4 ms·

This is a fluff piece aimed entirely at nontechnical readers. "Beautiful", "intuitive", "dynamic", "personalizable", and so on are exactly the words this audien

This is a fluff piece aimed entirely at nontechnical readers. "Beautiful", "intuitive", "dynamic", "personalizable", and so on are exactly the words this audience wants to hear. They wouldn't understand anything more jargon-y and don't care how the site was built, they just want to know how they're going to feel while using it.

jrockway 14y ago
How can someone tell me what I will find beautiful or intuitive? It's buzzwords, not a meaningful reflection on the changes. People that aren't professional writers think that stringing positive-sounding words together in a way that is grammatically correct will result in a good sentence. The result is corporate speak. "The synergy of the positive verbiage results in a dynamic reading experience." No, it makes me want to hit my head on the desk until my eyes get too watery to read the text anymore. Or post an angry comment on HN. One of those.
- obstacle1 14y ago
  >How can someone tell me what I will find beautiful or intuitive? Nobody can. But when a press release says a product is beautiful and intuitive, it at least invites you to go use the product and judge for yourself. >It's buzzwords, not a meaningful reflection on the changes. Beautiful, fresh, and intuitive aren't buzzwords in the same sense that synergistic, disruptive, etc. are. Beauty, freshness, and intuition are ancient aesthetic concepts that speak to instincts in, dare I say, all humans. When I hear that something is beautiful, that is an invitation for me to go judge said thing's beauty. As such, I'd argue that describing a new product as beautiful, intuitive, or something similar is an equally meaningful description as listing technical specs driving a change. >People that aren't professional writers think that stringing positive-sounding words together in a way that is grammatically correct will result in a good sentence. The result is corporate speak. As someone who has written copy professionally (and still sometimes does) I disagree with you on a number of levels. Strings of positive-sounding but effectively meaningless words absolutely are effective for selling and persuading. On the other hand strings of meaningful and unambiguous words often don't convert. Note that we don't sell consumer products by using instruction manuals as ads, and we don't drive massive traffic by describing the mechanics behind a site. Even Rails, a technical "product", advertises itself by claiming to facilitate the writing of "beautiful" code.
- taligent 14y ago
  > How can someone tell me what I will find beautiful or intuitive? Let's be honest here. Yahoo doesn't really care what you think. Clearly if you are someone who gets worked up because a company calls a new product, "beautiful" or "intuitive" then you really aren't their desired demographic. Especially since you know. You are a Google employee and all. The fact is that Yahoo is simply trying to make this launch sound exciting. Like companies have been doing for hundreds of years. And the language they are using is far less hyperbolic than most. > The result is corporate speak. Might want to check a dictionary because I don't think you understand what that term means.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    Let's be honest here. Yahoo doesn't really care what you think. I was under the impression that I was replying to an HN comment, not to Yahoo. I know they don't care what I think, nor do I expect them to care. I don't even think there's value in them caring what I think. The point of this particular HN thread was to analyze the language used in the article, and I added my thoughts to the thread for others to read. (I didn't even start the thread; someone else submitted the article and someone else pointed out the sentence in question.) Why are you following me around on HN and making everything into a personal attack, anyway? Disagree with the idea, not with the person. Might want to check a dictionary because I don't think you understand what that term means. If we're going by Wikipedia, it seems I meant to say "marketing speak", which is defined in the "Corporate jargon" article. I think the idea is clear: talk about what you did in objective terms, not whatever beautiful and dynamic words happen to be nearby while you're preparing a statement. (Wait, that was kind of fun. Maybe I'm wrong.)
    - Terretta 14y ago
