
A Case Study of “Designed By Developers:” Stack Overflow - spxdcz
http://danzambonini.com/a-case-study-of-designed-by-developers-stack-overflow/
======
jcnnghm
I don't like his interpretation for several reasons:

1\. When I log into stack overflow, the status bar at the top usually contains
information I want to know.

2\. The use of negative space is better, but the question title and question
body seem to be too separated from each other. The question body looks too
much like an answer, and their isn't enough differentiation between the two.
In the original design, the tabs and the line clearly separate from the
answers.

3\. He seems to have gotten rid of a lot of the statistical information about
the page. I use this information to decide on the value, relevancy, and
recency of a question. It's kind of like Github, one of the first things I do
is check the network graph, and see how healthy a project is.

4\. The votes are too small in his new design. This is a critical aspect of
the site, and allows visitors to make snap value decisions. It should be
large, it's at least as important as the entire body of the message.

In general, his design looks better and is less busy, but would kill the
overall usability. Stack overflow is useful because of the information
density, not in spite of it.

~~~
lovskogen
1\. He is not suggesting a re-align of the logged in state.

------
halo
I think some people have focused too much on his mockup rather than his point
- Stack Overflow's design is poor, with some very bizarre decisions. He only
touches on some of the problems with the site.

Let's take the bright orange banner at the top of the screen that appears only
to new users.

Obviously, it's not just new users that see it. It's anyone who hasn't got a
cookie on their browser indicating they haven't closed the ugly bright orange
banner before, so it's hitting plenty of people who know this information
already.

But let's ignore that, and ask whether it does the job: how useful is the
information contained in the big ugly bright orange banner to new users? Not
very, I suspect. For most users, the purpose of the site will be implicit -
from context (because they did a search for their problem and were linked to
it), from the design (it looks like a Q&A site), and from the content
(questions and answers). If it's not implicit, then the exact same information
is explicitly stated in a box on the right-hand-side of the site. No other
popular modern site on the web does these sort of popups anymore, so I don't
see why the creators of Stack Overflow thought they were a good idea. In
addition, why does the big ugly annoying bright orange banner link to the FAQ?
What pecentage of new users will ever want, need, or read the FAQ? Users don't
read _anything_. If the idea is to encourage sign-ups, then create a sign-up
link, not a link to something nobody will read.

Then there's the functionality of the big ugly annoying intrusive bright
orange banner. It loads after the rest of the page loads, then shifts all the
elements of the DOM down. Just in case you'd missed the bright orange banner
that distracts you while using the site, it scrolls with you, displaying on
all Stack Overflow pages until you're forced to go out of your way to move
your mouse to close it (with their weird 'close' icon), when finally (if
you're near the top) it shifts the DOM up again, just to ensure it can be
maximally irritating.

I don't see how "you’re seeing the one-time new user screen layout" should be
regarded as any sort of defence for the big ugly annoying intrusive
distracting irritating bright orange banner. Do new users somehow deserve bad
design and bad functionality?

In my eyes, Stack Overflow has firmly been a success _despite_ its poor
design. It's not as though Experts Exchange set a very high bar to beat
usability-wise.

~~~
theBobMcCormick
I do agree that the "improved" mockup is easier on the eyes than the current
Stack Overflow design, but I'm not convinced that Stack Overflow's success is
"despite its poor design".

Maybe Stack Overflows... umm.. how shall I put this.. distinctive design is
actually part of whats made it so successful. I mean, let's face it, when
you're googling around and land on a Stack Overflow page, you _KNOW_ you've
landed on Stack Overflow, even if you weren't paying attention to the URL.
It's look is definitely distinctive and unique. Maybe that's more important
than being pretty. It does seem there are a lot of famously ugly sites that
are also famously successful (CraigsList, PlentyOfFish, etc) I'm also reminded
of the recent HN post about those long ugly salesletter sites, and how they
convert much better than attractive web 2.0ish sites.

