x457 9mo ago
  "Beautiful" maybe, not "good UX" for sure. Prior to Uber, calling a cab using the phone app was...suboptimal and easier to actually call a taxi company. They also provided much better services, which is what make them stick around. RH made a lot of investment tool accessible to people that "I just want to buy stock of some company", I used tasty trades for a while, but their mobile app while has all functionality, but realistically you will just look to overview portfolio.
  - airstrike 9mo ago
    The point still stands. The improvement in "usability" in those three cases did not come from app UI/UX.
    - 0x457 9mo ago
      It came from adjusting IRL to work with better UI/UX rather than adjust UI/UX to work with existing business processes.
random3 9mo ago
This. Every time Apple made Ui changes, I’ve seen negative reactions. People react negatively to change, not to good or bad necessarily. I’ve been using the ne UI since it was in the developer beta, and can’t really tell a practical difference.
eschaton 9mo ago
There’s a huge difference between anti-design bias and calling out Liquid Glass for the garbage human interface design that it is. If anything, it demonstrates a substantial *pro-design* bias because it shows that people actually care about design more than any “party line” here.
avidiax 9mo ago
I worked at Uber. The UX designers were pretty obsessed with the iPhone app, making sure it was pixel perfect and the little cars in the city view moved smoothly and every transition was crisp and so on. The vast majority of new users at the time were on the comparatively ugly Android app. Things got pretty bad. More than 95% of all employees (and I'm guessing 99% of designers) were using iPhones at the time. There would be rough edges all over the Android app, but as one of our designers said "people with taste don't use Android". Imagine knowing that most of your new users were getting a subpar experience, and that not being enough motivation to expense a flagship Android and drive it daily. But the new users kept coming, and despite mostly being Android users, they still used the product. Turns out that legacy taxis are themselves an ugly interface, and ugliness is relative.
- nish__ 9mo ago
  > people with taste don't use Android Probably true at the time.
  - stefanfisk 9mo ago
    I remember excitedly switching to a Nexus 5X and then going back to my old iPhone a few months later because every app felt like a bad port of the ”original” iPhone app.
- shuntress 9mo ago
  Using the term "Legacy Taxi" to imply that a taxi you don't summon by phone is somehow out-dated is wild. I understand the reason you would use it, especially at a company like Uber, but it still seems hilariously delusional.
  - llbbdd 9mo ago
    I've never worked for Uber and I see the old model as a barbaric non-starter, why on earth would I want to flag a car down instead
    - 9mo ago
cmiles74 9mo ago
It's difficult for me to believe that you might be arguing all of the icons in the drop-down menus are beautiful... I know I have found them distracting. In my opinion, this article had very clear and direct criticisms; they were hardly "anti-design bias". The increase in visual clutter is, for sure, a net loss for MacOS Tahoe.
trinix912 9mo ago
Design is not just pretty visuals but also solving problems. The design of Tahoe doesn't solve any problems the previous designs didn't but it solves many of the previous problems worse than the designs before.
koyote 9mo ago
Uber very much falls into the category of "useful despite the awful app" for me. It's slow, bloated, buggy and ugly. Probably one of the worst apps running on my phone.
- Nextgrid 9mo ago
  Nowadays yes, since they need to justify the jobs of hundreds of Javascript developers. But there was a time when their app was native and was actually quite good.

progbits 9mo ago

No they took of because they used illegal practices and VC money to undercut competitors.

ethbr1 9mo ago
Bit of column A, bit of column B.
oompydoompy74 9mo ago
I think we can pretty safely assume that every large and successful company has done horrible and illegal things to get themselves there. That being said I think design and ease of use still play a significant part in Uber’s success.
- kjellsbells 9mo ago
  Well, I didn't have Balzac on today's HN bingo card, for sure! "Behind every great fortune is an equally great crime." https://www.britannica.com/biography/Honore-de-Balzac/La-Comedie-humaine https://www.britannica.com/biography/Honore-de-Balzac/La-Com...

naikrovek 9mo ago

design for design's sake is bad, and that's what Liquid Glass is. There was no thought behind it. It is 2026 and UIs are still abysmally slow in many cases. How is that even remotely possible? Now, with that in mind, consider (just for a moment) why people might think that UX people don't know what they're doing.