      Generally I'd agree with you. And generally I think these releases are PR. But the sentence in question "feels" more sincere than that to me: She said it's "important that the page be dynamic, that it feel very fresh, and that it be very intuitive, and that it really tries to embody beautiful design". In context, I don't think the first word, "dynamic", means AJAX, I think it means conveying energy or excitement. Putting the "Yaa-hoo!!!" back in Yahoo, if you will. The hero images change out. The weather, stocks and scores are up to date. On the iPad, you have an edge to edge (full bleed) hero image and thumbs you can scroll to. On the iPad, it does "feel" dynamic without being annoying. The next word, "fresh", is the opposite of what Yahoo's been for a decade. The Yahoo look until not long ago still hearkened back to its curated directory days. When visited from an iPad, her new design does feel up to date, without feeling like it came from Bootstrap Template Monster Ville. You can recognize at a glance that this is not MSN, AOL, et. al. (However, when visited on a desktop, I think it feels more like a shuffled iGoogle, so not so fresh.) There is a risk in "intuitive" in that it's crucial for the Yahoo audience which is a little older and more change averse. In this case, the word needs to mean approachable and immediately grokked by their majority. Grandpa needs to be able to find his scores and grandma her horoscope. I suspect this word used here signals why this page isn't singing and dancing with undiscoverable swipe style affordances. The "beautiful design" is the hardest to accept, if visiting from the desktop. On the iPad, I was struck how nice it looked. On the desktop, I think she might be bringing too much Google to her aesthetic. "Clean" is not equal to "beautiful", and I'm not even sure it's clean given the use of grey hairlines and shaded boxes to delineate content areas. A more "beautiful" design might, for example, convey the content area boundaries aesthetically, and have the grey hairlines and shading show up only when the gear (settings) and X (close) icons are needed. With a decade of Google behind her, she probably does consider this presentation more "beautiful" than any of the section home pages you reach from this page. Word by word, I think she used the best words she had on hand for what she was directing her redesign team to come up with. I like that she talked about how it "felt" rather than just metrics. If you spitball a bunch of terms you want your home page to convey, this isn't a bad list. Perhaps these particular words sound overused because, well, a home page like Yahoo's needs these words as priorities. I didn't read her comment as insincere or corporate speak or even marketing speak. I think it's honestly what she was going for.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
bpatrianakos 14y ago
I wasn't looking for an explanation of how the site was built at all. I really think she could have came up with an explanation of the goals of the redesign that actually meant something. For example: "We wanted the site to feel fresh, intuitive, and beautiful which why we put a lot of work into the new real-time news feed, gave the homepage a simpler, less cluttered design, and took inspiration from designs that are both modern and timeless". What was really lacking in the original quote was substance. She could have used the very same first half the quote then pointed at one thing that qualified the redesign as being each of those adjectives and it would have went from buzzword soup to a meaningful statement.
- jlarocco 14y ago
  It's not her personal blog. For all we know, she went into detail about the whole thing and the reporter snipped it all. I'm not saying it happened here, but it does happen.
  - bpatrianakos 14y ago
    Okay, fair points. I had no idea my one little comment would get so much attention. I'm really not trying to be as critical of Mayer as everything seems to have taken it. I saw a quote, it stood out as being supremely hollow and so I pointed it out. I'm not the typical HN cynic that picks things apart where there's no need. I understand the context. I just thought that quote was funny enough to point out.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- obstacle1 14y ago
  You're right that the quote lacks substance but again, this is basically a press release aimed at Joe and Jill Schmoe. They do not care about all the work that went into the site; they only care about the experience of using the site. With this in mind, take your revised sentence: >"We wanted the site to feel fresh, intuitive, and beautiful which why we put a lot of work into the new real-time news feed, gave the homepage a simpler, less cluttered design, and took inspiration from designs that are both modern and timeless" And chop it up as such: >"We wanted the site to feel fresh, intuitive, and beautiful." Absolutely no relevant facts lost (given the audience) and a much clearer read. The shorter sentence is also more effective from a marketing perspective because it plants the seed of curiosity in the reader's mind. "How is the site fresh, intuitive, and beautiful? Better visit yahoo.com and find out".