Maybe (for web sites), being pretty isn't all it's cracked up to be?

~~~
wazoox
> Maybe (for web sites), being pretty isn't all it's cracked up to be?

Being pretty isn't much, but actual usability of SO is quite poor. I've used
it since the beta and I learnt about some functionalities through this
analysis, that I missed because they're so badly laid out!

I'm pretty sure that stackexchange-based sites NOT targeted to highly
technical people will fail, because of the extremely poor UI.

------
mcantor
I was going to agree entirely with eplanit's comment (that this post is merely
a vent for the author's ego), but I _literally_ felt a wave of relaxation when
I looked at his mockup. It's probably not perfect, and it probably has some
flaws compared to the use case of the current site, but man, looking at it
makes me feel like I'm kicking back at the beach. What a difference.

------
edanm
Interesting article, but I largely disagree with it. A big part of my problem
is that he doesn't talk about the differences between new users, and regular
users.

Most of the users who simply read content, are looking for an answer to a
particular question. Chances are, they're coming from a Google search for a
specific problem, and SO has the answer. Their actions and expectations are
geared towards finding the answer as quickly as possible. I can't say for
sure, but I think most users don't have much problem seeing the question or
scrolling down to see the first answer. They also probably realize it is the
"best" answers by the score next to it.

On the other hand, you have the regular users. Most regular users don't see
the ads which bombard the newcomers, which already removes a lot of the
ugliness from the screenshot he posted. Also, as a regular user myself, a lot
of the other stuff he claims is "useless" is very important: the info bar at
the top, the rep scores, the tags, all of it.

I'm not saying Stack Overflow is perfect. But to understand its design, you
first have to understand the different users who come to it, and analyze
whether the "off the street" user manages to find their answers or not, and
whether the site is good for the "community users" (obviously it is,
considering its success).

By the way, if anyone is interest, Jeff himself comment on the blog.

------
pxlpshr
I use stackoverflow a lot and I'm a "designer". I find the original UI to be
more utility-focused and information-rich than his interpretation. His
interpretation also lacks the presence of authority, which I think the
original UI does well by emphasizing numbers (votes/views) and colors. My
2cents.

------
herdrick
(First let me say that I admire Jeff Atwood and his work. That doesn't mean he
has made no mistakes.)

Jeff launched this thing by tuning it for what he wanted in a Q & A site.
Since he is _exactly_ the sort of early adopter they needed for the first one
(for programmers) that worked OK. But now they are launching a fully baked,
"Jeff-tuned" product to other populations and I think there will be problems.
The problem with an overloaded page is that you've closed off your options -
you've made it really hard to iterate. Because every piece of available space
is filled with information it's very difficult to test the product with new
users.

This happened partly because this is every programmer's instinct, and partly
through Jeff's misunderstanding of Edward Tufte's concept of "information
density". Somewhere in a Stack Overflow podcast Joel is telling Jeff that
there is way too much stuff on the page and Jeff defends that as being an
example of information density that Tufte would like. Not true - a vector
field has information density: <http://www.google.com/images?q=vector%20field>
When you can apply a single (simple?) rule to understand a lot of data, that's
information density. By contrast, Stack Overflow is like any web page in that
each element must be examined in turn to be understood. That's why you must
eliminate elements ruthlessly, especially when you are starting out.

~~~
codinghorror
Well cited -- the actual post I was referring to is
[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/information-
density...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/information-density-and-
dr-bronner.html) and the relevant quote is probably "Is it a victory for
information density? Maybe. I think Craigslist is conceptually pretty close to
what Dr. Bronner was doing."

~~~
herdrick
Ah, interesting, thanks.

Well, it looks like I'm wrong about what Tufte meant by information density.
In that case Tufte wouldn't say that information density is the only thing.
"Every pixel doing work" != good design.

But I definitely heard that exchange on a podcast.

------
slantyyz
This is actually an interesting article in the sense that SO is also designed
--FOR-- developers, which is why the "negatives" haven't hindered usage of the
site.

As the article's criticisms have some validity, I do wonder - does Stack
Exchange need to revisit the information architecture of the original code if
they want it to be the Q&A platform for the masses?

