

Web design? Screw aesthetics - MrAlmostWrong
http://www.drawar.com/articles/web-design-screw-aesthetics/113/

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shadowsun7
I've known Scrivs from his days in 9rules, and while I respect what he's doing
over at Drawar, I'm beginning to question his focus on design as an answer to
... well, everything.

Good design only helps if your site is useful; this in particular applies to
both blogs (like his) and webapps. He argued recently that:

 _Do you think it bothers the Gowalla people that they put so much care and
effort into the design of everything that they do and Foursquare is still
right there with them with a significantly worse design?_

That's missing the point. The point is that Foursquare is doing something
right, and that something is likely more than just design. I've not looked
into the location app space recently, but my guess is that Foursquare reached
critical mass before Gowalla did. Connecting an app's value to its design only
makes sense when all else is equal.

 _When Google is brought up as an example of mediocre design that succeeds,
people come out from the woodworks to argue that it is actually great design
and base it on the success that they have had. I don’t believe it._

I think design only gives you an advantage when you're competing in a space
with little or no technical differentiation. In this case, Google has had such
a huge technical advantage over its competitors that it didn't matter what
design they used anyway.

~~~
sketerpot
Remember when the internet was slow? If Google had loaded down their design
with huge amounts of images and clutter, they wouldn't have been nearly as
attractive in a world of "portal" search engines.

~~~
ugh
Good design =! many images

Minimalist search pages can look better than Google’s without being any
bigger.

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hegemonicon
It's well known that Google collects massive amounts of data, and does massive
amounts of UI testing (such as the infamous testing between 85 different
shades of blue), so I'm somewhat skeptical that it's design is mediocre
because this guy says it is and he's a web designer. Data trumps intuition
every day of the week.

~~~
boucher
You are skeptical because you believe that this is a data problem. He believes
(as do I) that it is not a data problem.

Making more people click your button is not, on its own, good design. There's
more to aesthetics than conversion rates. You can argue aesthetics aren't
important, but it's simply not the same subject as the kind of data collecting
A/B testing that Google does.

~~~
tptacek
I have a hard time understanding how people can reject the notion that design
is a data problem. I know I might be wrong about this. Random thoughts:

If your design doesn't accomplish a business objective, it may be better, but
it is irrelevant to the business.

If data indicates your aesthetic doesn't increase a metric, then ultimately
the only rational decision to make is to minimize the cost of your aesthetic.
All things being equal, you take the equivalently successful design that
imposes the least costs.

If the data indicates that your design _decreases_ a metric, then ultimately
the only rational decision is to kill the design.

There are also probably non-obvious cost factors. A much better Google SERP
design may be more aesthetically strong, and may not hurt metrics --- it may
even marginally improve metrics --- however, if the end result of that
aesthetic is that every other page at Google needs to cost more to cohere with
the SERP, then, again, it may be irrational to improve the design.

Companies spend a lot of money on design. Companies tell themselves a lot of
things about design. Somebody's whole career is predicated on the idea that
the lobby of a class A office building in the Chicago Loop needs to be just-
so. In the building I'm in now, somebody spent several million dollars to
improve the aesthetics. I think that probably has more to do with vanity than
it does with business.

Corporate annual reports are a marquee design project. Companies spend serious
dollars on them. Berkshire Hathaway does theirs in Word, set in Times New
Roman. They seem to be doing OK.

Sell me on aesthetics more? I don't see it.

~~~
fjabre
Design can be a powerful weapon if done right - just look at Apple..

However, it's very difficult to achieve Apple's near perfect blend of
aesthetics & function so I think most people give up and build anyway, making
something perfectly functional i.e. Facebook or Gmail, but not awe-inspiring.

~~~
tptacek
Apple's design is also more data-driven than it appears --- although it's
clearly not as coldly rational as Google's.

~~~
boucher
Data driven from an individual collection and observation perspective,
perhaps. Apple doesn't AB test its products.

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ThomPete
Design is problem solving. Nothing else.

You don't apply aesthetics to a design you apply a style to a design.

Whether something is aesthetic i grounded in culture, history and so many
other things.

The google style is bad by print and 1999 standards, but we have come to like
it because judging visual things is not only about how they look but how we
feel about them.

~~~
shadowsun7
Worth noting: <http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/06/logos.html>

_About thirty years ago, three companies dreamed up logos that have become so
powerful, I don't even have to show you the images to get them to pop up in
your head. A sneaker company paid a few hundred dollars for an abstract,
upside down wave, a coffee company picked a half-naked mermaid (is there any
other kind) that cost them nothing, and a computer company picked [hired a PR
firm that picked] a piece of fruit with a bite out of it.

What the images had in common: nothing. They range from abstract to woodcut to
groovy. The art of picking a logo, even one for the Olympics, has almost
nothing to do with taste or back story. A great logo doesn't mean anything
until the brand makes it worth something._

Likewise, great aesthetics/graphics mean nothing until the brand makes it
worth something.

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davidedicillo
Aesthetic is a consequence of good design. A good design is almost a science.
If you ask anybody to divide a page in two section, it isn't a coincidence if
almost everyone will divided it using the Golden Ratio without even knowing
what it is.

~~~
shrughes
Yes, because people automatically solve x^2-x-1=0 in their heads when dividing
up the page. Wait, my bad, it's just that people looking for that sort of
thing take whatever ratio they see and round it to the nearest multiple of the
golden ratio, and ignore any other ratios because they don't count.

Why don't you look at the top colored bar at Hacker News and compute its ratio
against the entire page? Why not count the ratio of this comment box? Why does
the resize draggie that Chrome puts in the bottom right hand corner of the
comment box have a 1:1 ratio? Why does the reply button, and most other
buttons online, have a ratio larger than 2:1? All the windows I have open on
my screen that are divided into sections don't follow the golden ratio. None
of their sizes are the golden rectangle. My monitor doesn't follow the golden
ratio. My aesthetically pleasing coffee mugs don't follow the ratio -- wait,
the handle's smaller than the width of the brim, but not less than half as
small. It must be the golden ratio.

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ugh
Great article but I don’t get the title.

~~~
iamwil
link. bait.

