7 ms·

There is a major thing going on here that is not mentioned in the article: One department doesn't deliver a website. Is that "Terms of Service" modal there bec

There is a major thing going on here that is not mentioned in the article: One department doesn't deliver a website. Is that "Terms of Service" modal there because a front-end dev thought "interrupting the user experience is a great idea!" No, it's there because of legal. And all those social sharing widgets? They are there because of marketing. And the 5 different ad exchanges? They are there from Sales/BizDev. And that 400KB of JS crap? That's Optimizely and their crappy A/B testing library that the dev team put it. And that hero image that's actually 1600px wide and then resized in CSS to 400px? It's there because that was the source image from the external agency and no one thought to modify it. The biggest challenge with modern web sites/apps is that they are largely built by committee. Often its not literally built by a committee, but I mean that while multiple departments are all involved and all get to add to the site, but no one is really responsible for the final, overall user experience of the site. And even if there is a "user experience" or "performance" team, they rarely have the power to change things. A customer of ours is a Alexa top 100 B2C company that provides a market place for buyers and sellers. They get commissions from sales, but a large part of revenue is ads. The "performance team" makes no head way against any of the terrible performance problems with ads because the ads team is judged based on the ads/conversions, not on performance of the page. Even when the ads are hurting the conversion rates of the sales/commissions, the ads team doesn't care. It's total deadlock of departments saying "performance and user experience is not my responsibility, I only do X".

