

Ask HN: Feedback on side-project Webdesignerd (an HN for webdesign) - adamhowell
http://webdesignerd.com/

======
adamhowell
I think HN has one of the web’s most successful communities, but my interests
skew more towards the front-end and I’ve wanted to create an HN for webdesign
for awhile now. At the moment I’m the only one posting links and designs but
I’m hoping the site could eventually gain enough traction to truly thrive on
its own.

A couple of potentially interesting design decisions:

* Points for both links and comments are hidden until after you vote

* Uses oAuth and OpenID exclusively (even though none of your personal info is displayed and you can still choose your username independently this may be a big turnoff -- but I also think it’s potential for keeping out spam could outweigh its potential drawbacks)

* Was contemplating creating a sense of scarcity by limiting signups to 10/20/whatever per day. Of course at the moment it wouldn’t matter either way, but could be an interesting way to drum up interest

Anyway, it’s just a side-side-project and may not appeal much to this crowd,
but feedback is appreciated.

------
apsurd
On first open, I immediately thought "whoa, I'm lost." Then I thought... "way
too much effort to parse this information."

Of course its almost surely because I am so used to the HN simplicity and
directness. But it is indeed hard to parse for me. Lists are very very
friendly. I find myself being able to parse HN very fast, starting from the
top left, reading each listed line until it loses my interest, and then
proceeding. Very hard to do on your site since much of my effort is ignoring
the design aspect and also the fact that I have to scan so wide horizontally
does not help.

Much easier for my mind to know that each line is its own concept, and a
newline refreshes the concept. With your box model, my mind has to consciously
give meaning to the structure and boxes. Same thing for hierarchy. There is an
assumed, implied, and very natural order with a list. Not so with your box
model.

Perhaps I'm just thinking too much but for usability, your site gets a "too
much effort." and I'd much prefer HN.

Of course as you may have guessed, I'm not a design guy. I can appreciate and
love good design, but my take is that design should complement the goal in not
only an aesthetic but utilitarian manner.

I feel there is just _too much_ benefit in using the HN list model to go with
anything else.

~~~
joeminkie
I have to agree. The large bold type in short lines is hard to read. As with
HN, you should be able to scan quickly. I like larger type than most people so
that's good, but longer line lengths are essential. Another subtle thing about
HN and is the color. The black (or almost black) and white is too jarring for
quick scanning. If you want to keep the box design with images check out
<http://www.notcot.org/>. Also, this article:
[http://www.brandonwalkin.com/blog/2009/08/10/managing-ui-
com...](http://www.brandonwalkin.com/blog/2009/08/10/managing-ui-complexity/)
specifically the part where he mocks up the Aperture 2.0 filter window with
iLife-style controls (in regards to your double border on the boxes).

Despite all of this, though, it is a good idea and a good start. I hope it
works out.

~~~
adamhowell
> The black (or almost black) and white is too jarring for quick scanning

Agreed, I was going back and forth between making sure the article text didn't
get overwhelmed by the screenshots and vice versa.

------
rmp
When creating a username I was slightly thrown off by the inconsistency of
calling it a 'username' versus a 'display name'. At first (w/o reading
helptext) I thought clicking 'Create display name' was going to take me to
another page to create a new name. Maybe think about going with one or the
other, I would prefer username.

Also, when choosing a username there is no way to cancel the action and return
to the main page (ie clicking off the dialog or maybe having a cancel button.)

