
Why “Simple” Websites Are Scientifically Superior - Brajeshwar
http://soshitech.com/2014/01/27/why-simple-websites-are-scientifically-superior/
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onedev
So let's talk about Facebook. Over the years the site and service has become
bloated beyond belief.

I think part of the reason people (especially younger audiences) are using
Instagram/Twitter/Snapchat for key functionality over what FB provides is
because of the simple UI/UXs. Kids might be seeing FB similar to how they see
Excel spreadsheets. Complicated shit for adults that isn't synonymous with
"fun".

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rmrfrmrf
No; there are a lot of problems with Facebook, but I'm pretty sure it boils
down to parents being on there. That, more than anything else, will keep kids
away.

You could also argue that Facebook focuses too much on content consumption
whereas Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat all focus much more on content
creation.

Another problem I've seen a lot lately is the Newsfeed algorithm just being
downright _terrible_. I've noticed a rash of comments on months-old photos
lately where people are saying "how did I miss this photo?!" If you're going
out of your way to create content and no one sees it, what's the point?

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jmngomes
Agreed, and I think it's mainly because it gets hard to figure out what
content to display when 1) people are following 300 friends + 300 pages; 2)
advertisers are paying for their content to be seen.

The competition for a spot in the users' news feed makes it increasingly
harder to present the user with quality content...I sometimes wonder how it's
even possible to test the quality of their algorithms a such a large scale
(kudos, btw), even with all that automated continuous learning.

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bazzargh
Nothing from "Why Simple is Scientifically Easier To Process" down is backed
by any of the actual research papers he mentions. He's also mixing studies of
(at least) two different things here. The Google and Harvard studies both
looked at flashing up images of websites, and were about judging aesthetic
appeal, not recall. Meanwhile, the papers on fluency are about recall of
information presented (items on a restaurant menu, for example). The former
set of papers don't mention any connection with Miller's 7+/-2. In fact, those
papers don't posit a physical basis: they're empirical studies. This stuff
about photoreceptors seems entirely irrelevant.

If you want to do something scientific, why not actually test your website?
It's what the researchers in those papers did, but it's missing from his
recommendations.

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rmrfrmrf
Maybe it's because SoshiTech is an inbound marketing/content marketing/content
farm/black hat SEO website? I clicked on the "Apple" tag in the tag cloud and
got back a list of completely unrelated posts. TBH I don't understand how
posts like this get so far up the front page without some shenanigans going
on.

~~~
tommycxl
Yes, this content was scrapped. (Hi, I published the article originally)

While I did re-distribute the content to Medium, we very much practice these
principles where the post was originally published on ConversionXL

While the studies referenced do pull from different areas, "beauty",
"retention", "conversions" they are all used in order to back up that science
supports simple, prototypical, sites performing better.

This means less visual clutter, everything being where it is "supposed to be"
and presented in a way that isn't over stimulating to the senses.

As far as the photoreceptors in your eyes are concerned, that's the bridge
between the real world and your brain.

You don't actually "see" anything, your brain just decodes the information.

Less information to decode (i.e visual complexity) the easier the actual
message has to get to your brain.

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mistercow
>Even though this was part of a bigger growth strategy, the results are still
impressive, over a million new users have been added since June, when the new
logo was first debuted.

No, the results are _meaningless_ because they're confounded by a big whopping
set of hidden variables.

This is like extolling the virtues of vitamin C by pointing to a cancer
patient that was put on chemo and also given supplements to keep them healthy,
and saying "Even though it was part of a bigger treatment plan, the results
are still impressive; the cancer has been in full remission since June, when
the doctor first started administering vitamin C."

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ronnier
I prefer simple HTML pages over JavaScripty type pages. And it seems these js
UIs keep replacing perfectly good HTML UIs. The Hadoop web admin UI did this
going from 1 to 2. I think the new google groups did the same.

~~~
kendalk
Agreed. I know of a forum that has barely changed its design since 1997-1999.
It loads fast and has many members. The focus is on content over appearance.

These javascript-heavy UIs feel heavy, almost syrupy, by comparison.

~~~
collyw
Agreed. I like the simplicity of HN (though the expired link thing is quite
annoying.

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jchendy
Science can't tell us whether a design is superior. It can tell us that the
design performed better in some specific test (such as a beauty rating), but
leaping from that to blanket superiority is not science.

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the_cat_kittles
Yes! Thank you, I get annoyed when people think there is one definition of
good design/art/beauty ...it's a thinly veiled display of narcissism. It's
like trying to tell someone what kind of food they like, or who they find
attractive- there are trends, and sometimes it seems like there are rules, but
nothing is ever 100% universal as far as I can tell.

~~~
source99
The article is discussing "simplicity" as one aspect of design. While I agree
different designs can really only be viewed subjectively there are some
aspects of simplicity that can be judged objectively.

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yeukhon
Scientifically superior is a strong claim.

Though what is important to note is that web accessibility is still important
for visually healthy person. It sucks that visually disabled people have
trouble navigating the web, but heck as a sighted user I have trouble finding
things too. Just yesterday I said how awesome the original Mac Writer was. It
was simple. Compare to today, I can't even locate the line space option
easily.

I can careless about the pretty round corners. I care about efficiency. Is the
information adequate or not, is it loading quickly or not.

Not all simple websites are created equal either. I have been to a lot of
static blogs lately and friends, half of them have horrible nav or CSS choice.

 _Web semantic_ is scientifically superior because then a program can parse
the input very easily. No more div soup to create buttons. img should have
alt. <p> shouldn't be misused.

One wonders if the HTML works for our purpose or not. It was meant for
document sharing. Does it work for our multi-media purpose?

And yes, I can't do all the things above because I just do what works... if it
works, it's good right?

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royquilor
Having a simple site could also be backed by psychology studies. Hick's law
states the more choices available, the more time it takes to make a decision.
To test the theory, two jam stalls were set up in a market. One with 50
choices and the other with 3. We can all guess who sold more.

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dk8996
I really love the direction UI/UX is going in, more and more based on science.
There is already good amount of work done in the human factors and ergonomics
area -- I would love to see this knowledge applied to web and mobile apps.

~~~
jchendy
This is not a new direction. UI design was scientifically-based long before
the phrase UX was coined.

Just a couple examples: -The CHI conference started in 1982, and the content
has always been primarily scientific research on UI -This book from 1983 has
been very influential on the evolution of UI:
[http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Human-Computer-
Interaction-...](http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Human-Computer-Interaction-
Stuart-Card/dp/0898598591)

~~~
aggie
The field of Human-Computer Interaction has been around for decades but the
larger design community has not always paid much attention to the literature
or embraced the scientific approach to design.

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MrAlmostWrong
So I've seen this article in 3 places today.

* ConversionXL * Medium * and now Soshitech

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wespad
You mean, like this?
[http://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html](http://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html)

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nfoz
That was an extremely non-simple webpage to say that.

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tommycxl
Content was scrapped.

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ballard
TL;DR -> DMMT

(don't make me think ;)

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Pitarou
What does "DMMT" stand for? You made me think, dammit!