~~~
ydant
It seems to be working for cooking subjects, too
(<http://cooking.stackexchange.com>). That might just be because it's overrun
with geeks right now. There's a pretty strong overlap between code and food
hacking, so that could help explain it.

~~~
justrudd
I would consider my wife a foodie (a baker not a chef). I thought she might
like the site (she enjoys answering questions about the recipes that she posts
on her site). So I pointed her to it, showed her the basics, and left. Came
back about 30 minutes later and she was trolling through other food blogs
answering questions in comments.

She tried to up vote an answer and got the yellow box (Login or register). She
ended up on the OpenID page and couldn't find where to put her e-mail or
password. She has a GMail account, and I told her she could click on the
"Google" icon.

She found the "Click here to sign up" link, but that just sent her to
MyOpenID. A site she'd never heard of. And I've grilled it into her not to
create accounts on sites she hasn't heard of or hasn't been recommended by
someone or that she was redirected to.

So the site has some novice computer user problems. In my wife's defense, she
is a great photographer, baker, and has several master's degrees in science
(even worked at JPL for a bit on the Mars rover that burned up in the
atmosphere). But she is a complete novice when it comes to computers. And the
site turned her off in about 5 minutes.

~~~
mcantor
I don't normally swear in Hacker News comments, but it is such a fucking
tragedy that we still have this problem, especially on StackExchange sites
owned by people like Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood who should really know
better.

------
eplanit
A List of Grievances is not a 'Case Study'. The ego of the author elevates his
Opinions to be Facts.

~~~
slantyyz
I think you've just summarized more than 50% of the links submitted to Hacker
News.

------
phsr
It should be noted that the ads in the main column disappear when you have
accrued 200 rep points (which isnt that hard if you use the site often).

------
nswanberg
Dan should see the original (un)design:
[http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/07/stack-overflow-beta-
de...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/07/stack-overflow-beta-
design/#comment-4765)

More seriously, the link above shows how early on Jeff Atwood got design input
from the people who use the site. Jeff's comment on Dan's critique also show
how they continue to work with the users on design, and they've hired a
designer, Jin, who also commented.

The post is like a small version of the American Airlines design critique post
from a while ago, complete with a polite explanation of why the design is the
way it is.

~~~
nhnifong
Makes me wonder if that excellent logo was the first thing designed.

------
MartinCron
I should have stopped reading at _"my eyes puked from the motion sickness.."_

Seriously? What a horrible way to tear apart someone else's hard work.

An actual case study of Stack Overflow would be that something designed by
developers could be a huge objective success.

Also, his proposed improvement _"hasn’t included all the functional elements
yet"_ Anyone can make almost any interactive design appear to be superficially
better as a static screenshot by taking things away. As far as making
something that actually works and does the right thing, that takes more than
Photoshop and arrogance.

It's sad to see this guy getting attention.

~~~
cemregr
If you look at the (in)famous design criticism articles of the past year, you
can see that discourtesy has become a pattern. Because these got so much
attention, others started to think it's "okay" to do design critic in a
similarly childish and discourteous manner. It's interesting to see the
lengths people go for attention.

Tyler Thompson on Delta's boarding pass: "It was like someone put on a
blindfold, drank a fifth of whiskey, spun around 100 times, got kicked in the
face by a mule (the person who designed this definitely has a mule living with
them inside their house) and then just started puking numbers and letters onto
the boarding pass at random..."

Andrew Wilkinson on Zappos: "I checked out your new website and wanted to stab
my eyes out with a sharp object."

Dustin Curtis on American Airlines: "Fire your entire design team, if you have
one." (His original post was harsher but he has edited it since and I don't
have access to the original.)

~~~
MartinCron
Those kinds of reviews are fun to write and fun to read, but I think they do a
dis-service to the entire community.

This sort of design critique discourtesy isn't just from the last year, I was
writing about it two years ago:

[http://martincron.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/respect-for-
peopl...](http://martincron.wordpress.com/2008/07/17/respect-for-people-and-
mean-spirited-trash-talk/)

------
cedsav
I really like reading design critics like this one. It's detailed and most
points are well supported. I stopped reading though when the OP offered his
"better" version.

