

We don't need you to design anymore - MrAlmostWrong
http://www.drawar.com/articles/we-dont-need-you-to-design-anymore/111/

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dusklight
The value of design increases as the number of users increase.

For Amazon, getting a 0.1% increase in revenue from changing the color of a
button would be a big deal. If Amazon paid $50k just for that one color change
they would still be millions of dollars ahead.

For a smaller business a 0.1% change would not be as significant.

~~~
webwright
The problem here is the definition of "design".

For Amazon, A/B testing a button color could have a huge effect.

However, being "prettier" might not do a damn thing. Heck, it might HURT them.

The author, I think, is talking about graphic design. His point would
obviously fall REALLY flat if he was talking about UX design.

~~~
dagobart
Is that UI (user interface) design? If not, to my knowledge, UX refers to
Unices, and wikipedia does not tell anything related else.

So, what is UX?

~~~
dunstad
User experience, I believe.

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shalmanese
The author commits a fallacy by only listing companies that are successful and
have bad design and not listing those who were unsuccessful and had bad
design.

You could make similar arguments about source control, unit testing or bug
tracking. Plenty of companies succeed despite not having them and they're not
crucial to success but it can make or break in a large amount of marginal
cases.

Despite that, the article is making an important point and having a
conversation I don't see designers having very often.

~~~
ktsmith
He also misses that a website is not the only aspect of most businesses. A web
only company might be able to get away with a logo from 99 logos, but a brick
and mortar store would likely have some problems.

My experience is that there isn't a lot of good cross over between print
designers and web designers as the skill sets differ greatly. If I need a logo
for my business I expect that it's going to cost me about $1k or maybe more. I
will be able to use the assets for the web, print, video etc. This has been
pointed out before, but I would also want my designer to take into
consideration how the logo looks away from the screen. Is it legible on a
business card? Would it scale up to a billboard or signage for my storefront?

The other issue with things from 99 designs is that they are often built from
templates and you could run into licensing problems later. That could be an
expensive mistake if you attempt to register trademarks or copyrights and
submit anything with those designs in them. Overall the article is simply
short sighted.

~~~
tptacek
You really think so? I walk down the street in the west loop, and I do not see
a lot of Pentagram-grade design in signage. Most people get by just fine with
crappy design.

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davidedicillo
I'm going to tell you a secret: good design = good usability.

Shhhh... don't tell anyone that a gradient or a shiny button doesn't mean
having a good design. A good design might be as simple as text over a white
page. Good design is about getting out of the way, making the use of the
website or application easier and intuitive (and of course making it look good
while doing that). Design is about aesthetic and functionality, you can
separate them.

~~~
mortenjorck
I agree with you entirely right up until you say you can separate aesthetics
and functionality. While you can do so arbitrarily, they're both so
interdependent that neither can truly excel without a certain amount of care
taken for the other. Good functionality improves the aesthetic experience of a
UI, and good aesthetics improve the conveyance of functionality.

You'll find varying emphases between these two all over, but very few
successful products make it with a significant disconnect between them.

~~~
davidedicillo
Actually that was a typo. I meant to say that you can't separate them :)

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teilo
From experience, I can tell you that all things being equal, a good design and
pleasant usability experience win you business from your competition.

My company built its own online quoting and ordering platform from the ground
up - Smartpress.com. There are many sites out there that let you buy printing
online. Ours is clean, fast, pretty, and gives you instant quotes on all
products. I'm not pimping our site, but these features of our platform have
won us customers. We know because that is what they tell us. The design
attracted them, and equated to conversions.

We have our own designers in house, just not web designers. So, we paid good
money to a contractor whom we know very well, and worked closely with him. It
was worth every penny.

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timdorr
Oh, the many counter-examples:

Github & Sourceforge

Slashdot & Digg

Facebook & MySpace

Look at Apple. When they started building their products with interesting,
cool designs, they started recovering as a company. I own a Nexus One because
it's a better phone, but the iPhone outsells it because it's more slick to own
one.

Design does matter. Especially if you do it right. A really stellar website
markets itself.

~~~
trafficlight
I don't think you can compare the iPhone that's been out for over 2 years and
the Nexus which has been around for 2 months. And really, the iPhone has been
in the making since 2001 with the advent of the iPod. Google is starting from
scratch with the Nexus.

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twidlit
Zappos.com has the largest footer because they sell shoes. Get it? Foot?
Shoes? ....please don't downvote me.

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cschep
Weird. This took forever to load, caused Chrome to crash, then my computer
blue screened. Probably just a local problem..but did anyone else get weird
loading behavior in Chrome at least?

edit: loads up in firefox 3.6 no problem. I'm on windows 7 64bit.

~~~
mikecane
FWIW, I've had problems with Chrome on sites and others have reported it on
Twitter too. It makes me wonder if this is something someone should follow up.
Seems like there's a story here everyone is not yet seeing, I haven't had
these problems until a week or so ago when I updated it, Excuse this being OT,
but Chrome was mentioned here,

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latch
Is web design becoming a commodity? In some cases it has been for a while, but
like all professionals, a good designer will learn new skills and adapt to the
changing world - like crazy jquery kung fu or iphone samurai.

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PonyGumbo
I appreciate the blog / opinion content on HN when it's well written, or
written by a credible source. This fails on both levels.

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DenisM
s/opinion/spit-test/g

