Hacker News Reader

Comment by Olscore | Hacker News Reader

Just glancing at the design I can see that the whitespace is all messed up. The previous design was more compact, one could easily view most or all of the necessary information in a smaller space. But that is just glancing at it. The newer design seems to be following the newer web motif of flat design, generous space, etc.

Back in the 2007-2010 era of websites, somebody mentioned that "ugly" websites work. Not that fancy or flat design is bad. But the sheer simplicity of ugly websites forces people to focus on the content, context and functionality. The ugly websites pointed out were MySpace and Craigslist mainly, but you could probably add a few others like Drudge Report and Plenty of Fish. Even Hacker News is pretty "ugly" but it obviously works great.

View on HN

There is an ongoing trend of equating "simplicity/removing distractions" with "hiding or removing information/making it less useful".

Make something as simple as it needs to be, but no simpler. Most designers I see these days seem to forget that last bit.

In this specific example the whole purpose of the request system is to vote and secondarily get other people to vote with you. The new design eliminated almost everything that made the old one useful. It isn't simpler, it's simplistic.

Make something as simple as it needs to be, but no simpler. Most designers I see these days seem to forget that last bit.

People are copying the pointless "elegant simplicity" signalling of the new Apple Macbook. I think this is probably one of the best filters you can find, if you are perceptive enough to be able to use it: See whether or not someone prioritizes signalling over actual functionality/semantic content/logic. Observe how often this happens. Compare the effort that goes into signalling versus more substantive observation and analysis.

If someone isn't self aware of their signalling, and hasn't differentiated that concept from actual value/competence, quietly disengage.

The wasted space thing drives me crazy. I tried the new beta for Evernote and it was mostly empty space that the text can't be in. Please, let me have some interface "distracton" please.

My reaction was Nope, roll back to the previous version.

I may be wrong, but I think that this site's UI is far from simple. It looks clean, but that's different thing.

The new interface feels very unconventional, in fact. It may become convenient once you've learned what everything means, but until then you'd feel puzzled.

~~ Of course, I could not try to work with the old site, but the old screenshots looked more informative than the new ones. Not surprised at all by the results.

What's complicated about it? Click on an article to read the article. Click on the comments link to read the comments. Click on reply to reply.

It's hard to imagine something simpler. HN even maintains a good information density.

I were talking not about HN, obviously.

The questions you should ask when designing a website:

What am I trying to communicate? Can someone easily get that information from my site? If there is interaction - is it easy for the user to figure out what to do?

The questions that actually get asked when designing a website:

Does it feel modern? Am I using the latest technologies? Would I feel comfortable telling my buddies how I created the site?

I have nothing against modernizing a site, other than the fact that it's not that important, and it's really easy to screw it up.

You can break all of communication down to Know, Feel and Do. What do you want someone to Know, to Feel and ultimately to Do.

http://www.yale.edu/fin-bus/resources/docs/SurvHandbookChap3...

A couple of red flags that stood out to me in the write up itself as revealing of a mindset that could lead to such drastic results:

"To be honest, the graphic below is pretty much useless. I just think it’s pretty, so it’s staying in."

"I was FORCED to conduct usability studies"

Seems like bad jokes may affect user conversion. I should write my next article on that.

Back in the 2007-2010 era of websites, somebody mentioned that "ugly" websites work.

One obvious example being Amazon.

As a consumer I will generally go with whoever gives me the most information about whatever I'm doing/learning/buying with the least clicking around. Indulging in the modern "design" trend of giving me 5 million white pixels is not how you sell stuff to me. I'm not looking to buy white pixels, I'm all stocked up on those.

I don't agree with Amazon as an example, but I agree completely re: modern Web design.

You may find this writeup from an Amazon veteran about how Amazon goes about designing things. It's 100% about accessibility over aesthetics. Ihttps://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX

> It's 100% about accessibility over aesthetics.

That surprises me, since when I visit Amazon's UK homepage my fan kicks-in and there's a noticable delay before I can start typing-in the product for which I want to search; all so that they can load an enormous Prime promotion carousel and rows upon rows of 'product suggestions' in which I have never shown any interest. Today it includes pearl ear-rings.

Things have changed a bit in the five years or so since that was written. I don't think Bezos controls every pixel any more.

OT: I really miss Yegge's writing. I wish he publish more.

Back in the 2007-2010 era of websites, somebody mentioned that "ugly" websites work.

Yes, and they were wrong for any meaningful sample of websites. You can point to ugly yet hugely successful websites but that ignores the millions of ugly, failed websites that have long since stopped serving visitors. And equally, there are examples of beautiful sites that work and beautiful sites that didn't.

How good a website looks has a short term impact on how it's perceived, but great content (where "content" has a lot of different meanings) is always more important. That's true regardless of how much effort you spend on design.

The point to the quote being:

"aesthetics is orthogonal to usability". not "all ugly websites are usable".

To me this is more about the fact that incremental changes are better than a complete redesign. The previous design had its flaws but people were used to it.

Reddit is another great example.

Spot on.

and 4chan

No it's not, it didn't get popular until it was redesigned. It's proof that sites can be too ugly, but that sites don't have to be particularly pretty.

What redesign are you referring to? Reddit has never changed much in its design. I'm looking at it in the Wayback Machine from before subreddits were introduced, and it still looks like the same site.