It's not that his version is bad but redesigns by outsiders necessarily
introduce their own new flaws. They don't know what constraints drive a
specific design, so there's little to learn from a mockup that fixes, say a
white space issue, but did not consider if usability or conversion rate could
be impacted.

~~~
Qz
The "stopped reading" jab is getting kind of tired. Really? It was that
offensive that you couldn't bear to read another sentence?

If you had, you might have realized that the guy acknowledged straight out
that his admittedly uninformed re-design would probably introduce it's own
flaws, but that the main point was to show how some of the flaws he did
identify _could_ be addressed, not as some evangelical "better" version.

~~~
cedsav
It wasn't offensive and I wasn't offended. Sometimes it's a better use of my
time to stop reading an article half-way.

Anyhow, this post is in the same vein as the AA redesign by Dustin Curtis. The
criticism is interesting and useful. The complete redesign attempts are
however a step too far. IMHO. You can't suggest solutions to identified flaws
by completing changing the parameters of the problem.

(I'm not specifically talking about OP here, it's more about redesign posts in
general.)

------
jedc
No matter what your criticisms are of the finer points of his critique (I
agree with some, not others), the OP mocked-up a much better concept for the
site. (IMHO)

~~~
barrkel
I think it looks hideous - it reminds me intensely of phpBB, with the author
icon / info etc. on the left, and the stench of phpBB is definitely to be
avoided (IMHO).

~~~
mkinsella
Keep in mind the author-icon/info-on-left concept isn't exclusive to phpBB,
it's used by most forum software. It's used so frequently because _it's what
the user expects_ which is what drove this layout: making the site easier to
use for first time users coming from Google.

~~~
LargeWu
The difference is that SO is not a forum, it's a question and answer site. A
key distinction. I think SO's current design serves its purpose well.

~~~
rmc
One of the reasons SO was created is cause forums are usually so bad at
serving as Q&A sites.

------
scotty79
Ouch.

I came to stackoverflow from search engine multiple times while searching for
solutions to my problems. I was pleasantly surprised how fast I could find
question that was asked and after confirming that the asker has similar
problem to mine how fast I could browse through responses. Also I could get to
know reservations other user had to responses (stated in comments to those
responses). I shouldn't probably be surprised by my amazement because the
thing that recurrently cropped up in my search result in old days was experts-
exchange.

After multiple visits I finally got curious what is that site that helps me so
often and I clicked link in the orange banner on the top that drew my
attention. Up to this moment the only parts of the page that I've noticed
were, questions, answers, comments and banner on the top.

After I registered and answered few questions I picked tags that interest me.
They are visible on the right. Tags are for answerers not for askers. Tags
visible to unregistered users are just cool unimportant bonus info similar to
pageviews and they are placed in the bottom right when nobody even looks if
he's not bored and exploring.

There are maybe some features that are not necessary, and some missing but
what is important for me, no unnecessary feature ever got in my face while
using this site.

As for the proposed redesign I think it's horrible.

You can barely see votes and up/downvote buttons that are very important for
this site to work. If people can't find them and hit them less often more bad
answers would be mixed with good ones.

User info is in prominent place and it is almost of no importance ~8k rep guy
can give you bad answer. Votes on answer matter, not the rep of answerer. Also
insane spacing around it immediately kills aesthetics of the whole design it
might have possessed. I rarely see something that awful outside of works of
beginner designers (and yes, also developers).

Putting main menu in the right top corner where are all the things that you
don't usually care about until you want to search for something or log in is a
bad idea. But I don't use this main menu all that much so probably it wouldn't
hurt too much. ... Besides if you see input box in the top right corner what
do you expect it to be? A spot where you can place your pizza order? Even if
that box was empty as long as it looked as input box I'd have thought that
this is serchbox and when I put some stuff there and hit enter site will be
searched for occurrences of it.

