

Ask YC: Do young people care about a nice visual designed websites? - carlos

Hi,
I am about to launch a new site addressed mainly to teenagers. As I like nice visual "look and feel" sites, I usually spend lot of time on this issue, compared with i.e. programming, etc. This effort usually ends up delaying an almost ready to launch site (from the development point of view).<p>Do you think that nice visual designed sites are appreciated by most people (specially young people) or it is a secondary issue?.<p>I am asking this question because I am starting to think that nice designs are only appreciated by designers and not for the average user.
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brlewis
I think you're asking the wrong question. It isn't so much the age that
matters. Ask what kind of relationship they have with your site.

Search results can look plain. Classified ads can look ugly. Someplace
associated with their own identity needs to look great.

More on my experience here:

<http://ourdoings.com/2008-02>

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thorax
> Someplace associated with their own identity needs to look great.

I would have agreed with you on that until MySpace came along and showed there
was less "need" even in that situation.

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brlewis
OK, so "great" wasn't the right word. What's a word with similar meaning but
conveying subjectivity?

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thorax
Well, I didn't actually mean it in that sense. When MySpace was getting its
umpteenth million user, the site layout, fonts, styles, etc, was all
amateurish and nowhere near "great". It didn't have any elegance at all
anywhere.

Nowadays they've had some professionals hop in and touch up some of the core
site elements. I still wouldn't call anything about it "great", even in terms
of "good match for each user" because it feels more like they're just working
with whatever they were given. None of the widgets/elements/profile tools
they're given are 'great' on its own.

So basically MySpace shook the premise for me that quality is any sort of an
essential element for success. They're probably an exception, but they're very
much a huge exception.

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izak30
I'm going to be a little contrary to some of these other guys:

Good design is very important. However: Usually, if you're the first in that
space, poor design is tolerated (arguably MySpace) If you're not the first in
the space, you need a 'better mousetrap' which can be the same features, and a
better design in some cases. Virb has excellent asthetics, and a great user-
feel, but it didn't take off like myspace or Facebook, so obviously design is
not the most important thing either.

It's all a matter of perspective, and what is important to your site. I would
say, if you have the money, hire a good, professional web designer.

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babul
good design will attract people, good usability will keep them. I say focus on
simple usuability first, then graphical niceness.

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pchristensen
Take a look at "Emotional Design" by Don Norman
(<http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/0465051359/pchristensen-20> )

The thesis is that if you present people with two [websites, machines, etc]
that function identically but one is beautiful, people will be measurably
better at using the pretty one, and they'll enjoy the experience more too.

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lee
Here are some rules of thumb that may help guide your approach.

In my experience, you need to divide up your problem into two different issues
to solve: design and branding. Design for functionality and smoothness of user
experience. Brand so that your audience relates well to your product.

A lot's been written about good design. Yes, teens definitely respond to it.
If a site's hard to use, they have the attention span of hummingbirds and if
you cause an engagement failure because of poor usability, they'll be gone and
won't return. Above all else, focus on making your site easy to use and the
user experience seamless.

Branding depends on your audience's demographic. Most teens have developed a
strong enough, though flexible, identity to be attracted to some things and
repelled by others based on their perceived sense of who they are in their
greater and lesser social ecosystems. You might be interested in reading
everything danah boyd (intentionally lowercase) ever wrote, most especially
"Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" here:
<http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html>

In general, people, no matter what their age group, adapt to symbolic systems
they're immersed in. Kids in gradeschool can glance at a page in a textbook
and from the fonts, point size, layout, graphics, tell you precisely whether
it's a third grade book or a fourth grade book, and therefore whether it's for
them or not. (The same goes for someone looking at a full page ad in The New
Yorker - font, point size, color choices, etc..) Higher income demographic
kids are exposed to high end design by the time they're in their teens and
have a more positive response to it than kids without the opportunity and
exposure to design. In my own work with teens, non-college bound teens find
Facebook's design BORRRRRING! [picture an entire class of kids singsonging
that in unison] They tolerate a _lot_ of busy-ness and chaos on a page and
will jump onto MySpace whenever your back is turned.