jrockway 14y ago

How can someone tell me what I will find beautiful or intuitive? It's buzzwords, not a meaningful reflection on the changes. People that aren't professional writers think that stringing positive-sounding words together in a way that is grammatically correct will result in a good sentence. The result is corporate speak. "The synergy of the positive verbiage results in a dynamic reading experience." No, it makes me want to hit my head on the desk until my eyes get too watery to read the text anymore. Or post an angry comment on HN. One of those.

obstacle1 14y ago
>How can someone tell me what I will find beautiful or intuitive? Nobody can. But when a press release says a product is beautiful and intuitive, it at least invites you to go use the product and judge for yourself. >It's buzzwords, not a meaningful reflection on the changes. Beautiful, fresh, and intuitive aren't buzzwords in the same sense that synergistic, disruptive, etc. are. Beauty, freshness, and intuition are ancient aesthetic concepts that speak to instincts in, dare I say, all humans. When I hear that something is beautiful, that is an invitation for me to go judge said thing's beauty. As such, I'd argue that describing a new product as beautiful, intuitive, or something similar is an equally meaningful description as listing technical specs driving a change. >People that aren't professional writers think that stringing positive-sounding words together in a way that is grammatically correct will result in a good sentence. The result is corporate speak. As someone who has written copy professionally (and still sometimes does) I disagree with you on a number of levels. Strings of positive-sounding but effectively meaningless words absolutely are effective for selling and persuading. On the other hand strings of meaningful and unambiguous words often don't convert. Note that we don't sell consumer products by using instruction manuals as ads, and we don't drive massive traffic by describing the mechanics behind a site. Even Rails, a technical "product", advertises itself by claiming to facilitate the writing of "beautiful" code.
taligent 14y ago
> How can someone tell me what I will find beautiful or intuitive? Let's be honest here. Yahoo doesn't really care what you think. Clearly if you are someone who gets worked up because a company calls a new product, "beautiful" or "intuitive" then you really aren't their desired demographic. Especially since you know. You are a Google employee and all. The fact is that Yahoo is simply trying to make this launch sound exciting. Like companies have been doing for hundreds of years. And the language they are using is far less hyperbolic than most. > The result is corporate speak. Might want to check a dictionary because I don't think you understand what that term means.
- jrockway 14y ago
  Let's be honest here. Yahoo doesn't really care what you think. I was under the impression that I was replying to an HN comment, not to Yahoo. I know they don't care what I think, nor do I expect them to care. I don't even think there's value in them caring what I think. The point of this particular HN thread was to analyze the language used in the article, and I added my thoughts to the thread for others to read. (I didn't even start the thread; someone else submitted the article and someone else pointed out the sentence in question.) Why are you following me around on HN and making everything into a personal attack, anyway? Disagree with the idea, not with the person. Might want to check a dictionary because I don't think you understand what that term means. If we're going by Wikipedia, it seems I meant to say "marketing speak", which is defined in the "Corporate jargon" article. I think the idea is clear: talk about what you did in objective terms, not whatever beautiful and dynamic words happen to be nearby while you're preparing a statement. (Wait, that was kind of fun. Maybe I'm wrong.)
  - Terretta 14y ago
    Generally I'd agree with you. And generally I think these releases are PR. But the sentence in question "feels" more sincere than that to me: She said it's "important that the page be dynamic, that it feel very fresh, and that it be very intuitive, and that it really tries to embody beautiful design". In context, I don't think the first word, "dynamic", means AJAX, I think it means conveying energy or excitement. Putting the "Yaa-hoo!!!" back in Yahoo, if you will. The hero images change out. The weather, stocks and scores are up to date. On the iPad, you have an edge to edge (full bleed) hero image and thumbs you can scroll to. On the iPad, it does "feel" dynamic without being annoying. The next word, "fresh", is the opposite of what Yahoo's been for a decade. The Yahoo look until not long ago still hearkened back to its curated directory days. When visited from an iPad, her new design does feel up to date, without feeling like it came from Bootstrap Template Monster Ville. You can recognize at a glance that this is not MSN, AOL, et. al. (However, when visited on a desktop, I think it feels more like a shuffled iGoogle, so not so fresh.) There is a risk in "intuitive" in that it's crucial for the Yahoo audience which is a little older and more change averse. In this case, the word needs to mean approachable and immediately grokked by their majority. Grandpa needs to be able to find his scores and grandma her horoscope. I suspect this word used here signals why this page isn't singing and dancing with undiscoverable swipe style affordances. The "beautiful design" is the hardest to accept, if visiting from the desktop. On the iPad, I was struck how nice it looked. On the desktop, I think she might be bringing too much Google to her aesthetic. "Clean" is not equal to "beautiful", and I'm not even sure it's clean given the use of grey hairlines and shaded boxes to delineate content areas. A more "beautiful" design might, for example, convey the content area boundaries aesthetically, and have the grey hairlines and shading show up only when the gear (settings) and X (close) icons are needed. With a decade of Google behind her, she probably does consider this presentation more "beautiful" than any of the section home pages you reach from this page. Word by word, I think she used the best words she had on hand for what she was directing her redesign team to come up with. I like that she talked about how it "felt" rather than just metrics. If you spitball a bunch of terms you want your home page to convey, this isn't a bad list. Perhaps these particular words sound overused because, well, a home page like Yahoo's needs these words as priorities. I didn't read her comment as insincere or corporate speak or even marketing speak. I think it's honestly what she was going for.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

bpatrianakos 14y ago

I wasn't looking for an explanation of how the site was built at all. I really think she could have came up with an explanation of the goals of the redesign that actually meant something. For example: "We wanted the site to feel fresh, intuitive, and beautiful which why we put a lot of work into the new real-time news feed, gave the homepage a simpler, less cluttered design, and took inspiration from designs that are both modern and timeless". What was really lacking in the original quote was substance. She could have used the very same first half the quote then pointed at one thing that qualified the redesign as being each of those adjectives and it would have went from buzzword soup to a meaningful statement.

jlarocco 14y ago
It's not her personal blog. For all we know, she went into detail about the whole thing and the reporter snipped it all. I'm not saying it happened here, but it does happen.
- bpatrianakos 14y ago
  Okay, fair points. I had no idea my one little comment would get so much attention. I'm really not trying to be as critical of Mayer as everything seems to have taken it. I saw a quote, it stood out as being supremely hollow and so I pointed it out. I'm not the typical HN cynic that picks things apart where there's no need. I understand the context. I just thought that quote was funny enough to point out.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
obstacle1 14y ago
You're right that the quote lacks substance but again, this is basically a press release aimed at Joe and Jill Schmoe. They do not care about all the work that went into the site; they only care about the experience of using the site. With this in mind, take your revised sentence: >"We wanted the site to feel fresh, intuitive, and beautiful which why we put a lot of work into the new real-time news feed, gave the homepage a simpler, less cluttered design, and took inspiration from designs that are both modern and timeless" And chop it up as such: >"We wanted the site to feel fresh, intuitive, and beautiful." Absolutely no relevant facts lost (given the audience) and a much clearer read. The shorter sentence is also more effective from a marketing perspective because it plants the seed of curiosity in the reader's mind. "How is the site fresh, intuitive, and beautiful? Better visit yahoo.com and find out".