Questions are just barely discernible from answers. Stackoverflow does this
better but I'm not sure why. Maybe with spacing? Maybe by not discouraging you
from reading it by putting it somewhere in the middle of gray background?

Only thing I think might be good in the redesign is exposing "Ask a Question".
But I think SO does almost as good by surrounding this option with plenty of
whitespace.

As a footnote:

Don't try to redesign how thing looks until you understand what it does.

"By developers for developers" sometimes works.

~~~
samstokes
I almost stopped reading when I saw "by developers for developers" as a
criticism, because he's talking about Stack Overflow, a website that is
_explicitly_ "for developers". Sure, that doesn't mean usability doesn't
matter, or can't be improved, but it seems silly to start a diatribe like this
without at least considering that maybe usability and aesthetics have
different optima for developers than for a general audience.

(To be fair, he does discuss developers as a demographic somewhere in the
middle of the laundry list of 20 or so "initial concerns", in the context of
the prominence of the banner ad.)

~~~
scotty79
By developers for developers does not always work. In my opinion it mostly
fails when it comes to IDEs (with some notable exceptions).

------
noss
As a developer and all around geek I frequently find myself being asked to
help with digital devices (i.e. change a digital watch to summer time, set the
wheel circumference on a bicycle computer, etc). I don't think I am alone in
this here. This is our life. With the knowledge that holding down "SET" for 3
seconds, the digits tend to start to blink, that makes us invincible in the
digital age.

Obviously, this guy proves that it goes far and it applies to a website such
as stackoverflow as well. When I came to stackoverflow 1 year ago I had an
amazingly streamlined experience. But of course, I had previous experience
from using the internet. I expected that

* the site search box to be in the upper right corner, and use the verb "search" or "find" * the login/register links to be in the same upper right corner * most publishing tools have a permalink to be found in relation to posts on the page * 'flag' is likely related to fighting spam, a problem most open forums have * 'tagging' is that which was made popular in this whole web 2.0 craze * "Ask Question" would mean something involving "asking" and "a question" * an up/down arrow, above and under a number would increment or decrement that number * it is beneficial to place a mouse pointer over items to see if there is clarifying mouse-over text, but with little fear I tend to push buttons to see what happens as well

Complaining about ads by guessing they're not effective, or that the careers
link is just hidden ads also seem quite malicious. They got to earn money, and
having read jeff's/joel's blog entries on the success of ads on stackoverflow
I am very sure that they've been trying out different things to see what
works.

It is difficult to criticize these remarks without sounding a like a wise-ass.
He does have remarks about sensible things, such as the graphical element used
for sorting answers, or the background colors of areas that have static and
less than important information. But I guess this guy primary mistake was to
frame his remarks as "these are things that need to be changed, because im a
designer and user experience expert", rather than "these are things that would
be interesting to perform A/B-tests on to see if they improve the experience".
That is how it came across anyway.

------
aarghh
I don't follow the logic of some of the complaints, but specifically, what is
wrong with tag clouds? I find them quite intuitive, and in fact they help you
give navigation streams or word-lines if implemented right.

Also, the author's choice of having the masthead of the blog grayed out does
not seem consistent with his criticism of gray type in the design.

------
davidcann
Am I the only one who thinks good application developers should also be decent
designers? Why does everyone assuming that a person must fit into only one
group?

Being a good developer is not about typing code, it's about creating a great
application. That means using all of the tools at your disposal... code,
visual design, workflow structure, analytics, etc.

In my experience, traditional designers often do very poor work when it comes
to interactive applications. As a developer, it's my responsibility to tell
them it's crap, why, and present a better solution.

~~~
mortenjorck
Good front-end developers should have a functional understanding of design
principles, just as good front-end designers should have a functional
understanding of CSS, JS, and HTML.

------
grammaton
"Stack Overflow was set up by two successful high-profile businessmen,
attracts over 7 million unique visitors a month, and has received $6 million
in funding."

Obviously being butt ugly didn't hurt them that much.

I find the tone of this article a little annoying in that it plays to the
businessman / designer stereotype of developers not knowing anything about
design, and only being focused on functionality - to a fault.

------
arb99
I think he forgot that it was "designed by developers FOR developers". I've
never had a problem with the way it looks. Some of his points are valid, but
you can think of better ways to do things on 99% of sites. Including his -
which is a blog, just for him, yet had a "Login" link on every page.

His idea of paying for answers (near) instantly would be handy though
sometimes.