ommunist 11y ago
that is exactly my point. And even when you have a single professional webdev/design team, you have no power over legal restrictions (EU cookie widget) or contractual obligations boss signed (ads must appear next morning). Real world just goes forward. Users have more power with adblockers over their UX than UX designer.
- eterm 11y ago
  One way you can avoid the need for an EU cookie widget is by not setting unneccessary cookies.
  - ommunist 11y ago
    In many cases to determine its necessity you set a cookie. Seriously, can you name a mainstream news site in Britain that does not set a cookie?
    - mrec 11y ago
      No, but I can name lots that shouldn't. If I'm not logged in, there's no good reason for a news site to set a cookie.
    - bwindels 11y ago
      Most uses of cookies that are not tracking are exempt from the cookie law and don't need consent: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm#section_2 http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm#se...
sanderjd 11y ago
It seems like there are two separate kinds of cruft: stuff that is distracting and gets in the way (social buttons, privacy policy modal, big nav-bar with temperature, ads, etc.), and stuff that happens in the background and doesn't get in the way, but makes things slow (multiple ad network embeds, optimizely, analytics scripts, etc.). While I agree that the first category has a lot to do with organization structure and incentives, the second category seems like it may be a good business opportunity for a new generation of "low-cruft" solutions to the same problems. For instance, I was kind of astounded that optimizely only has a crufty javascript solution, rather than a (probably far more complex) less crufty pure server-side solution, and I spent awhile looking around for such a thing, but found nothing much. Or something that puts all the tracking and analytics that different departments want to do behind a single optimized script (maybe segment.io already does this?). tl;dr; The problem that lots of different people that contribute to a website are vying for the user's attention in different ways doesn't seem to have a technical solution, but the problem that we're making too many third-party requests that respond with too much data and/or run too much javascript seems like one that could be solved if tools focused on it.
- Touche 11y ago
  I would say the biggest problem with pages like this is that it "jumps" around as content is loaded. The fact that ads are lazy loaded is not bad (probably good actually!). This is easily fixed by simply having the container set to exact width/height so that it doesn't mess with the rest of the page when it loads. CNN also has a sidebar that pops in with other stories. Don't do that. Render it on the server. Just a couple of fixes like this and the page would be fine, even if some extra stuff takes a while to load. They key from the user perspective is that the article should immediately be readable when the page loads.
  - pcwalton 11y ago
    The fact that ads are lazy-loaded can be a big performance problem if it's implemented with a method that causes browsers to turn off async pan/zoom. Especially sad is when images are loaded this way, because most browsers will load images on scroll automatically, so this technique of "lazy loading" ads for "performance" actually cripples scrolling performance with no benefit.
nickbauman 11y ago
Conway's Law writ as Web Cruft.
higherpurpose 11y ago
> And that hero image that's actually 1600px wide and then resized in CSS to 400px? It's there because that was the source image from the external agency and no one thought to modify it. And because of retina iPads and Macbooks.
- Spivak 11y ago
  True, but they could be doing better by serving the appropriate image size depending on the client.
  - napoleond 11y ago
    Much easier said than done, sadly.
    - Uehreka 11y ago
      Not that hard. Want to make it a background image? @media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2), only screen and (min-resolution: 192dpi), only screen and (min-resolution: 2dppx) { background-image: url(image@2x.png); } Do you consider the image to be part of your content? (Something you'd want to appear on printouts and RSS feeds) <img src="image-src.png" srcset="image-1x.png 1x, image-2x.png 2x" /> Retina images are a solved problem for modern browsers. Very few users with Retina screens (and thus new computers) are on non-modern browsers, and those users who are using old computers and browsers will end up getting the 1x image. (Good luck finding a Retina Macbook Pro that runs IE9)
      - napoleond 11y ago
        Sorry, I just saw this now and I doubt you will see it 6 days later, but just in case: The main problem with that approach is (or at least used to be; I would love to learn that it's changed) that the browser will still load the 1x image first. Since the large chunk of retina users are on mobile devices, that sucks.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Back in May, TheNextWeb made some changes. Their mobile experience at the time had two bars, one at the top and one at the bottom. Even on a large phone display, viewing the content between the two was very distracting. Also, they both had icons for twitter and Facebook. I gave them some feedback regarding the design and said that I felt it was a UX mistake. The VP of design got back to me and said, very politely, that he disagreed with my assessment. He went on to say basically that an increase in shares means an increase in page views which means an increase in ad impressions, and thus income. With TNW being an ad-supported company, this directly relates to the quantity and quality of our content. This lead me to feel that the single driving motivation was not that their users had a good experience, but that they maximized revenue. From a user point of view, I feel that's wrong. From a business point of view, it does make sense. Regarding who is responsible for the final content, I would assume that if you have a VP of Design, that's the person. Maybe I'm wrong. I notice now that they only have the one bar at the top. Interesting.
- austenallred 11y ago
  Optimizing for specific metrics is dangerous, and makes a big difference
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  They're possibly optimizing for the wrong metric, or at least a metric you don't care about. I'd think they'd want repeat viewers. A bad UX will mean fewer repeat viewers, and possibly an unsustainable business. Classic short-term vs long-term view. Problem with this is it's generally harder to measure long term, so short term becomes easier to justify.
  - flinty 11y ago
    The ad exchanges don't care for repeat viewers. Its purely a numbers game. More clicks more revenue.
    - billyhoffman 11y ago
      The content sites themselves largely don't care about repeat visitors. Social networks and other aggregators are the primary drives of traffic to news/content/lifestyle sites. In other words, most people do go look at the home page of Buzz Feed or Wired or Huff Po and read multiple stories. They go to Facebook and click into different articles on different sites
ryandrake 11y ago
This is typically the role of a project's Product Manager: to balance the needs (or perceived needs) of all internal stakeholders (development, design, marketing, sales, legal, and all the various other isolated silos that don't talk to each other) with the interests of the end user. You need someone empowered to say no to crap, because every company is filled with people trying to load crap into the products, even developers. Weak/ineffective Product Manager roles are set up to simply report to one department, for instance Marketing, and just do everything they want. Effective ones have the power to say things like, "We're not doing this awful UI element just because legal says they want us to." and "We're going to stop taking requests from sales until we improve product quality." You need one person who is directly responsible for the entirety of the product, who can't escape responsibility with the standard "not my department".
- williamcotton 11y ago
  The problem for these Product Managers is that the incentives between the different stakeholders are drastically misaligned at a fundamental level. The people in charge of community, design, content and publishing are actively fighting the demands of the parts of the organization that drive profits. Companies that use advertisements to subsidize free content have sales and marketing teams that need to interrupt the goals of all of these other functions in order to keep the organization alive. However, if you look at the incentive structure for say a traditional book publisher, the marketing and sales don't actively fight the content because they don't put adds inside the covers. They just sell the finished product. Sure, market appeal might affect the kind of content that gets invested in by a publisher, but it doesn't affect how the content is presented.
  - mmatants 11y ago
    That makes me wonder - why do companies treat design and content as something that does not drive profit? Profit is holistic, otherwise why bother with the so-called "cost centers"? Kind of like a restaurant saying "the cash register is where our revenue clearly ends up, let's just cut out all the other cruft like the kitchen".
tikhonj 11y ago
This might also explain why mobile apps by the same company serving the same content and, presumably, contributing to the same business model somehow manage to have less cruft[1]: there's a single gatekeeper team for each app. It's funny how the important difference between apps and web pages is entirely arbitrary, social and historical and not based on the underlying technology—the concrete difference between the two. [1] Or, at least, that's been my experience. As a concrete example, take a look at the BuzzFeed app[2] which only has the prominent social buttons as visual cruft. Of course, the rest of the cruft on the Buzzfeed mobile page were two (!) links to their app... The CNN app[3] is probably a better example, with the app being almost completely cruft-free. [2]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buzzfeed.android&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buzzfeed.a... [3]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cnn.mobile.android.phone&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cnn.mobile...
- altcognito 11y ago
  Pessimistic me says that's mostly because the market has not matured. Ads and cruft will arrive eventually.
tosseraccount 11y ago
... they are largely built by committee Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. -Mel Conway ( http://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html http://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html )
anigbrowl 11y ago
I always find it amusing that our capitalist system basically consists of competition between command economies as succinctly described above.