That said, the signup process was really smooth and painless. Congrats!

~~~
adamhowell
Yeah, I was trying to add as many textual clues as possible to the fact that
your Gmail username, etc. wouldn't ever be shown, but instead your "public" or
"display" name. But, you're right, "display name" is inherently confusing.

> when choosing a username there is no way to cancel the action

That's actually intentional so that users can't post or comment without a
username. But I should add helper text to explain that.

------
saturdayplace
The design is confusing. Not because there's too much information (there's
not) but because there's no hierarchy. You haven't told me where to look.
There's not an element on the page that has any more visual importance than
any other. Comparing the site to HN makes me think these are going to be
ranked/ordered, but we haven't ranked anything.

Below, jlees suggested splitting out the design and the news sections. I think
that'd help. The grid layout you currently have for the whole site would work
fine for the design section, and then I'd do news the same way HN does (why
re-invent the wheel?). If you look at the HN homepage, it doesn't take more
than 1/2 the width of the browser (or in the cases it does, links could be
truncated/wrapped). You could have the news/design sections side by side on
the homepage. The split alone would help me decide where I should spend my
time.

~~~
adamhowell
Before when I was the only one posting, I turned ranking/ordering off. Now
that there are a few other users I've turned ordering back on and there's now
a /newest page where everything's ranked only by freshness.

I think part of the confusion might stem from the fact that points are hidden
until after you vote, so I'll have to think on that one.

------
petesalty
I didn't mind the layout as much as some people here, but I think that having
a list version wouldn't be bad. Would it be possible to allow the user to
choose?

As for the idea - great! I already found a few points of interest and that's
just from scanning the front page.

------
incomethax
My first impression was that it is very difficult to quickly scan which
articles I want to look at, but as I look at it, it seems that it's more
usable because I can see what's behind the link. Maybe a combination of the
two strategies might help?

------
mattdawson
One usability detail you might consider:

I like how you follow HN's lead and make read content headlines a lighter
gray. But there's no corresponding effect for the screenshot slides. That
definitely reduces the usefulness of the read state.

~~~
mp3jeep01
Isn't CSS3 supposed to have an opacity setting (little use considering not
every browser supports it now, but, might be something to look forward to?)

EDIT: Correction, not "have", rather "support"

~~~
chrisrhee
Yup. You can set opacity for elements in all modern browsers. IE6, too.

On some sites, I've used it as a subtle hover state for image links, so they
"pop" a little. (Set the default opacity to 92% and have it go to 100% on
hover.)

------
icey
What is the difference between the boxes that have text and the ones that have
images?

I got a little overloaded looking at it; but I'm also not a designer.

I think the site looks nice... just a little overwhelming.

~~~
adamhowell
The idea there is to feature more than just articles, so the user can submit
designs, too. I'm not sure that'll stay or not, it's just an attempt to appeal
to the visual person a bit more.

Re: overwhelming - Yeah, I agree, I've tried to keep everything toned done as
much as possible, but there's probably still too much visual noise.

~~~
jlees
I would split out design based voting and leave interesting news as text, HN-
style. The way it's currently presented just doesn't incite me to really click
or interact, and seems weird - reminds me a lot of Evernote, actually. I may
be an outlier, though.

~~~
abossy
I'm gonna go ahead and suggest the opposite: keep the news as is, but reduce
the textual noise. That is, remove the tld, "upvote," submitter, etc. and only
show them on mouseover. These are all distractions from the important content,
the article names. That's why the NY Times skimmer works; all the metadata is
absent.

Since your audience are front-end designers and developers, they like to look
at pretty things. The Hacker News crowd strives for functionality.

------
Travis
My plate is so full these days that I won't use a new site / service unless I
can consume via RSS. Didn't seem to find a feed on the page, which makes it
effectively inaccessible for me.

~~~
adamhowell
Yep, was on the 'add if anyone cares' list, will be working once I get home.

------
chrisrhee
Maybe it's just me, but I thought the [+] icon in the comments was a toggle to
show/hide extra content, not upvote the comment.

------
jdp
It would be nice if it saved all the things I upvoted. Other than that, this
site has been added to my daily (hourly?) routine.

------
bgnm2000
as a front end guy myself, I like it a lot

whats it built on?

~~~
adamhowell
Thanks, Django.

~~~
bgnm2000
awesome - I've registered and made a post

~~~
adamhowell
Glad it worked ;) Welcome.