ethbr1 9mo ago
> It is 2026 and UIs are still abysmally slow in many cases. How is that even remotely possible? Because UI/X teams were separated from engineering. (Same thing happened with modern building architecture) It's fundamentally impossible to optimize if you're unaware of physical constraints. We need to get rid of the "It's okay to be a UI/UX designer who doesn't code" cult. (Looking at you, Adobe and Figma...)
- naikrovek 9mo ago
  Agreed. The further you are away from how a computer works internally, the worse your product for a computer will be. We have convinced ourselves as an industry that this is not true, but it is true.
- kergonath 9mo ago
  > We need to get rid of the "It's okay to be a UI/UX designer who doesn't code" cult. I don’t think designers who don’t code are really a problem. They just need to dogfood, and be lead by someone who cares (and dogfoods as well).
  - makapuf 9mo ago
    In the case of Apple, I really doubt its designers don't dogfood. Do you expect them to have Android phones and linux desktops?
    - 0x457 9mo ago
      I have a strong feeling people working and approving Liquid Glass didn't dog food it in dark mode because it just looked BAD in the first builds available.
    - collingreen 9mo ago
      I sometimes wonder if anyone in charge at Apple uses Apple devices the way I do. I expect they have one, consistently-apple, high-end setup and it probably works very well for their style. Some things are great but others are insane and it seems like that happens most when using things like non-apple monitors or not typing a certain way on the phone or if you don't drive the same car. Switching windows between two non apple monitors after waking from sleep is wildly unpredictable and has insane ux like resizing itself after a drag. My carplay always starts something playing on my car speakers even when I wasn't listening to anything before connecting. It's so off it's comical. The iPhone alarm will go off like normal, loudly from the speaker, even if you're currently on the phone and have it up to your ear. This has been a problem since my very first iPhone. There has been a bug about plugged in physical headphones being unrecognized sometimes after waking from sleep even if it worked fine when going into sleep. I checked once in probably 2014 and Apples' official response was that it literally wasn't physically possible despite all of us people experiencing it. The bug was ancient even at that time and >ten years later my m4 macbook pro STILL DOES IT. Apple and apple fanboys seem to take the stance that these are all user error on my part (remember the "you just aren't a Mac person" era?). I bet some of these are configurable with settings deep in some menu somewhere so from a certain perspective that's right but also underscores my point about the limitations of myopic dogfooding. As a fun aside, the ux for turning on the "Voice Over" tutorial is the worse thing I've ever experienced on an Apple device. I was laughing out loud trying to figure out how to get out of it instead of finishing the unknown remaining steps. I feel bad for folks who need that accessibility in order to be effective.

dec0dedab0de 9mo ago

None of those companies had predecessors.

airstrike 9mo ago

That statement is just 100% demonstrably false. I don't think anyone seriously believes Uber, Airbnb and Robinhood won because of "beautiful apps".

BurningFrog 9mo ago
Beauty has real value, but usability is far more important. Unfortunately, most of the SW industry isn't even aware of the difference: For beauty you hire a graphic designer For usability you hire a PhD in cognitive psychology
0x457 9mo ago
"Beautiful" maybe, not "good UX" for sure. Prior to Uber, calling a cab using the phone app was...suboptimal and easier to actually call a taxi company. They also provided much better services, which is what make them stick around. RH made a lot of investment tool accessible to people that "I just want to buy stock of some company", I used tasty trades for a while, but their mobile app while has all functionality, but realistically you will just look to overview portfolio.
- airstrike 9mo ago
  The point still stands. The improvement in "usability" in those three cases did not come from app UI/UX.
  - 0x457 9mo ago
    It came from adjusting IRL to work with better UI/UX rather than adjust UI/UX to work with existing business processes.

random3 9mo ago

This. Every time Apple made Ui changes, I’ve seen negative reactions. People react negatively to change, not to good or bad necessarily. I’ve been using the ne UI since it was in the developer beta, and can’t really tell a practical difference.

eschaton 9mo ago

There’s a huge difference between anti-design bias and calling out Liquid Glass for the garbage human interface design that it is. If anything, it demonstrates a substantial *pro-design* bias because it shows that people actually care about design more than any “party line” here.

avidiax 9mo ago

I worked at Uber. The UX designers were pretty obsessed with the iPhone app, making sure it was pixel perfect and the little cars in the city view moved smoothly and every transition was crisp and so on. The vast majority of new users at the time were on the comparatively ugly Android app. Things got pretty bad. More than 95% of all employees (and I'm guessing 99% of designers) were using iPhones at the time. There would be rough edges all over the Android app, but as one of our designers said "people with taste don't use Android". Imagine knowing that most of your new users were getting a subpar experience, and that not being enough motivation to expense a flagship Android and drive it daily. But the new users kept coming, and despite mostly being Android users, they still used the product. Turns out that legacy taxis are themselves an ugly interface, and ugliness is relative.

nish__ 9mo ago
> people with taste don't use Android Probably true at the time.
- stefanfisk 9mo ago
  I remember excitedly switching to a Nexus 5X and then going back to my old iPhone a few months later because every app felt like a bad port of the ”original” iPhone app.
shuntress 9mo ago
Using the term "Legacy Taxi" to imply that a taxi you don't summon by phone is somehow out-dated is wild. I understand the reason you would use it, especially at a company like Uber, but it still seems hilariously delusional.
- llbbdd 9mo ago
  I've never worked for Uber and I see the old model as a barbaric non-starter, why on earth would I want to flag a car down instead
  - 9mo ago

cmiles74 9mo ago

It's difficult for me to believe that you might be arguing all of the icons in the drop-down menus are beautiful... I know I have found them distracting. In my opinion, this article had very clear and direct criticisms; they were hardly "anti-design bias". The increase in visual clutter is, for sure, a net loss for MacOS Tahoe.

trinix912 9mo ago

Design is not just pretty visuals but also solving problems. The design of Tahoe doesn't solve any problems the previous designs didn't but it solves many of the previous problems worse than the designs before.

koyote 9mo ago

Uber very much falls into the category of "useful despite the awful app" for me. It's slow, bloated, buggy and ugly. Probably one of the worst apps running on my phone.

Nextgrid 9mo ago
Nowadays yes, since they need to justify the jobs of hundreds of Javascript developers. But there was a time when their app was native and was actually quite good.