ommunist 11y ago

that is exactly my point. And even when you have a single professional webdev/design team, you have no power over legal restrictions (EU cookie widget) or contractual obligations boss signed (ads must appear next morning). Real world just goes forward. Users have more power with adblockers over their UX than UX designer.

eterm 11y ago
One way you can avoid the need for an EU cookie widget is by not setting unneccessary cookies.
- ommunist 11y ago
  In many cases to determine its necessity you set a cookie. Seriously, can you name a mainstream news site in Britain that does not set a cookie?
  - mrec 11y ago
    No, but I can name lots that shouldn't. If I'm not logged in, there's no good reason for a news site to set a cookie.
  - bwindels 11y ago
    Most uses of cookies that are not tracking are exempt from the cookie law and don't need consent: http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm#section_2 http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm#se...

sanderjd 11y ago

It seems like there are two separate kinds of cruft: stuff that is distracting and gets in the way (social buttons, privacy policy modal, big nav-bar with temperature, ads, etc.), and stuff that happens in the background and doesn't get in the way, but makes things slow (multiple ad network embeds, optimizely, analytics scripts, etc.). While I agree that the first category has a lot to do with organization structure and incentives, the second category seems like it may be a good business opportunity for a new generation of "low-cruft" solutions to the same problems. For instance, I was kind of astounded that optimizely only has a crufty javascript solution, rather than a (probably far more complex) less crufty pure server-side solution, and I spent awhile looking around for such a thing, but found nothing much. Or something that puts all the tracking and analytics that different departments want to do behind a single optimized script (maybe segment.io already does this?). tl;dr; The problem that lots of different people that contribute to a website are vying for the user's attention in different ways doesn't seem to have a technical solution, but the problem that we're making too many third-party requests that respond with too much data and/or run too much javascript seems like one that could be solved if tools focused on it.

Touche 11y ago
I would say the biggest problem with pages like this is that it "jumps" around as content is loaded. The fact that ads are lazy loaded is not bad (probably good actually!). This is easily fixed by simply having the container set to exact width/height so that it doesn't mess with the rest of the page when it loads. CNN also has a sidebar that pops in with other stories. Don't do that. Render it on the server. Just a couple of fixes like this and the page would be fine, even if some extra stuff takes a while to load. They key from the user perspective is that the article should immediately be readable when the page loads.
- pcwalton 11y ago
  The fact that ads are lazy-loaded can be a big performance problem if it's implemented with a method that causes browsers to turn off async pan/zoom. Especially sad is when images are loaded this way, because most browsers will load images on scroll automatically, so this technique of "lazy loading" ads for "performance" actually cripples scrolling performance with no benefit.

nickbauman 11y ago

Conway's Law writ as Web Cruft.

higherpurpose 11y ago

> And that hero image that's actually 1600px wide and then resized in CSS to 400px? It's there because that was the source image from the external agency and no one thought to modify it. And because of retina iPads and Macbooks.

Spivak 11y ago
True, but they could be doing better by serving the appropriate image size depending on the client.
- napoleond 11y ago
  Much easier said than done, sadly.
  - Uehreka 11y ago
    Not that hard. Want to make it a background image? @media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2), only screen and (min-resolution: 192dpi), only screen and (min-resolution: 2dppx) { background-image: url(image@2x.png); } Do you consider the image to be part of your content? (Something you'd want to appear on printouts and RSS feeds) <img src="image-src.png" srcset="image-1x.png 1x, image-2x.png 2x" /> Retina images are a solved problem for modern browsers. Very few users with Retina screens (and thus new computers) are on non-modern browsers, and those users who are using old computers and browsers will end up getting the 1x image. (Good luck finding a Retina Macbook Pro that runs IE9)
    - napoleond 11y ago
      Sorry, I just saw this now and I doubt you will see it 6 days later, but just in case: The main problem with that approach is (or at least used to be; I would love to learn that it's changed) that the browser will still load the 1x image first. Since the large chunk of retina users are on mobile devices, that sucks.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