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maxwell
I'm a borderline young person, so I guess I can comment. Good aesthetics and
good content seem circular. If a site looks good, I'm probably more inclined
to look around, bookmark it, or contribute to the content. Conversely, if the
content's good on its own, that might give it the popularity that spurs some
visual improvement. A lot of popular sites weren't particularly pretty when
they launched/grew (take Facebook), and some still aren't. But if it's a user-
driven site, people might be less inclined to contribute information or come
back in the first place if its ugly. So, I generally try not to separate the
two in my own work. Form and function follow each other around.

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axod
I think there are examples on both sides that are successful.

The iPod is fantastic design. Myspace is absolutely hideous design.

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bigtoga
Great examples.

I think functionality overrides appearance, at least until competition steps
in. Reddit and YC are examples of spartan design but great loyalty among
readers young and old. It's the idea and the execution first followed by the
quality of design.

We see it all the time: small company comes up with cool product but not-so-
cool packaging/marketing. Once they become successful, they hire people who
make their packaging/marketing as good as the product.

I guess I fall on the side of "Product First, Marketing Second." It could be
that a great website design is more about marketing than product but I don't
know.

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justindz
Spartan design can be fantastic design and also does not necessarily indicate
a lack of features.

Fantastic design is product first and marketing second. Marketing is about
convincing you that you need something via a channel that is not the product
itself.

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hugov
Visual design is a key, integral part of "look and feel" and usability. I
would argue that even if you ask your users and they tell you they don't care
about the aesthetics, they actually are influenced at some level by them.
People (including me) are more likely to continue to use and contribute to a
well-designed and attractive site.

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jdavid
there are a couple of ways to look at it, but you first need to figure out
what you are selling. in the case of myspace, they were creating a place for
people without web skills and money to have a social website, it was
geocities2.0 and if someone at geocities was paying attention, they should
have come up with the idea. the ipod on the other hand was designed to have
every sales advantage over every other MP3 player, and at launch, IT DID. the
iPod was smaller, easier to use, had a larger hard drive, and it was cheaper;
Jobs was able to sell the iPod cheaper than other MP3 players because he knew
that he could make the money up in the online store, so if Apple broke even on
the device, he would make it up later. So Apple had more in common with
selling a Starbucks Coffee, than selling a piece of hardware. Apple became a
music experience vendor.

Dyson sells vacuum cleaners as an experience vendor too.

How are new cars sold? Are they a total experience sale, or are they a
hardware sale?

How are used cars sold? Are they a total experience sale, or are they a
hardware sale?

If your site is an experience sale in a developed marketplace, you may need to
think about design "now," however, if your device is a time saver, or is new
in its marketplace, you should be able to iterate the design over time.

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m0nty
I love good design, but I've noticed recently that many people don't care that
much. The company I'm freelancing for keeps buying programs which look like
they were designed by a monkey (eg, clipart icons, garish colours, poor
alignment of elements, graphics _literally_ done in MS Paint) and nobody
except me seems to give a damn. If your product is a good one, don't sweat the
design too much. If people use it and like it, you can enhance the design
later.

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challenjer
My partner & I wrestled with the same issue -- craigslist is fugly but
functional, etc. Does depend on audience, but we're following Mint's path.
First pass was functional but bad UI (probably an extension of the prototype),
then they got $4M and voila. If you're asking for all their financial data, it
probably can't look like MySpace.

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wenbert
Good design and good user-interface. Nothing is more annoying than sites with
awesome design but bad UI...

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misterbwong
I think it depends on what you mean by "nice designs." Personally, I have a
(pretty low) bar that's set in my head. If the design doesn't meet that bar,
the website gets relegated to the "mom and pop" bin. If it passes the bar, I
will usually give it more consideration.