Reddit got popular when Digg was redesigned.

I was literally just thinking that reddit's staff are either all back-end engineers or don't do anything at all. reddit has barely changed at all in the past several years. The design has barely changed. They finally just recently put out a mobile app. Little to no improvement has been made in moderator tools. Where is this redesign you seem to be seeing?

http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com

The better one is worse. :/

That medium gray text is harder on the eyes.

http://thebestmotherfuckingwebsite.com/

That is so true! That is why we are seeing a new trend in web design called "Brutalism".

Brutalism isn't "making things look ugly," it's using building-block type materials in architecture. It comes from the French word for "raw."

Not so fast.

There are actually a few etymologies for the term in architecture. It does often imply a deliberate crudeness and a harshness, supposedly an honest response to the character of the materials. To the untrained eye this is close enough to "ugly" that most people don't distinguish. There's also a very strong argument that brutalism represents a turn away from the values of western humanism (typically expressed, historically, in classical architecture) toward a vulgar, bleak conception of modernity. Another aspect is that it tends to be "sublime" rather than "beautiful", which, again, translates to negative vibes for many people.

It's not a term that I'm happy to see being applied now to some essentially cosmetic aspects of web design.

I always find this "language evolves"-argument a bit strange. Maybe I am reactionary, but it is "though" not "tho". More people using it wrong, does not make it right to me. In some cases I will eventually adapt, but not when it is about concept that was invented, explained and named by a person with sources you can cite to prove it.

Unfortunately, language is a social construct and relies entirely on popular consensus of words. Words like "literally" and "inflammable" have grown to take on their opposite meanings. One could argue that "though" is an inefficient way to spell that word and too easily confused with the spelling of "thought".

I share a similar peeve as you with the use of "women" as an adjective. All through grade school and high school, the use of "women" as a noun was pummeled into my head. Now, I routinely see presumably college-educated journalists use it as an adjective ("women scientists", "women engineers", etc.)

You are right, but as I described "Brutalism" is a scientific term, not a social construct. There was an inventor, there are sources. The meaning inside its scope is well-defined.

If you would now go ahead and use it to describe a concept of a different scope where it does not apply at all, say web designs, you could do that, but you would expose that you just tried to name something in a sciency way to sound sophisticated without having any idea what the term actually means.

That language is a social construct does not imply that everyone must automatically accept any usage someone else proposes as equally valid as any other. Individual people, as well as groups, are free to reject any drift or change in meaning as they see fit.

Indeed, this is by far the usual case. People collectively can, and do, reject almost all proposed novel usages, which are quickly forgotten. We just remember the few cases where things change due to survivorship bias.

What does "accept" mean here, is it a matter of refusing to understand what someone is trying to communicate until they use the lexical conventions you prefer? Words have meaning whether you "accept" them or not.

"People" aren't really a useful measure here because there is slang that achieves popularity out of the subculture that produces it, subcultures composed of people, just the same as it may not propagate, in which case it naturally remains useful to the in-group. To reject slang as valid language until it achieves mainstream acceptance is a) not measurable as there is no line that is crossed, and b) antisocial.

I can't see how to define "accept" except as the opposite of rejection. You can understand what someone is trying to say, but then mock them for saying it "stupidly". You can also just refuse to repeat it. If you accept someone's usage, you probably do neither of these (you might make fun of someone for the heck of it, or not get a chance to use the new term, but you get the idea). Social dynamics, basically. And yes, this metric might produce different answers at different cultural strata.

If you understand what they're saying, you've already "accepted" the meaning/spelling/usage/etc. Turning around and mocking people or refusing to use the term is a separate issue that doesn't necessarily reflect well on that person.

We already have a word for that, though. It's "understand". And while I see what you mean about mockery, refusing to use a term/idiom is everyone's prerogative. I, and probably you as well, simply don't use certain widely accepted phrases because I think they're dumb.

Anyway, I came up with a better definition: accepting a word/usage is believing that it's a good way to express whatever it was.

It means you do not promulgate the usage. I understand perfectly well that some people who say "literally" actually mean "very," even though I do not accept this semantic change in "literally."

I myself will never use "literally" to mean "very," which differentially lowers the chance of this new meaning becoming standardized. Over time, either most people will do the same and the proposed novel usage of "literally" to mean "very" will die out, or else most people will collectively adopt the new meaning.

Empirically, almost all novel usages die out very quickly and are forgotten. Read some slang from the 1920s -- it's already almost incomprehensible to a modern reader.

What do you think of these newfangled gentleman planters, like George Washington?

http://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/biography/

I think there's probably an imaginable application of Brutalism to web design, but I'm not sure it would add much to the discourse. I would absolutely read it as entertainment, though.

As for the term itself, there's always a risk of imprecision when laypeople discuss the concepts used in certified professions.

It's culture, what can you do.

There's a 2004 paper along the lines you mention by Simon Yuill: http://www.lipparosa.org/essays/code_brut.pdf

A side effect of brutalist architecture though is some pretty ugly buildings. And it is a principle of brutalism to forego the aesthetic refinements and ornamentation common to other styles - this can be observed in the websites being called brutalist as well.

The real trend we are seeing is half-educated people trying to give names to concepts, which sound sophisticated to them but do not actually fit.

Edit: Somebody should write a manifesto about it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com