Back in May, TheNextWeb made some changes. Their mobile experience at the time had two bars, one at the top and one at the bottom. Even on a large phone display, viewing the content between the two was very distracting. Also, they both had icons for twitter and Facebook. I gave them some feedback regarding the design and said that I felt it was a UX mistake. The VP of design got back to me and said, very politely, that he disagreed with my assessment. He went on to say basically that an increase in shares means an increase in page views which means an increase in ad impressions, and thus income. With TNW being an ad-supported company, this directly relates to the quantity and quality of our content. This lead me to feel that the single driving motivation was not that their users had a good experience, but that they maximized revenue. From a user point of view, I feel that's wrong. From a business point of view, it does make sense. Regarding who is responsible for the final content, I would assume that if you have a VP of Design, that's the person. Maybe I'm wrong. I notice now that they only have the one bar at the top. Interesting.

austenallred 11y ago
Optimizing for specific metrics is dangerous, and makes a big difference
mgkimsal 11y ago
They're possibly optimizing for the wrong metric, or at least a metric you don't care about. I'd think they'd want repeat viewers. A bad UX will mean fewer repeat viewers, and possibly an unsustainable business. Classic short-term vs long-term view. Problem with this is it's generally harder to measure long term, so short term becomes easier to justify.
- flinty 11y ago
  The ad exchanges don't care for repeat viewers. Its purely a numbers game. More clicks more revenue.
  - billyhoffman 11y ago
    The content sites themselves largely don't care about repeat visitors. Social networks and other aggregators are the primary drives of traffic to news/content/lifestyle sites. In other words, most people do go look at the home page of Buzz Feed or Wired or Huff Po and read multiple stories. They go to Facebook and click into different articles on different sites

ryandrake 11y ago

This is typically the role of a project's Product Manager: to balance the needs (or perceived needs) of all internal stakeholders (development, design, marketing, sales, legal, and all the various other isolated silos that don't talk to each other) with the interests of the end user. You need someone empowered to say no to crap, because every company is filled with people trying to load crap into the products, even developers. Weak/ineffective Product Manager roles are set up to simply report to one department, for instance Marketing, and just do everything they want. Effective ones have the power to say things like, "We're not doing this awful UI element just because legal says they want us to." and "We're going to stop taking requests from sales until we improve product quality." You need one person who is directly responsible for the entirety of the product, who can't escape responsibility with the standard "not my department".

williamcotton 11y ago
The problem for these Product Managers is that the incentives between the different stakeholders are drastically misaligned at a fundamental level. The people in charge of community, design, content and publishing are actively fighting the demands of the parts of the organization that drive profits. Companies that use advertisements to subsidize free content have sales and marketing teams that need to interrupt the goals of all of these other functions in order to keep the organization alive. However, if you look at the incentive structure for say a traditional book publisher, the marketing and sales don't actively fight the content because they don't put adds inside the covers. They just sell the finished product. Sure, market appeal might affect the kind of content that gets invested in by a publisher, but it doesn't affect how the content is presented.
- mmatants 11y ago
  That makes me wonder - why do companies treat design and content as something that does not drive profit? Profit is holistic, otherwise why bother with the so-called "cost centers"? Kind of like a restaurant saying "the cash register is where our revenue clearly ends up, let's just cut out all the other cruft like the kitchen".

tikhonj 11y ago

This might also explain why mobile apps by the same company serving the same content and, presumably, contributing to the same business model somehow manage to have less cruft[1]: there's a single gatekeeper team for each app. It's funny how the important difference between apps and web pages is entirely arbitrary, social and historical and not based on the underlying technology—the concrete difference between the two. [1] Or, at least, that's been my experience. As a concrete example, take a look at the BuzzFeed app[2] which only has the prominent social buttons as visual cruft. Of course, the rest of the cruft on the Buzzfeed mobile page were two (!) links to their app... The CNN app[3] is probably a better example, with the app being almost completely cruft-free. [2]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buzzfeed.android&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buzzfeed.a... [3]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cnn.mobile.android.phone&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cnn.mobile...

altcognito 11y ago
Pessimistic me says that's mostly because the market has not matured. Ads and cruft will arrive eventually.

tosseraccount 11y ago

... they are largely built by committee Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. -Mel Conway ( http://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html http://www.melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html )

anigbrowl 11y ago

I always find it amusing that our capitalist system basically consists of competition between command economies as succinctly described above.