~~~
slantyyz
I thought that Stack Overflow had a bounty system?

~~~
arb99
Was never aware of that. Maybe stackoverflow _could_ do with a redesign to
make it more obvious ;)

------
Kototama
Better designed by developers than developed by designers!

~~~
boucher
Probably not. I know a lot of designers who have become good enough at
programming to do most of the things that good programmers can do. I know very
few programmers who are even passable at design work.

~~~
mdg
How would you rate yourself?

------
csomar
The original UI is quite usable. When I started using Stack Over Flow,
navigation was a headache as the links weren't clear. I'm accustomed to it
now.

Why do you need a good navigation if people just hit the website to lookup the
answer? If they want to become active members they'll learn it!

The font and colors choice are quite good for reading. Reading for long hours
and long periods with this theme without getting tired or annoyed, I should
say it was really well designed.

~~~
herdrick
_The original UI is quite usable._

 _When I started using Stack Over Flow, navigation was a headache as the links
weren't clear. I'm accustomed to it now._

Those two consecutive sentences would seem to be from different reviews.

~~~
nhnifong
Contradiction is not balance.

------
Benjo
Some valid points, but he overemphasizes the new user experience. Logged in
users answer questions and create value. Optimize for them. Badges, votes and
tags exist to encourage certain behaviors from that community.

New users get answers easier than on any other site. Users who understand the
value of the site will spend time to learn become valuable community members.
Lowering the barrier to entry would lower the quality of the content.

------
nhnifong
Why should developers design for anyone but developers? In my knowingly vain
opinion, a developer is a just a normal person with a lot of patience and
selective attention. I worry the long term effect of lenient demands on the
public's ability to digest large amounts of information would only worsen the
divide.

------
njharman
Hmmmm, I wonder if I'm alone in having the "internet" and "internet
advertising" change the way I read pages compared to traditional(expert) views
of how people read pages.

Main point being I focus exclusively on the center content portion. Ads and BS
have trained me to completely ignore sidebars and mostly ignore headers(some
sites the header/center content is not clearly seperted). I never look at
banner/menu until unless I want to explore site.

------
yatsyk
IMHO original design [1] looks much better and it's easier to find relevant
info then with proposed one [2]

[1]
[http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/3498/soregistereduserscre...](http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/3498/soregistereduserscreens.png)
[2] [http://danzambonini.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/07/stack_ove...](http://danzambonini.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/07/stack_overflow_redesign.jpg)

------
lovskogen
This would be a constructive conversation without the "it just works, it could
be way worse" arguments.

------
AlexMuir
It just needs some light backgrounds to break up the content a bit. I think
the original looks fine - the banner ad causes the most damage because it's in
a completely different style.

------
mhd
Am I the only one who regularly enters their search terms into the
"interesting tags" box?

------
jlcgull
As an aside, why do advertisers on 'geek' sites (by devs, for devs) even
bother putting up advertisements is beyond understanding for me. Given the
demographic that visits these sites (tech savvy power users), would the
majority not be using ad-scrubbing-measures 99% of the time anyway?

I understand that these sites need to generate revenue and advertisements are
one way of doing that, but given the eye-gouging (flash-gif-html5) ads
designed by most advertisers my sympathy lies with the readers who visit these
sites for reading content.

------
c00p3r
There is only one problem with such slow-evolving projects - who will pay your
bills first year or two.

Everything else isn't a rocket science - launch fast/early and evolve! ^_^

There are tons of similar ideas in non-IT fileds (travel guidelines or a-la
AirBnB for hotels/trekking agencies in third world - the first that comes to
mind). But who will pay my bills?

